Big Al Brewing may be labeled a microbrewery, but the owners’ dreams are in no way small-scaled while they make a huge splash from their White Center establishment.

Alejandro Brown, 36, and his wife Noelle, opened 15 months ago. They lease the building, at 9832 14th Ave SW, from Charlie and Karin McElevey, former microbrewers there. The McElevey’s are well known to many in the area for starting the West Seattle Brewing Company on California Avenue. They later sold the business to the Elliott Bay Brewery.

While Big Al Brewing’s retail bar is doing well, its wholesale clients, now 130, are growing rapidly. They speculate they will sell 2000 barrels over the next 12 months. One U.S. barrel equals two kegs or 31 gallons. The brewery occasionally makes lager beer, which involves a longer fermenting process, but is more associated with ales.

West Seattle clients include Porterhouse, the Admiral Pub, and Circa Alehouse in the Admiral Junction, the Beverage Place at the Morgan Junction, and Quest Field for the Seahawks and Sounders games.

“I was a home brewer for nine years and after my second brew day I decided this is what I wanted to do,” said Alejandro, or Al. He was a technical trainer for Nissan Northwest making a very good living he said. Noelle was in marketing at Macy’s and lost her job a year and a half ago when the department store laid off 750 workers.

“Noelle does our marketing, and my knowledge from my former career was also transferable to the craft (micro) brewing business,” he said. “A brewer has to understand physics, fluid dynamics, and chemistry, and I still use my Nissan tool kit.

“Basically brewers don’t make beer,” said Al. “Yeast makes beer, and I am a chef for yeast. Yeast consumes the sugar and turns it into alcohol and carbon dioxide. So my job is to provide a meal and good atmosphere for yeast, and nice ‘wort’ for them to enjoy.”

The “wort” (rhymes with “skirt”) is the sweet liquid that comes from the grain, and is basically sugar water. The wort separates from the grain and rises in a heated vessel, in this case, Al’s smoldering 350-gallon “mash tun.”

“Ultimately, all alcohol comes from sugar,” said Al. “So with vodka the sugar source is potatoes, with wine it’s grapes, and with beer its grain, or malted barley.”

The “mash,” the spent grain left behind after the wort is removed, can be reused as feed.

“Mash has value to farmers to feed pigs and cattle,” said Al. “A little Enumclaw farmer comes by and picks it up for free. He is doing me a favor.

“We have five year-round beers, plus one new (seasonal) beer each month,” he said. Those five are currently Irish red, amber, pale, ipa- India pale ale, and a smoked porter, smoked by putting grain in a smoker with peat moss. One of the new monthly offerings is “Winter Warmer.”

“I think good beer comes from passion,” said Al. If you are just trying to make money, based on what your accountant tells you, you become less interested in what ends up in the glass.”

Charlie McElevey is more than Al’s landlord. He is his mentor. Charlie was an American soldier stationed in Germany where he met German-born Karin. He attended Weihenstephan, the world’s oldest brewing school, now part of the Munich University of Technology, and has helped over 25 microbreweries get started.

“It’s a tough business to get started in,” said McElevey, a West Seattle resident. “Al has done well. People like him. The beer is good. He has some very nice, interesting beers. I expect he’s going to be successful.

“Some people might say they don’t want to drink micro because it’s too ‘hoppy,’ or bitter, but that isn’t a valid criticism at his place. He covers the spectrum of flavors. When they taste the beer they are going to find something they really like.”

This, and the Big Al staff, who McElevey knows well and deems “reliable and honest,” seems to be a winning cocktail for getting noticed by regular retail customers, like the group of a dozen or two who meet there Thursday nights for what they wryly call their “weekly meetings.” They are some of the 200-plus members of the West Seattle Funblog, a local website that lampoons West Seattle life, akin to the national satirical news site “The Onion.”

Funblog’s ringmaster, “Luigi Linguini” may love to lampoon, but he takes his beer very seriously.

“The Big Al Brewing is a wonderful place to congregate with friends and enjoy excellent, locally produced fresh beer,” enthused Linguini. “I enjoy the fact that Al has both a sense of tradition and adventure. He's intrepid in terms of taking an established beer style and putting his personal twist on the recipe. The result is always something bold and exciting and you'll find yourself returning to participate in the next surprise.”

For more information, visit www.bigalbrewing.com.

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