Here’s to the home brewers – Daily News

Published February 1, 2012

Something is brewing in Galveston County, and it’s not trouble — it’s beer.

Home brewing is a hobby that has grown steadily. Recently, a large group of practitioners were at Yaga’s Chili Quest and Beer Fest passing out samples.

Monty Hudspeth, of Galveston, had three beers on tap — a cream ale, an American pale ale and an oatmeal stout. He’s been brewing for almost 15 years and said he got his start out of necessity.

“I started brewing in 1997,” he said. “I was living in a dry county and I said, ‘This is just not going to cut it.’”

So he got a simple kit, the kind available in department stores.

“That just didn’t produce the results I wanted so I went and took a class,” Hudspeth said.

“I brew 12 different beers — four lights, four mediums and four darks. I brew something different every month.”

He said brewing beer is pretty simple.

“If you can boil Galveston tap water, then you can brew beer,” Hudspeth said.

Most new brewers take a simple approach. Depending on the recipe, 5 gallons of water is brought to a boil and about 8 pounds of liquid malt extract is stirred in. A few ounces of hops are tossed in for bitterness and the mixture is boiled for an hour.

After the liquid has cooled, yeast is added and the soon-to-be beer is put in a fermenter. About a week later, the yeast has eaten all of the sugar in the malt and turned it into alcohol, and the fermenter is filled with flat beer.

At this point, the beer is put in bottles with about a teaspoon of sugar and the bottles are capped. A week later, the beer has carbonated and can be served.

That last step is the most important for Hudspeth.

“All home brewers live for is to give it away and have people tell you how good it is,” he said.

Hudspeth gets his supplies at BS Brewers Guild, a home brewing shop in Seabrook. The store also is where the Bay Area Mashtronauts meet, and he often runs into members there.

“It’s a whole society and it’s a support group,” he said.

Ben Stahl, of League City, belongs to two clubs, the Shuttlecock Brewers and Apogee Brewers. He got introduced to beer making by friends.

“It’s always interested me,” he said. “I’m an engineer, and it’s kind of like a science project.”

He’s treated it as such, too. After starting with a “turkey fryer burner and an old aluminum pot,” he and his club mates have seen their brewing apparatus expand.

“Now we brew 10 gallons per week with a two-burner system with pumps and lines,” he said. “We’ve been stepping up our equipment as we go along.”

Stahl’s greatest joy is the end result.

“My favorite part is trying a really good beer that you made yourself,” he said.

“It can be hard to come by. But, once you’ve got something that’s fully perfected and you produced it and it tastes just how you want it to, it’s the greatest feeling in the world.”

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