Spreading the gospel

A love of beer sparked restaurateur Elliot Nelson’s growing empire

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TTV: What are we drinking?

EN: That’s Hoffbrau Lager. Like I mentioned, on these hot days I always like drinking either a German or Czech Lager. The hops from that part of the world hit the back of your tongue really crisply, which makes it great drinking for a hot day. Some days, when I’m having a rough day, I’ll come down here and work the floor, run food, try beers—kind of reconnect with why I started all of this in the first place. It’s nice to get to do this.

TTV: There’s a handful of breweries popping up around Tulsa.

EN: You look at all of these guys making great beer here, and due to their particular goals and business plans, they may or may not ever be big enough to ship large quantities of beer all over the world. So, they may not be an internationally known brewery. But when I travel, I want to taste the local beers from the area I am visiting.  And we’re in a situation now because of these guys that when you’re in Oklahoma and you want to drink craft beer, you’re getting some really good stuff. I think people coming to this part of the country will taste our style of beer, it will develop its own kind of style and brand; and that makes it interesting. 

TTV: It makes our country more interesting.

EN: Yeah, eventually you’re going to have regional beer styles again. You’re going to go to a restaurant or pub and they will have several national brands and the rest will be local beers. That’s how it is in Europe. Everything is hyper-local. Every town has its own brewery.

TTV: What are people who drink the big, national brands missing out on?

EN: Oh, I don’t know. I had a Miller Lite the other night at a function because that was what was available to me. I think those beers are all just so similar and, in a lot of ways, like soda water. They’re almost like a soft drink at this point. There’s not a lot of beer profile to them. 

So, in a lot of ways, I think people are missing the agrarian side of beer making, the real connection to the product. You taste this beer, you taste malt and then the hops, and those ingredients, if you really learn about beer, you know where they’re from. Sometimes you taste the grain or yeast, a lot of times the hops. Those big commercial beers don’t have that. 

There’s a romantic side to beer for me, knowing that this all started in a field somewhere, there’s a real connection back to the land that creates these flavor profiles. The big stuff, it’s rice, it’s force-injected CO2, quick fermentation, on and on. Our goal here is to take a customer who really likes, say, Miller Lite, and find that person a beer with the qualities he enjoys in that beer, but also find him something a little more authentic. 

TTV: So, if my uncle walks in here and says, “I like Coors Light. Cold. In a bottle.” Where do you take him?

EN: Okay, when we have Kronenbourg on draft, I am so excited to give that to a light beer drinker. It’s a French beer, it’s from Alsace, which has been French or German depending on the war. So it’s really a German beer. It’s very light and drinkable, but it’s a real fucking beer. And I would say, you’re going to drink it and you’re going to like it. I mean it’s just got a great flavor and the tiniest profile, but it’s wonderful and light beer drinkers enjoy it.

TTV: Can Tulsa become a beer city?

EN: Oh yeah. I mean, we’ve got a lot of great beers being brewed here right now—I mean really solid beers—and it seems like we’ve just gotten started. Our laws are a little tough to deal with, but you know, these guys are champs, they work around it. There’s no reason in my mind why we can’t be. 

You look at Leon’s, which is basically a Brookside staple right now. They devoted—I can’t remember how many, but the majority of their handles—to local beer the other day. And they have that 35-45 [age group] crowd coming in there. That says a couple of things to me: One is, that may be what the market is demanding. But the other thing is, that the owner feels comfortable enough with the product to make that move. That’s encouraging to me. But Tulsa has the local-grown kind of mentality that could turn it into a great beer city. I think we’re seeing at least an attempt to get there right now.