Behind the bottles

Published on poststar.com with a companion video report
3/6/06

Ed Bethel's best shot at second career started at hunting camp.

One weekend in the early '90s, one of his hunting buddies showed up at camp with a few bottles of home-brewed beer. Bethel took a sip.

It was good -- so good that it changed his life.

After finishing off the homemade stuff, the guys moved on to cans of what Bethel called "my beloved Genesee Light." The commercial brew tasted awful by comparison.

"I just looked at the can, like, what the heck happened to you?" he remembered.

Over the next few years, Bethel started brewing beer in his kitchen, and became fascinated with the business of microbrewing. When the valve company where he had worked for a decade decided to leave the area, Bethel and his wife, Patty, decided to explore a new venture.

They visited microbreweries as far away as Nova Scotia to learn from others' methods, scoured the classifieds for used equipment, and soon gained a partner -- their son, Adrian.

On St. Patrick's Day in 1999, the family opened Cooper's Cave Ale Company in an old industrial building on the corner of Sagamore Street and Dix Avenue in Glens Falls. Seven years later, the business is barreling along at full speed as more and more local folks discover the tasty brews that Ed Bethel creates from the simple ingredients of water, malted barley, hops, and yeast.

Although Bethel stays up until 4 a.m. most mornings brewing, he seems to have bottled up a secret stash of energy and humor. In his work gear -- a white lab coat, dust mask, and a baseball cap over his long, grey, braided ponytail -- he looks a little like a mad scientist. And in a sense, he knows it's crazy to put so much work into a process that could be mechanized.

"It's truly a labor of love," he admitted, as he climbed a ladder and grabbed a rake to stir several heavy sacks of malted barley into an elevated vat called a mash tun.

"Of course, to make good beer, you have to have good music," Bethel added, humming along to a jazz recording.

As the mash boiled, Bethel added hops, the ingredient that gives beer its bitter flavor and unique aroma. It also acts as a natural filter.

After about an hour and a half of boiling, the liquor was extracted from the mash and sent to the fermentation room, where it will sit in open stainless steel tanks for up to a week as the yeast takes action.

"It looks marshmallowy at first, and when it's done, it's more like mud pie," Bethel said.

The newborn beer is then conditioned and carbonated in pressurized tanks, then clarified with natural agents like seaweed.

Cooper's Cave Ale Company makes about 450 barrels of beer a year, in batches of seven 31-gallon barrels at a time, and Bethel said his favorite part of being a brewer is sampling each batch.

"That's not a tough job. Most people want it, but I'm not giving it up," he says, laughing. "I like 'em all."