Patent Brewing & Patent Labs: “Make better beer, make beer better”

Last fall we sat down with Matt Humbard, one of the co-owners and co-founders of Patent Beer, which hopes to open in Prince Georges County later in 2019. In that interview we discussed Patent’s unusual business model: they will be buying wort from other breweries and then fermenting and hopping and blending on-site. That location is still to be determined, but there’s another interesting aspect to this business: Patent Labs. Humbard explains in a lightly edited interview below.

How did you get started with yeast collection?

I’ve been gathering yeasts and bacteria for years. I’m not as prolific as some people I know but I have a few hundred isolated yeasts and bacteria. I’ve been working with those strains all the way back when Handsome was a business, but we could never use them there. It occurred to me at some point that these microorganisms were pretty unique and not many people had experience working with them or a way to easily get them. So I decided to ask if people wanted

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