Jun 11, 2013

Terry Dustin

3 Huntsville-area breweries offer first-time home brewers beer-making advice – The Huntsville Times

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — Learning how to play the guitar solo to Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo
Child (Slight Return),” cook flawless Beef Wellington and speak fluent Mandarin
are all honorable endeavors.

So is brewing your own delectable, thirst-quenching beer at home.

Each of these four skills are attainable, but unless you’re
some kind of savant, they’ll probably take a few stabs to get right.

Now that home brewing is finally licit in Alabama, I talked
to three Huntsville breweries to get their advice for first-time home brewers
as well as their memories of first attempts at home brewing. You’ll have to
find your own short-cuts for the Hendrix, Wellington and Mandarin.

Keith Yager, head brewer Yellowhammer Brewing

“To quote the Godfather of brewing, Charlie Papazian, ‘Relax,
don’t worry, have a home brew!’ or if it’s your first batch I would recommend a
22-ounce bomber of Yellowhammer Tobacco Road. Don’t stress and have fun. It’s just
beer, after all.

“My first home brewed beer was a can
of John Bull extract, the yeast under the lid and five pounds of sugar that my mom
got me for Christmas in the ’90s. The beer was truly awful even though I tried
to convince myself and others that it was outstanding. Like any craft it takes
time to develop as a brewer. That said, there is so much great information on
brewing in books and a fantastic community of brewers on online forums that it
really is hard not to learn to make outstanding beer if that is your goal.”

Michael Spratley, brew master Blue
Pants Brewery

“Keep it simple. You don’t have to
brew with 18 kinds of hops just to do it and you’ll learn more about
ingredients if they can stand on their own. Move to kegging as fast as possible
- bottling is horrible. And don’t be afraid to move to all grain; it’s where it
becomes a lot more fun in terms of playing with ingredients and controlling the
other qualities of the beer.

“Don’t mess with different extract
colors, light dry extract is the way to go.
Sometimes extract isn’t as fermentable as advertised so you can use a
little bit of sugar to dry the beer out. Know which grains need to be mashed
and which can be steeped. If you aren’t familiar with an ingredient less is
more.

“(My first attempt at home brewing was as an) IPA, decent, but there were a lot of hop floaties in it and it was very flat.

“Weedy, our assistant brewer will
be teaching classes on home brewing. The
first one is May 18 and there is an advanced class on the 25th. You can sign up on our website on the store
page. We are also having a SMaSH (Single
Malt Single Hop) night coming up which is great for learning about brewing
ingredients.”

Rick Tarvin, co-founder Straight
to Ale Brewing

“Learn sanitation. Well! Find
someone to help. It will greatly reduce the learning curve. Perfect a recipe
before moving on to others. The first time I brewed I made two styles. They
were an 80 Shilling and a brown porter. Both were nasty and were fed to the
drain. It wasn’t until my fifth attempt that I made a drinkable beer, a brown
porter. It was actually very good.

“Both Dan (Perry, STA co-founder) and
I were long time home brewers before starting the brewery. Although many of our beers are now commercial
in that we produce large quantities, our mentality is still that of a home
brewer. We have produced 40 different styles in our short existence. We still
experiment and sometimes fail.”

Jun 4, 2013

Mike Kitner

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Ballard’s beer brewing district grows with Stoup Brewing

Posted by Meghan Walker on June 3rd, 2013

In case you had any doubt, Ballard’s brewing district is still growing; Stoup Brewing is set to open in the very near future. The brewery, headed up by self-described “hopeless drink and chow hounds” Brad Benson, Lara Zahaba and Robyn Schumacher, will open at 1108 NW 52nd St. sometime this summer.

According to Stoup’s website, head brewer Benson is, “a scientist to the very last DNA strand,” has a long resume of brewing both for established breweries and start-up operations. Benson’s wife, Zahaba, is a veteran of the wine industry and, “loves all things gastr0 – from a savory plate to a smart pour,” as stated on her bio. They’ll be teaming up with brewer Schumacher, who became the state’s first woman to pass the Cicerone certification exam to become the state’s first Cicerone, or beer expert.

The definition of stoup is three-fold; it is a drinking vessel, a bucket, or a basin for holy water. “As a vehicle for the educated pour, a tool for proper measurement, or a medium for otherworldly bliss, we’re convinced ~ it’s Stoupidly perfect,” they write on their website.

We’ll keep you updated on the opening date. Or, to follow Stoup’s progress, check out their Facebook page.

Tags: Ballard

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News from the Seattle Times

May 6, 2013

Mike Kitner

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Triangle Brewing Co. owners eye expansion

The Herald-Sun | Patrick McLaurin
Triangle Brewing Company’s head brewer Rick Tufts, left, and co-owner Andy Miller are pictured inside their current location at 918 Pearl Street on Thursday, May 2, 2013.

