Meet Phil Joyce of Amalgam in Midtown

Today we’d like to introduce you to Phil Joyce.

Phil, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Like many other brewers, I started as a homebrewer. Amalgam started while I was serving as the head brewer at Powder Keg Brewing Company in Niwot. Along with my business partner, Eric Schmidt, we started Amalgam with the goal of pursuing experimental and long-aged sour beer. We wanted to make beers that had flavors and aromas similar to beers that we were most inspired by. Our first beers were made on the brewhouse at Powder Keg and our barrels were stored there through an alternating proprietorship. Unfortunately, Powder Keg eventually closed and we worked to ink a lease deal with a good friend of ours in north Denver. We found that we worked best in a space that was collaborative in nature and as such, invited Westbound and Down to share our space in Denver. I now also serve as the Director of Special Projects for Westbound and Down. At Amalgam, we find that our inspiration and drive comes from the community around us. Whether or not it is a tight group of brand loyalists, musicians, artists, chefs, etc. true expression is our intent. Our palates change and evolve, the ingredients that are available to us often come seasonally, and sometimes we just experience something so great that we want to try and recreate that feeling the best we can in our beers.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
All things considered, it has been a relatively smooth road. I have a great partner in Eric and we work well together. Like many other breweries who are driven by quality, we’ve had to destroy beer and give up on certain projects, which while always difficult to do, is something we promised ourselves we would do if we weren’t proud of the finished product. Certainly, the largest struggle was the closing of Powder Keg, having to move our beer and get settled in a new location. While we started with all beers that were fermented and aged in oak vessels, we now have interest in producing beers with different fermentation profiles that require additional temperature control that we can’t yet provide in our space. We hope to remedy this soon in order to expand the beer portfolio we can provide to our customers.

Amalgam – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
At Amalgam, we have mostly been known for our barrel-aged, mixed culture and sour beers. To this day every beer has either been fermented or aged in oak or both. We recently released clean fermented Imperial Stouts that were aged in spent bourbon barrels and hope to do more clean fermentation projects with oak expression. As a company, we are most proud of the relationships that we have made and the experiences we have lived. We’ve traveled around the world to do collaborations, we’ve attended numerous festivals and events and made life-long friends along the way. We have grown our community and for that, we are incredibly grateful.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Last summer I was able to attend Brews for New Avenues in Portland, Oregon. Brews for New Avenues is a beer event that benefits New Avenues for Youth, an organization that is dedicated to the prevention and intervention of youth homelessness. It was an incredible experience and I made great friends, but the philanthropy through beer is something that Eric and I hope to make a bigger part of our business moving forward.

Contact Info:

• Address: 6381 Beach St. #A
  Denver, CO 80221
• Email: info@amalgambrewing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amalgambrewing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmalgamBrewing/

Image Credit:
@TheBrewtographyProject

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