UPDATE (Sept. 19):Other Half Brewing parts ways with renowned wild ale maker Eric Salazar

When Eric Salazar started working in beer in 1995, he said, he was an aimless college art student who found himself with an unexpected opportunity. He didn't envision a life in beer.

Fast-forward 24 years later, and it has certainly been a wild ride. Through serendipity, curiosity and hard work, Salazar established himself as one of the leading authorities and most important voices in American wild ales.

His experience at Colorado-based New Belgium Brewing, one of the progenitors of American wild, sour and wood-aged beers and the fourth largest craft brewery in the country, gave him the unique authority he now humbly maintains. (He's reticent to admit how much influence his work has had on American craft beer.)

And now Salazar is in Rochester. He's latched onto Other Half Brewing and he will oversee the brewery's nascent wood-aged and wild ale program in Ontario County. It marks a new direction for the Brooklyn-based brewery, which is in the process of opening its second location at the former Nedloh Brewing property in East Bloomfield, Ontario County.

The brewery instantly brings national attention to a burgeoning Rochester beer scene. Other Half is known for its hazy India pale ales, huge imperial stouts, eye-catching marketing and collaborations with breweries from across the globe.

"This is something we’ve always wanted to do, but have never been able to really justify the expense in Brooklyn," Other Half co-founder and brewmaster Sam Richardson said last week.

Richardson said the opportunity to hire Salazar was "enormous."

"This is his first chance to start over at it from scratch, too," said Richardson, who founded Other Half five years ago with Matt Monahan and Andrew Burman. "He’s going to help us reimagine what we want this program to look like. He’s really excited about. It brings a lot of credibility, but it also brings a lot of experience. He’s a big adult in the room. He’s seen it. He’s been there. He’s done it."

To be clear, the Other Half sour program is still in its infancy. It doesn't have a permanent space yet. No wort has been put into barrels in Ontario County. And it might be on the East Bloomfield property or it could be separate in a place such as Victor, Ontario County. (The brewery is still firming up those plans.)

More:Other Half Brewing buys Nedloh building, will open brewery in East Bloomfield

More:Other Half Brewery release in Rochester attracts hundreds; brewery vows to come back soon

More:Other Half Brewing to hold can release in Rochester

"We’re working on that right now," Richardson said. "I mean, really the goal is to find a place to work with. It’s a program that has to be set up from scratch. So, it’s going to take a lot of time. It’s not going to happen overnight. But we’re going to make it happen. We’re patient. Beers like this just don’t happen the second you brew them."

The facility for wild beers will be separate from the renovated Nedloh space, Richardson said. That's because it has to be. There is a huge risk of contamination when dealing with the type of wild yeast and bacteria needed to produce the wild and funky beers that will eventually bear the OH insignia.

Sour and wild beers take years to produce. The process often involves the blending of mature beers with younger ones. Much like wines from the Finger Lakes region, both Richardson and Salazar said OH wild ales will be representative of the area in which they are produced. They will be terroir-driven creations.

"We actually purchased a bunch of French oak foeders years ago. We kept trying to figure out how to bring them into our program, and we couldn’t make it work," Richardson. "It was just hard to find space. It’s cheaper to operate in western New York than it is in Brooklyn.

"This gives us a chance to really do this. A big component of it is we want to do a bunch of spontaneous beer and we would also like to develop our own mixed culture. There will be a whole host of different stuff that we’ll play around with."

The beers are much more time-intensive and not nearly so profitable as "clean" beers (those without wild yeast) such as IPAs and stouts. So that leaves some to wonder: Why do this at all?

"It’s important to us. We like it. We like to be a diverse company," Richardson said. "I want to make a variety of things and do it really well. It’s beers we’re excited about. We realize that in the grand scheme of things it’s not a big money-maker. It’s a lot easier and faster to sell clean beer. But sometimes you do things as a company because it’s what you want to do, not because it’s the smartest business decision."

Other Half has a coolship (or koelschip), which is the traditional fermentation vessel used to produce wild beers. It is an open-top vessel that is long, flat and not very deep. The coolship catches wild yeast to produce beers, much like has been practiced in Belgium historically. It's used to cool wort, which is the liquid derived from the mashing process that contains the sugars used by yeast to produce beer. It will become the first brewery in western New York to utilize a coolship.

"I've been out at the brewery to really just feel it and soak it up," Salazar said.

Salazar called beer an unexpected journey. "I just found myself in this position that was something that I never thought I would be in. Beer, right? I didn’t even know that beer could be an art form," he said. "I found a lot of passion for it. I worked really hard. All of a sudden, I went from being this mediocre college student to actually enjoying what I’m doing and putting a lot of hard work and study into this thing that I had no idea I would shine at. Years later I would realize I was the artist I wanted to be, just not in a medium I knew existed."

For Salazar, the road to Rochester involved "road signs" from the universe. He's a native of San Diego and spent more than 25 years in Colorado. But his marriage to Amy (Burdett) Salazar, a Rochester native, had him considering his options. He said they wanted to move back to Rochester to be closer to Amy's family.

"I always think that the universe, you can rely on it to show the road signs, but it’s kind of up to you to pay attention to those road signs," Salazar said. "Everything was clicking into place. As I went down this journey of leaving the old life behind and thinking about the new life, things were just falling into place so well that I couldn’t deny that this was where I was supposed to go and what I needed to do."

Under Salazar, former New Belgium brewmaster PeterBouckaert and Lauren Salazar, Eric's former spouse, New Belgium was largely responsible for introducing American beer drinkers to sour and wood-aged beers. (Bouckaert became New Belgium's brewmaster in 1996. He came from Rodenbach, one of the most famous Belgian beer producers.) The first New Belgium creations were released over 20 years ago. La Folie, a textbook sour brown ale aged in oak barrels, was the first in 1997. According to the brewery, it was the first commercially produced sour beer released by an American brewery.

Eric Salazar, the wood cellar manager, and Lauren Salazar, the sour beer blender, collaborated each year to release blends such as La Folie. And as Bouckaert worked on other projects, the Salazars began to take more ownership over the program.

At age 46, Salazar said he was looking for a new challenge. And then one day, his brother-in-law Scott Burdett called.

"Scott said, ‘You know this brewery, Other Half?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I know of them.’ He said, ‘We just did a business deal (through his family's company, Flaum Management).’ He sent me the local article, and it said they were planning on doing wild and foeder and sour beers. That article really spurred me."

Salazar reached out to Other Half and discussions progressed quickly. Salazar officially left New Belgium at the beginning of 2019. He spent two weeks down in Brooklyn, meeting people and learning about the OH culture. He's now officially the Other Half head brewer for wood-aged and sour beers.

"He saw this as an opportunity for him to finally do it," Richardson said. "He wanted to see if we had anything for him to do (pause and chuckle), which we do. It’s really random that we have all the wood and a lot of the equipment needed to continue doing wild beer production that he has been doing for New Belgium."

Salazar said one of his main goals is to leverage his years of experience from New Belgium and develop something that reflects the OH brand.

"I've been really thinking about how we can bridge that, just the marketing, our styles, what the whole idea of it is," Salazar said. "I'm sure Sam is thinking on the same level. What's really cool about this is that it's on the ground floor. There is not a whole lot of expectation other than let's do something great.

"For me right now, feeling like I'm at the beginning again is refreshing and exciting. It's scary. Don't get me wrong—but it's exciting more than anything else."

WCLEVELAND@Gannett.com