Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Steve Donohue's passion for beer-making began in college
Brand new brew
Steve Donohue parlays a passion for beer into a full-time career
By Sam Scott
Steve Donohue, the new head brewer at Stoddard's brew house in Sunnyvale, first turned to beer-making as a college student who loved good beer, but couldn't afford to buy it. Inspiration, he says, came to him with the first batch.
"It was the coolest thing I'd ever done," Donohue says. "I decided it's what I had to do for a living. Like lightning, I guess you can say."
And that realization on that day is, in brief, how Donohue came to spend his days wearing shorts and rubber boots, making beer for a living.
After working for years in a couple of local breweries and studying with the American Brewers' Guild, Donohue recently took the position at Stoddard's where they've been brewing since 1993.
A seat at the restaurant's bar provides a clear view of Donohue's "office." Glass panes form the end wall of the brewery and show the big steely fermentation tanks where the journey from malt to beer is completed. A beer at Stoddard's travels less than two hundred feet from its days as uncrushed malt housed in the grain silo in the patio to the tap at the bar.
"The beer is fresh," Donohue says. "And fresh beer is the best."
The ancient craft of turning malt and hops to beer seems a strange choice of profession for Silicon Valley, but Donohue says making ale hardly qualifies as work and he feels no desire to join the high-tech world.
"I definitely enjoy my job," he says "I love it."
Stoddard's sells its brew elsewhere. Occasionally, Donohue says he chances on someone drinking his stuff and spouting compliments, not knowing who's listening. "It's a good feeling," he says.
Donohue loves to drink beer in addition to making it. He just returned from his honeymoon in Europe, making sure to take in some of Munich's beer gardens. An earlier trip to England was spent largely in the pubs. On the way to Victoria, British Columbia in Canada, on other travels, he estimates he stopped at 20 breweries.
"I just love the taste of beer," he says, adding he rarely drinks much at one sitting. He approaches his small sample of porter as a connoisseur. He swirls it first, letting out the "aroma," sniffs it, and then tastes.
All that traveling and drinking makes him something of an expert on world beer. Americans take heart. He thinks the best beer scene is in America, thanks to its micro-breweries and their variety of styles.
"Germany makes great lagers," Donohue says. "Britain makes great ales. You can get the best of both world here."
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
