PLAINVILLE — Nearly 21 years ago, Mark Sigman brewed his first beer, a nut brown ale. He was excited about his creation, and even printed out labels for the beer after it was bottled.



“It was terrible,” Sigman said while sitting at his desk at Relic Brewing Co. in Plainville. “We drank four and then we threw it away.”



Over two decades later and almost five years after he founded Relic Brewery, Sigman, also the head brewer, has made 130 different beers sold in package stores in Connecticut and Massachusetts. His beers can also be found at multiple restaurants in the region, as well as in the brewery’s tasting room on Whiting Street.



“When I bought the equipment, it was very much a hobby,” Sigman said.



What started as a hobby became his life. Last week, Sigman went to work on one of Relic’s beers called Landline — a German style Hefeweizen that is 5 percent alcohol.



Sigman usually focuses Tuesdays and Wednesdays on brewing, making about 60 gallons of a different beer each day. Sometimes he heads up to Thomas Hooker Brewery in Bloomfield to rent equipment when he needs to make more.



The brewery is located in the former Peck Spring factory complex. It has a tasting room open to the public Thursdays and Fridays from 4 to 7 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 4 p.m.



There are usually between eight and 10 different beers on tap at a time. Patrons can buy growlers, four-packs or six-packs of the craft beer and sit in the tasting room or outside where tables are set up in the parking lot. Food trucks sometimes stop by on Friday nights.



Stephanie Geiling, the brewery’s operations manager and the only other full-time employee besides Sigman, helps run the tasting room on Thursday nights.



“We’re one of few breweries in the state that do this,” she said. “We do free flights, free samples of all our beers on tap. It’s really great, I really enjoy our customers.”



While Sigman oversees the brewing, Geiling has several roles at the brewery.



At the beginning of the week she helps clean the room where Sigman brews. She helps dry hop, keg and bottle. When Geiling is out of the office, she works with the sales representatives from the distributors that sell the beer, going to bars and package stores throughout the state.



She also runs promotional events, like a tap takeover at different bars.



“I am really excited about our beers. I really enjoy our product so it makes it more energizing,” she said. “It can get a little tiring, but on the other hand to see something grow is rewarding and satisfying.”



Sigman started the day last week by preparing the equipment he will use. The most important thing during the brewing process is the temperature of the water being used, he said.



As the water heated up, Sigman checked the temperature with two thermometers. Once the water hit around 160 degrees, he transferred the water using a pump from the heating container to another container.



Sigman then added three different kinds of grains — pale ale malt, wheat malt and pilsner malt — to the batch. He mixed them together and then added a small amount of calcium chloride.



“It’s like eating a steak without salt,” Sigman said on why he adds the calcium chloride.



The grains were then left in the hot water for the next 45 minutes. They soaked together to create wort, a sugary water at the bottom of the container.



Sigman said his love for brewing started when he moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming after graduating from Siena College.



“I lived there for seven years, it was a lot of fun, lots of skiing, lots of outdoor stuff,” Sigman said. “I worked as little as possible, I learned how to home brew while I was there.”



Sigman said the western United States was into craft beer years before the East Coast caught up.



“A brewery, that is still open there, opened up in 1994,” he said. “ I volunteered there a little. I visited other breweries while I traveled around the west.”



After more traveling and a stop in Denver, Colorado for some time, Sigman returned to his home state of Connecticut — he grew up in Simsbury — and noticed how that craft beer in the state was behind what he was used to.



“Craft beer was everywhere when I would go out west in 1992 or 1993, because the craft beer scene was so far ahead,” Sigman said.



In 2011, he decided to start his own brewery.



“I was really disappointed with not having a local brewery to go to,” he said. “I started a plan to eventually open up.”



He had a few hoops to jump through, including getting Plainville to change laws to allow a brewery. After about a year, Relic Brewery opened its doors in 2012.



“We got way too much attention, like so much attention from magazines, papers and online,” Sigman said of when the brewery opened. “The beginning was rough, but it was rough because we had no idea what we were doing at all. I knew how to make beer, but I really wasn’t super comfortable with the new equipment, there were a lot of misses where I had to throw away the whole batch.”



Now Sigman said he rarely throws out a batch.



After the grains soaked together, the Landline Batch he started making last week was coming together. Using a tube he connected to the container, the wort was recirculated back to the top. Sigman said the wort provides sugar for the yeast to eat when it is added.



In total, he boiled 63 gallons of water mixed with the grains. After the boiling process, Sigman immediately added hops before he hooked up a transfer system, moving the contents of the batch to a fermenter.



The transfer to the fermenter took another hour, and while the mixture was transferred it was flash-cooled from 200 degrees to 65 degrees.



Once the mixture was is in the fermenter, Sigman added yeast and sealed the container.



After around two weeks of fermentation the beer is ready to be kegged.



Once all the beer is kegged, Sigman said, it is ready to be carbonated by adding a priming solution. The batch is then conditioned for another two weeks before it is ready to serve..



ppaguaga@record-journal.com 203-317-2235 Twitter: @PetePaguaga





