Meet Tim Wilson, owner, brewmaster, official taster, and keg washer at the smallest commercial brewery in the United States. How small? In 1994 Tim brewed a grand total of 81 barrels. That’s 167 15 gallon batches, each batch divided into three carboys . . . let’s see, that adds up to about 500 carboys of beer. Actually, 499—a full one came tumbling down and broke.

Just one question: Is Tim Wilson a masochist or just plain crazy? Answer: neither. Tim and his wife Sally owned a historic bed and breakfast in Norwich, Vermont, and Tim wanted to add a brewpub. With five years of homebrewing experience under his belt, he thought he had the expertise to pull it off. Problem was, he just didn’t have the capital to buy the equipment, and although he was on good terms with the local bank, he didn’t want to go too deeply in debt.

Tim found the solution in a homebrewers’ magazine—an ad for a top-of-the-line homebrewing system from Pico Brewing Systems in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It would produce 15 gallons of beer at a time and cost under $900. Tim spent another $1,100 for a milk cooler, carboys, kegs, inventory, and other odds and ends. Six months and a total of $2,000 later, Tim was in business.

The ales are served at a charming little pub called Jasper Murdock’s Alehouse in the rear of the Norwich Inn. The inn was built in 1797 by Jasper Murdock, a land owner who served as a colonel in the Revolu-tionary War. Murdock began taking in guests, and the mansion served as a coach stop. The inn has been in continuous operation, except when it was being rebuilt after a fire. That was in 1889-90—it burned to the ground and was rebuilt in the Victorian style by then-owner Dr. Bowles.

Legend has it that during the 1920s, the innkeeper’s wife, Ma Walker, bootlegged out of the cellar. Although her body lies moldering in the ground, her spirit has stayed on. Many guests have reported hearing footsteps at odd hours and other supernatural phenomena. So if you want to spend a haunting evening with some fresh ale, the Norwich Inn is the place for you—rooms range from $69-99.

Before lunch or dinner, guests at the inn pass the time in the pub, trying out Tim’s wonderful brews and mingling with local beer lovers. He usually has three ales on tap at a time. Tim has chosen colorful names for his offerings, picked from local history and legend. They have included Jasper Murdock’s Extra Special Bitter (Tim’s favorite), Old Slippery Skin, Whistling Pig Red Ale, Stackpole Porter, Short and Stout, Elijah Burton Mild Ale, Dr. Bowles’ Honey Elixir, Heifer Vice (a Bavarian wheat beer for the summer), Wassail (at Christmas) and several others. The Wassail (oringial gravity 1.077) was a raspberry stout in which 40 pounds of fresh raspberries were used in only 30 gallons of wort.

Tim serves up the ales from five-gallon Cornelius kegs. He says that even though the beers are unfiltered, he did not have to modify the draw tube that runs to the bottom of the keg. The cold conditioning, the use of gelatin finings, and the fact that Tim claims to be a world-class siphoning expert have reduced the amount of trub in the keg to a minimum.

With such small quantities available at a time, Tim says he occasionally runs out of ale. Although others warned him that running out would spell disaster, Tim looks at it no differently than running out of, let’s say, potato salad.

However, demand has risen to such a degree that Tim has finally purchased a larger system. He obtained a four-barrel brewhouse from Elliot Bay Manufacturing in Seattle and scrounged 25 pressure vessels for fermenting and conditioning from a biochemical firm that had used them for bioreactors (i.e., culturing). They range in size from 16 to 36 gallons. Production should begin with the new equipment by summer.

For the time being Tim is brewing in his home, a cottage converted from a chicken coop, behind the inn. The mash and brew are done in reconditioned 15.5-gallon stainless steel kegs on Tim’s stove top. Because the pH of the local water supply is so high (7.0-8.0), gypsum is added to the mash. For most of the ales, he does a single-step infusion mash and sparges with 168° water during the mash out.

For three of the ales—Stackpole Porter, Whistling Pig Red Ale, and Short and Stout—he starts with a base of Munton & Fison malt extract, to which he adds specialty grains. All the other beers receive a full mash, using Munton & Fison pre-crushed, two-row pale malts and two-row specialty malts imported from England. The specialty grains are crushed with a Glatt malt mill, manufactured by Glatt Manufacturing, College Place, Washington. To cool the wort, Tim uses a copper immersion chiller.

Tim is a traditionalist and prefers to use leaf hops, using Chinooks for bittering for all of the ales. For flavoring and aroma he uses mostly imported East Kent Goldings and Fuggles. This may be surprising to fans of liquid yeast cultures, but Tim says he gets good results using dried yeast packets, which he rehydrates before pitching. He started out using the liquid yeast cultures but encountered problems with timing and low pitching rates.

He uses a single-stage fermentation (another surprise). The brew is split into three six-and-a-half-gallon carboys and ferments at 65° for five days. The wort is then chilled to 40° and conditions for two days before it is racked to Cornelius kegs. Tim composts the spent grains and uses them in his garden.

And speaking of gardens, last year Tim obtained some hop rhizomes from Fresh Hops and from a local grower. He now has 32 hop vines and expects to get his first full harvest this summer.

On my visit to the brewery in Tim and Sally’s cottage, I became very fond of the two “ferocious” brewery watchdogs—Barley and Jasper Murdock—who alternated between sleeping and wrestling on the floor beside the carboys. This article is dedicated to the dog Murdock, who Tim says disappeared on Christmas day on a trip to Philadelphia.

Steve Johnson lives in Clemson, South Carolina, and is author of two brewery guidebooks: On Tap: A Field Guide to North American Brewpubs and Craft Breweries and On Tap New England.