“For the record, I don’t want to be stuck on a deserted island,” says Ron Jeffries. It’s not that he’s afraid of boats—he’s spent plenty of time on them—but that experience is exactly why he doesn’t want to risk it now. “Boats break.”
Thankfully, his 6-pack doesn’t depend on being stranded on an actual island, as the exercise is purely theoretical. And that’s a good thing because Ron—a pioneering figure in the world of American wild beer and mixed fermentation—derives as much enjoyment from the relationships he’s developed with peer brewers as he does from the beer he brews himself. In that context, narrowing down a list to only six beers is hard work.
“I spent the past two days thinking about this list, and the first thing I did was copy all the beers that Jeffrey Stuffings, of Jester King Brewery and Vinnie Cilurzo, of Russian River Brewing put down. But then I scratched them all out because that would clearly just be copying their beers,” he says.