Aaron Morse of Dark Horse Brewing Company

Going Pro by | Mar 2010 | Issue #38

Aaron Morse founded his Michigan brewery on one simple belief: The beer always comes first. The brewery’s philosophy hasn’t swayed in a decade of brewing; Dark Horse puts its own unmistakable stamp on whatever comes out of its tiny seven-barrel system, whether it’s a brawling IPA, an experimental Belgian brew or an old-school craft classic bearing a new twist.

1. Open up
Like many Michigan natives, Aaron Morse discovered great beer in a bottle of Bell’s. “That beer was so flavorful,” he marvels. All of a sudden, he says, “there was more to beer than this 24-pack of bland nothingness. Those full-bodied, chewy beers—it was almost a meal in a bottle. From then on, I searched out big, flavorful beers.” Those are now the types of beers Morse brews—malty brawlers, beers with flavor and body, beers that excite the palate.

2. Just horrible? Just wait
Morse began brewing in college as a way to save money. “We made a lot of bad beer,” he confesses. In his first all-grain batch, for instance, he neglected to employ any base malt, “and obviously it turned out just horrible.” But Morse fell in love with the brewing process. He brewed relentlessly, and experience yielded results. Brewing was a career calling, Morse realized, so when his parents bought a bar in town, he asked, “What would you think about making it into a brewpub?”

3. Believe in beer
When the pub didn’t work out, Morse grabbed the brewhouse equipment, moved it across town and built out his own brewery and taproom, Dark Horse. “The brewery is very much built on a little money and lots of friends,” Morse says. “It’s just pure determination and the love of beer itself. When we closed the pub, I said, I just want to make beer. Beer was the driving factor. I wanted to get rid of all the other stuff. If you put something out that you believe is good, and others believe in, in the end, it works out.”

4. Believe in your beer
“The first three to five years were really killer,” Morse recalls. “I remember waiting to cash my paycheck so my employees could cash theirs. There were lots of nights sitting up wondering how I was going to pay for the next grain bill so I could make that beer that the distributor ordered. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears, and in the end, that’s what makes it so gratifying. We were sticking to our guns, not selling out, making a product we believe in.”

5. Make that a one-two punch
Morse likes to say that Dark Horse’s flagship Crooked Tree IPA “punches you in the face” with Cascade and Centennial hops. At the same time, he says, “I wanted enough malt backbone to make it substantial, so it didn’t taste like you’re just drinking hops. One thing I don’t like about IPAs—sometimes you wonder, is there any malt in this beer? There are people out there who like drinking those beers, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I just wanted some malt backbone in the beer to interact with those hops and make a nice harmony.”

6. Take work literally
Double Crooked Tree started out with a simple question: “How can a Double IPA be 8 to 9 percent alcohol?” Morse figured that since he was selling his customers on the word “double,” he might as well skip the recipe reformulation and simply double up Crooked Tree’s malt and hops bills. Dark Horse’s new Quad IPA wasn’t that simple—the brewery’s mash tun couldn’t contain all the ingredients—but, mathematically, the brew is Crooked Tree times four. “It’s going to end up being a Barleywine IPA,” Morse says. “It was probably 12 to 14 hours of brewing, for five barrels of yield.” Time well spent.

7. Give the classics a twist
A good craft brewery needs a good Amber Ale, Morse figured. But that doesn’t mean that Dark Horse phoned in its Amber. “We don’t like to do anything straight, narrow or perfect,” he says. “We said, let’s change it somehow.” The brewery employs a specialty strain with Belgian leanings. “We wanted to make it different. It’s still in the Amber category for those people who like them, but for the beer connoisseur who likes something a little different, it has a little more depth.”

8. Get down with Brown
This spring, Dark Horse brings back bottles of one of its old-school recipes, Brown Ale. The beer lost its production slot when Dark Horse’s four-head bottle filler couldn’t keep up with a heavy workload. Since that time, fans have been demanding the beer’s return. “We knew we had to bring it back,” Morse says, “and it was a question of, when we brought it back, we had to do it right.” Its return was enabled by a new 20-head Krones bottling line, which does more in a day than the old line could do in a week. The line has also allowed Dark Horse to ramp up its barrelage, and to expand its distribution footprint.

9. The payoff is in the pint
Morse stocks Dark Horse’s taproom with a steady rotation of experimental beers. The taproom is a laboratory for Dark Horse’s brewers—and a way of rewarding the brewery’s rabid fans. “When people come up on the weekends from Ohio or Indiana and we have two or three beers on you can’t get anywhere else, it makes their day,” he says. “The other side of the passion of the beer industry is watching the smile on that beer drinker’s face go to ear to ear.”