New Handles at Monkish Brewing

Henry, the owner and brewmaster at Monkish Brewing in Torrance, CA wanted some handles for his new bar and draft system in the tasting room. We decided on a slightly modified version of the B-2 style handle, only a little narrower. The wood is Pao Ferro with only a light finish on them. A few of the handles have worm holes and burl patterns, so each handle is really unique. Please stop by Monkish Brewing at 20311 S. Western Ave. Torrance, CA 90501 and have a glass of Henry's fantastic beer (Anomaly is one of my favorites!) and check out the handles while you're at it.

Marblewood Handles

I recently bought a small sample of Marblewood. I had never used it before and was curious about it. It is a yellowish colored wood with orange to brown streaks literally marbled through the wood. It is a very dense wood, is a little difficult to work with and is hard on the tools. Here I have one A-2 style handle done. I have enough wood to make a total of four. If anyone is interested in one or more, they are $35 each. If someone wants all four, I'll discount that. Here is some pictures of the finished handle and the raw wood.

Growler 6-Pack

I wish I could say that this was an original idea of mine, but it's not. I met a guy at a local brewery that told me that he had a six-pack holder for growlers. I immediately thought that was an ingenious idea. I've needed something to keep them from rolling and clanging around in the car, and transporting multiple growlers at once required more hands than I currently have. A holder seemed to be a great solution. This all happened right before New Years, so I quickly rounded up some scraps and threw this together to use it while making the rounds getting growlers for New Years.

It fits all sizes of growlers and I plan on making some inserts to accommodate some smaller growlers. It is made out of 1/2'' MDF and 1/4'' plywood. It is glued and screwed to hold together. It does have a downside. When full it is heavy. Six full growlers is about 3 gallons, which is about 25 lbs, just in beer weight, not counting the glass and wood. It does the job, though and can handle all the weight.

Full on New Years Eve. Full growlers left to right, front to back include:
Bootlegger's Brewery, Fullerton, CA - Chocolate Mint Porter (I wish I had more to put over ice cream!)
Stone Brewing Co, Escondido, CA - Levitation, One of my all-time favorites from Stone)
Stone Brewing Co - IPA, another fantastic favorite
El Segundo Brewing Co, El Segundo, CA - Citra Pale Ale, the Citra version of their house Pale Ale
Eagle Rock Brewery, Los Angeles, CA - Solidarity, their English Mild and at 3.8%
 you can drink it all night
Monkish Brewing Co, Torrance, CA - Anomaly, a dark Belgian Strong
 that is probably my favorite from them

Christmas Orders

Here's a few pictures of handles that I was working on around Christmas. I had several orders of all types, commercial and private. A bar in New York City, The Dead Rabbit, contacted me about making them some handles. That was the week before Christmas. The bar was to open December 27th! That gave me only a couple days to get the handles completely done and delivered in time, despite the craziness of everyone else trying to deliver packages around that time. Everything went well and they were finished with time to deliver without unreasonable shipping costs.

On the flip side, a couple homebrewers got handles for Christmas. Their significant others contacted me about getting them handles in time for Christmas and those also went out without a hitch.

Christmas Cutting Board Gifts

I decided to make some cutting boards for some Christmas gifts, including a big end-grain board for my wife. The first four are made from Maple, Cherry, and Walnut. They are made from varying thicknesses of all of the woods arranged into the pattern. They are about 1'' thick with handles routed into the underside for easy carrying. The finish is just mineral oil.

The next board is my wife's. It is also made out of Maple, Cherry, and Walnut, but I also used some scraps of Cocobolo that I had left over from the handles that I posted about earlier. When I was buying the wood, I found a piece of maple that was a little spalted, giving it a tan/grey figure that weaves through part of the board. This added to the accents, breaking up the squares and rectangles visually.

The process to make the board started similar to the above four, but involved several more steps. Basically I started by making nine small boards, each with a different random pattern. Next I cut those boards up into two inch strips. Then I re-glued pieces of each of the boards together into chunks that would become a eighth of the finished board. Then it was trimming and re-gluing all of the chunks into the finished board. After some planing and sanding, it was done. The finished board is a little over 12''x20'' and about 1.75'' thick. This board is beautiful and should last forever.

 In the foreground is the Anchor 2012 Christmas beer. This year is really fantastic. A little lighter on the spicing and very drinkable now. I'm still going to hang on to some to compare in a couple years. Cheers to the folks at Anchor Brewing in San Francisco. Behind the bottle and glass is one of the nine boards the finished board was made from.

Here are all nine boards cut up and stacked, ready to be re-glued

Two of the "chunks", one-eighth of the finished board

While I have no intention of going into the cutting board business, I guess if anyone is interested in a board like one of these or in any other wood or pattern, please contact me and I give you an estimate.

Pretzel Handle

Back in November a friend of a bar owner in Bogota, NJ contacted me about making a special handle that fit the theme of the bar. They serve their beer with a sourdough pretzel and wanted to have a handle made that would have a pretzel on top. I was excited about the project because it got me out of just wood turning and into having to think creatively about the whole process. Here's an overview of that handle from start to finish.

Here's a sample of the tulipwood for the main part of the handle

The handle turned, finished and with the hardware at the top for the pretzel to attach

The pretzel rough cut out of a piece of mahogany and test mounted on the handle

The pretzel routed, sanded and a coat of sanding sealer

White aquarium rock that I crushed and epoxied to look like "salt"

The finished handle ready to go out

This was another great project to work on. If anyone has any unique ideas for a custom handle for your bar, kegerator, brewery, or restaurant, please send me your ideas ad I'll make it happen. Whether it's one or a whole bunch, Smith & Co. can make the perfect handle for you. Just email or call for an estimate.

Bryan Smith