Bly Hollow Brewery, Local Nano-Brewery, Launches With Grand Opening

submitted by Cindy Parrish
Bly Hollow Brewery, LLC, will have its Grand Opening on Saturday, September 1, from 2 to 6 pm at 243 Bly Hollow Road, Cherry Plain. The opening of this ‘nano’ size brewery (smaller than micro) will feature live music and tastings of seven different styles of beer, along with an opportunity for all to barter or sell their local goods and garden produce. The public is expected.
Bly Hollow Brewery, also known as “The Beer Diviner,” is the creation of Jonathan Post, who received his Doctor of Arts degree and then taught English for a number of years at The University at Albany. He became “the beer diviner,” in 2001, when he was invited by world renowned author and shaman, Dr. Malidoma Patrice Somé, to bring home-brewing equipment to his village in Burkina Faso, West Africa. After sampling his brew, the villagers asked Post to help them build a small microbrewery. Post learned local beer making from elder women and then brewed a western style beer using the locally grown sorghum. At the end of this trip, the village shamans determined that he was a ‘beer diviner.’ “What’s that?” asked Post. “We don’t know,” the diviners laughed. “We’ve never heard of a beer diviner in the Dagara tribe. But because you’re a man and only women make beer in the village, you’ll need special rituals.”
On his return home, Post decided that the best approach would be to model the brewery in Burkina Faso by building a brewery at home. The brewery over here would show investors what might be possible over there in Africa. Soon, however, the brewery began to resemble a man cave, replete with high def TV and a homemade stereo system.
The History Of Beer
But, meanwhile, Post began researching the history of beer. Anthropologists agree that hunter-gatherers decided to settle down into agricultural communities around 8,000 years ago in order to grow grain and drink beer. This led to the beginning of civilization. The Dagara have passed down a similar story for thousands of years – they were wanderers… then they discovered beer.
Post himself grew up all over the world (his father was a U.S. Foreign Service officer) until he moved to Cherry Plain and discovered brewing. Could there be more to what the shamans divined than what he initially thought?
Then the University at Albany cut Project Renaissance, the first year program where Post taught English. The economy, it appeared, was not interested in public education. What was an out of work English professor to do? Since Post had already spent a good deal of time researching the legal requirements for opening a brewery and since much of what he needed to start was already built…why not change professions? Goodbye to Doctor English and hello to Doctor Beer?
Happily, since sales began in April, The Beer Diviner has not been able to keep up with demand. Sales have been exclusively local, mostly from The Cherry Plain Pantry on Rt. 22 in Cherry Plain. On September 1, at the Grand Opening, The Beer Diviner will unveil its new two barrel system built by Psycho Brew of Michigan.
Post hopes to be able to help the village in Africa build a brewery one day soon. It was only after his trips there that he learned that the name of the village, Dano, means “Good Beer” in the Dagara language. Or, to translate another way, like life “Beer is Good.”