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Back in Vermont in 1984, Mason hooked up with Davis, who was running an artist-in-residence program there for the National Endowment for the Arts. In the mists of the future, they discovered, each could see Catamount looming small. They began to work out financing: stock sold to a few believers and a low-interest community-developme nt loan. Mason was aiming at something close to English real ale, though he knew there would have to be some touch-up carbonation to accommodate the colonials' taste for fizz. Beer drinkers in Vermont and New Hampshire, the intended markets, bought a lot of bottles and not much draft beer, so Catamount would be bottled without additives, and, most important, there would be no pasteurization, a process that gives beer shelf life but that, Mason and other purists feel, "heat shocks" the beer and ruins its flavor. (Control of bacteria is not a factor -- the alcohol does that -- but cold-filtered, unpasteurized beer should be stored at cool temperatures and should be drunk within three months. Like bread, beer is really good only when it is fresh. Virtually all imported beer must be pasteurized to survive the lengthy shipping process. In the U.S., most mass- market beer is pasteurized, except for Coors and a variety of draft beers.)
Most used equipment available was far too big for Catamount, whose production this month will begin with only about 2,500 cases for its market area of New Hampshire and Vermont. But a yeast tank from a dismantled Stroh brewery in Detroit became a brew kettle. A high-tech Italian wine filter turned out to be ideal. Stainless-steel conditioning tanks were built to order. By September the partners were ready to begin ten weeks of practice | brewing. Mason says there were few surprises. At one point, a daily check of the yeast culture by Consulting Biologist Mike Sinclair showed that wild yeast had corrupted the strain, and Mason had to order another batch from Chicago. The taste of Catamount's gold and amber ales was distinct -- amber more full- bodied and slightly higher in alcohol content -- but their color was too similar, and Mason made adjustments to darken the amber.
An observer hears all this with interest and growing thirst. Davis is about to pour glasses of Catamount to illustrate a point he is making when a local dairy farmer arrives to pay for a batch of used barley mash, which he feeds to his cattle. Conversation develops, and the beer remains unpoured. Are there not cows to be milked? Perhaps there is some manure to be shoveled? At last the observer gets his glass of Amber. It is red in cast, bread fresh, with the body of a weight lifter: serious beer. A glass of Gold is similarly muscular, though not so massive. Lighter, notes the visitor, "though of course" -- he spells out the word that self-respecting beer drinkers prefer not to pronounce -- "not L-i-t-e."
Davis remains composed, but his emotion is evident. "We do not deal in Lite," he says with pride.