Beer Nut: White Lion’s head brewer Mike Yates has had a long, strange trip

SPRINGFIELD — In a weird way, Mike Yates’ brewing career has come full circle.

“I started out with one Ray and now I’m brewing for another Ray,” he said with a laugh during a recent interview with The Republican.

The two gentlemen he is referring to are the late, great brewing genius Ray McNeill of Brattleboro’s McNeill’s Brewery and Springfield’s entrepreneur extraordinaire Ray Berry, founder of White Lion Brewing.

But it wasn’t a straight line between those jobs. In between Yates spent time at a handful of breweries, including Cambridge Brewing, Amherst Brewing and Northampton’s much-missed Building 8, as well as stops at Berkshire Brewing and Connecticut’s Cambridge House Brewing.

Unlike many brewers, Yates wasn’t a home brewer, but sort of fell into the trade accidentally.

“When