When I now hear Right Proper Brewing, I immediately think “family” after the day I spent photographing its staff and operations. I have never seen such a tight knit crew of people that cared so much about each other and their restaurant. Everyone was on board and everyone seemed to have each other’s back.
When speaking with their cheesemonger, Tim Lake about the (somewhat unexpected) cheese program at Right Proper, he told me that the owners and management share a general philosophy of hire the right people and let them do what it is that makes them great.
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| Owner Thor Cheston takes a work break with GoGo and Rocket |
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| Tim Lake unpacks a new delivery before dinner service |
Same goes for the head brewer, Nathan Zeender. Regarded as one of the small batch brewers to keep an eye on, Nathan really lives and breathes everything related to the brewing process. Nathan used his incite and expertise to design a small, hands on in-house brewing system that fit within the limited confines of the Right Proper brewing footprint. Due to spacial constraints, Nathan had to omit many of the automated accessories that are common on most brewing systems, relying instead on a manually managed network of pumps, piping, heat, water and filtration systems. Nathan says that this manually controlled system keeps him heavily involved in each stage of the brewing process so each recipe has the full attention and fingerprints of its creators. Nothing is automated with this system and no aspect is taken for granted.
Thor Chesten, Right Proper’s owner, calls this system a “manual gearbox” for brewing, comparing its tactile engagement and constant hands on attention to the experience of driving a car equipped with a manual transmission. I started my day with the brewing team, which was about an 8am call and stuck through to the evening shift. Looking back, I should have probably covered Right Proper over the course of a couple days, with one morning devoted to the brewing process followed by a night with the restaurant staff. Right Proper only offers a dinner service so there isn't any action throughout a typical weekday afternoon to fill the gap between the brewing and service schedules, but I decided to hang out at the restaurant and get everything in one visit anyway. It's interesting to see the restaurant change throughout the day as the ebb and flow of staff members make their way in. From solitude to a full house, Right Proper was a great first stop in my RAMMYs InFocus adventure.
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| Spent grains are collected after the brewing process and sent to local farmers for animal feed |
Click here for an introduction to the project and check in soon for more updates about my visits to DC area restaurants for the RAMMYs InFocus project.