Aaron Gervais

I co-founded Otherwise Brewing, San Francisco’s first gluten-free brewery, and my music has been commissioned and performed by renowned contemporary classical ensembles across North America and Europe.

I also have experience in nonprofit arts administration, online marketing, and web development, and my critical writing on music has been widely distributed both online and in print.

Beer and music may seem like a strange mix, but they actually have a lot in common.

When I started brewing seriously, it felt like a natural transition, since the creative processes for brewing and composing are extremely similar. All of the decisions that go into designing a beer recipe have close parallels in music composition.

The first year of the brewery has been dedicated to intensive R&D and recipe development, since much is still unknown about gluten-free brewing. As of this writing, we are in the final stages of securing permits and intend to launch within a few months.

We’ve got a number of delicious recipes under our belt that are indistinguishable in taste and appearance from traditional barley-based beers, and I’m super excited to share them with the world!

In terms of aesthetics, I’m particularly interested in humor, found materials, quotation/collage, and the sociological aspects of how people use music, which has taken my work from the introspectively sombre to the irreverently slapstick. Critics have described my work with statements from “I cried tears of laughter” to “unique, unsettling” to “this is just really great fun.”