In the kitchen with William Frazer, Fat Point Brewing
- Dream vacation: Brewery tour in Belgium. They've got hundreds of breweries, some hundreds of years old, and incredible beers. The monks know their beer. It would be any beer lover’s dream.
- Celebrity (living or dead) you’d love to have dinner with: This would be a tie between Nikola Tesla and Bill Murray.
- Oddest thing you’ve eaten (and did you enjoy it?): Reindeer pizza when I was in Finland for business. It was quite tasty.
- Favorite beer to drink: I'm a sucker for a good West Coast IPA, or a Belgian Tripel
William Frazer, brewmaster at Fat Point Brewing in Punta Gorda, stays slim spending his days brewing, cleaning and lugging 55-pound bags of grain around the brewery, which officially opened in August. For every hour of brewing, there’s roughly three hours of cleaning in the more than 100-degree brewery. It’s work Frazer has thrived on since he started at the brewery two years ago. He lives in Punta Gorda with his girlfriend Edith Ferdschneider. The 12,000-square foot brewery, which is already producing beer, will have a 1,500-square-foot tap room and a beer garden opening later this year with plenty of seating. Located at 611 Charlotte St., visit fatpoint.com or call 800-380-7405 for more information.
• Inspirations: Russian River, Deschutes, and the entire beer industry in San Diego and Los Angeles.
• Favorite beer to drink: I'm a sucker for a good West Coast IPA, or a Belgian Tripel
• Favorite beer from your childhood: Plead the fifth
• What was the first beer you mastered? Our rye IPA, Ryeght Angle IPA. This has become our flagship beer that we lead with when entering a new market.
• Celebrity (living or dead) you’d love to have dinner with: This would be a tie between Nikola Tesla and Bill Murray.
• If I weren’t in this business, I’d be…: An engineer wishing I was making beer.
• Things you can't get through the day without: A cup of coffee, my pen, and my pocket knife.
• Favorite or “go-to” beer: Dale's Pale Ale (It's my "go-to" when I can't make up my mind)
• Guilty beer pleasure: PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon)
• Food or beer aversion you can't get over: Over-hopped beers. I like a good hoppy beer, but you need to know when to draw the line so it doesn't mask all the other flavors.
• Favorite beer on your menu (and why?): Bru Man Chu, our Belgian Tripel, inspired by a good friend of mine who got me into brewing.
• What was your biggest brewing disaster? Disconnecting the wrong fitting on our fermenter the first time we brewed on our new system. It was nine o'clock at night and I had 15 barrels of beer gushing out of a 1.5-inch hole. I got it closed back up, but not before it made a huge mess.
• Favorite SWFL brewery other than your own: This is tough. SWFL is going through a beer boom right now, and starting to make a name for itself. If I had to pick one, I'd say Fort Myers Brewing. They brew the styles I like and do it well.
• What would be your last beer? Honestly, no idea. Probably whatever is closest. I've typed in at least ten different beers and keep changing my answer.
• What are your plans for dinner tonight? Whatever Edith is kind enough to make.
• Dream vacation: Brewery tour in Belgium. They've got hundreds of breweries, some hundreds of years old, and incredible beers. The monks know their beer. It would be any beer lover’s dream.
• Oddest thing you’ve eaten (and did you enjoy it?): Reindeer pizza when I was in Finland for business. It was quite tasty.
• Age: 34
• Where were you born? Sarasota
• Culinary/brewery training: Self-taught
• Former gigs: Over 10 yrs as an automotive engineer