Yankee Brew News Archive

New Micro Coming to Providence: Great Providence Brewing Company Gets the Word Out Before the Beer

Originally Published: 02/97

By: Kerry J. Byrne

This is a weird kind of brewing story.

When we last saw brewer Kurt Musselman, he was cranking out a long line of fine beers at the Trinity Brewhouse in downtown Providence.

For the past several months he has been in the employ of the Great Providence Brewing Company, mashing away to his heart's content at the company's pilot plant in East Providence.

The building was once an ice cream plant. "I'm tucked away in one corner of this huge building," said Musselman. "I'm using one little room of it."

In that one little room is a five-gallon (that's GALLON, not barrel) Recirculation Infusion Mash System (RIMS) made out of kegs with no tops. The system, designed by a homebrewer, includes a circuit board which allows the brewer to recirculate the liquid through the mash and has an external heater which allows the brewer to step up the temperature.

"It's what a pilot plant should be,'' Musselman said. "Flexible." He said the simple system allows him to do single- or multi-step infusion mashes, as well as decoction mashes.

What a nice little story, right?

Well, here comes the weird part.

Enter Fred Argilagos and Greg Hutchins, the founders of the Great Providence Brewing Company. Already these two have worked wonders. Argilagos, speaking from his office in Connecticut, said Money Magazine is slated to do a story on them.

Mayor Vincent (Buddy) Cianci has deemed their product the official beer of Providence, said Argilagos. And, he said, the company already has 20 accounts to sell its product, while its Web page (www.Americanbrewing.com) is getting 6,000 hits per month.

Better yet: Argilagos said his company's product has been selected to represent Providence at a February trade show in Los Angeles called LocationExpo which promotes movie making in the individual states. And it gets better: One-hundred bottles of Great Providence product, said Argilagos, will be sent to Hong Kong in June as part of a celebration of the city's unification with China.

And now the weird part: All this took place before one bottle or keg of Great Providence beer had touched the shores of the Ocean State.

Which begets the question: What about the beer? Not that we should expect a brewer of Musselman's caliber to give us a bad beer. Quite the contrary. Great Providence Pilsner, the company's first product, should be of a high-quality.

But it does call into question the aforementioned titles and honors bequeathed upon the company. How do you get such lofty honors without a product? We're not talking marinara sauce. What if a journalist won a Pulitzer Prize without writing a story?

Musselman and Argilagos defended the process.

"When I first heard their plan it sounded very ambitious, but these were the guys to do it," Musselman said, in reference to Argilagos and Hutchins, who come to the brewing world by way of the real estate business. "In Egypt, a king once said 'Hey, I'm going to build a pyramid and he went out and did it.'''

"We've been very pro-active in these things because they are very important," said Argilagos. "And a lot of people have been calling us and have approached us." And, he said, "we have a show stopping product."

That product was expected to finally come to Rhode Island in late January.

After tweaking his recipe at the pilot plant, Musselman went to the Independence Brewery in Philadelphia in late December to brew the first batch of Great Providence Pilsner. There it will be brewed, kegged and shipped to Rhode Island until the company opens a Providence brewery later this year. Argilagos said the company has secured 20,000 square feet of space in a Clifford Street building "in heart of the Jewelry District." The building is at the intersection of interstates 95 and 195, where signs will be visible by more than 300,000 cars per week, said Argilagos. "We'll have great exposure."

But what about the beer?

The brewery will have a capacity of 50,000 barrels per year, but Argilagos was not sure what kind of system they would utilize. This will the largest project yet for Musselman who, as a one-time employee of PUB Brewing Company, has worked at or helped develop numerous breweries across the country, including Waterloo Brewing Company, in Austin, Texas, Box Office Brewing Company in Dekalb, Illinois., and James Bay Brewing Company, in Port Jefferson, New York.

Locally he has worked at John Harvard's Brew House in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Mass. Bay Brewing Company in Boston. Musselman said in mid-January that the only definite product was the pilsner. He said it would be "about as authentic as I could make it." He used Belgian pilsner malt, a lager yeast from the Weihenstephan Institute in Germany, and Perle and Saaz hops.

Argilagos said the beer will be available at many popular bars and restaurants in Providence. Among them: the Capital Grille, J.G. Goff's, the Westin Hotel and the Providence Civic Center and Convention Center Musselman was still working on additional test batches, concentrating mostly on a Russian Imperial Stout. He would then likely slide into an IPA and other popular styles. Musselman said the pilsner brewed at Independence used his ingredients and was his recipe.

"It will just be on draft for right now," said Musselman. "Eventually we will have a bottled product. Independence is getting a new bottling plant.

"The main reason why we're brewing beer out of state and bringing it in is to generate interest in the stock offering."

Ahh, the stock offering.

The company is in search of capital, said Argilagos, so they "can bring the proud tradition of brewing back to Rhode Island," perhaps unaware that there are a handful of breweries and brewpubs already in the state. Those interested in investing can call (800) 787-BREW.

The two owners were "both in real estate in the 1980s when it stopped being fun, as everyone knows," said Argilagos. "We got into this because it's an exciting industry. We thought we could bring in some business background.

"We're just a couple of guys who love beer and we're just thrilled to be in this business."

Yeah, but what about the beer?