The Herald-Sun| Patrick Mclaurin
The new warehouse space that will soon be home to the Traingle Brewing Company just around the corner at 812 Mallard Avenue.

The owners of Triangle Brewing Co., a production brewery in Durham that makes beer to sell in grocery stores, restaurants and at other venues, are planning to move the brewery to a location where they could open a taproom.

Rick Tufts, 39, and Andy Miller, 40, launched the brewery in 2007. The two first met in high school and became business partners. They lease 10,000 square feet of former warehouse space on Pearl Street for the brewery, Tufts said, and plan to buy a 22,000-square foot-building nearby at 812 Mallard St.

They have the building under contract, Tufts said, and are looking to close on the purchase this month. They plan to buy new equipment to increase their production capacity by four times. Tufts said they’d be able to brew up to 8,000 barrels a year.

They plan to decommission their Pearl Street operation and to sell most of their equipment. They hope to be brewing beer in the new location by the fall, and to have the taproom open about a month later.

“It gives us the opportunity to grow and double in size, and it’s going to allow us to have a taproom, and to continue to excel at what we do, which is making beer,” Tufts said of the plan.

As a production brewery, Triangle Brewing Co. doesn’t have a taproom on location, Tufts said. They do hold tours on Saturdays, however.

“We get well over 100 people on some weekends, and we’re still in the misunderstood part of Durham,” he said. “We just wanted to make beer and make quality beer, and the need for the taproom has developed itself,” he added.

In the brewery’s first year, it produced 150 barrels of beer, Tufts said. This year, they plan on producing more than 4,000 barrels.

Their beer is sold in grocery stores and by independent stores. They’ve started selling in Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Wilmington.

They can their beer in Durham, Tufts said. They use cans because that increases the beer’s shelf-life, he said, and caters to people who are “on the go.”

“Here in North Carolina, which is a great state, we’ve got the ocean, and we’ve got the mountains,” Tufts said. “You can’t take glassware to the beach, you can’t take it hiking very easily; you can’t take it to the pool. So we make beer for people on the go…”

Tufts said he went into the beer brewing business when he needed a change. He’s a developmental psychologist by training who worked for several years with the TEACCH Autism Program at UNC Hospitals.

He said his business partner, Miller, studied hotel restaurant and institutional management at East Carolina University in Greenville, and had restaurant experience.

“I loved working with families, the only issue was that every family I dealt with, I was dealing with them at a very sad moment,” Tufts said. “I was trying to help them above that, and it became emotionally draining.”

He said he went to brewing school at the American Brewers Guild in Vermont, and worked as an apprentice at Flying Fish Brewing Co. in New Jersey. He said he saw beer production as a means to bring people pleasure.

“I would do that again in a heartbeat…but to be able to make something that other people could enjoy on a social level, as opposed to … dealing with people at their most vulnerable moments – it was time for me to change,” he said.

Tufts said they see the planned investment as part of the development of Durham. Their targeted location is empty, but previously housed a feed mill for Southern States, an agricultural products supplier, said Al Frega, an officer in the company that owns the building.

“We’re not in the best location, but Durham is changing significantly, and renovations and downtown revitalization is coming our direction, and we’ve made an investment to be in this part of Durham,” Tufts said.

Mar 3, 2013

Terry Dustin

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Home is where the suds are

Mar 03, 2013 (Menafn – Richmond Times-Dispatch – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) –Brandon Tolbert started brewing beer at home about nine years ago, and caught the brewer’s bug.

“It all started when my wife got me a starter kit,” said Tolbert, referring to one of the basic beer-making equipment kits available at home brewing supply stores for less than 100.

“Over the years, I got more into it and more into craft beer in general,” said Tolbert, who joined the James River Homebrewers Association, a group of home brewing enthusiasts in the Richmond area who hold monthly meetings and host brew competitions.

Tolbert won awards for his beers at several of the group’s competitions, including gold medals for his brown ale and imperial India pale ale.

Now, Tolbert’s brewing hobby has turned into a job.

He was recently hired as the head brewer at Extra Billy’s Smokehouse Brewery, as the local brewpub and barbecue restaurant seeks to broaden its offering of craft beers amid a growing craze among the beer-drinking public for new tastes.

“All the old recipes are gone,” Tolbert said. “I will be creating all the new recipes that come off tap here.”

That includes a pale ale that he has already brewed, to be followed by a brown ale, an India pale ale and an imperial pale ale.

Most home brewers won’t become professional brewers.

Yet any home brewer can make good beer with a little practice, local home brewing experts say.

“It is a pretty easy thing to do,” said Tony Ammendolia, owner of Original Gravity, a home brewing supply store on Lakeside Avenue. “Some people may be intimidated at first because it’s something they have not done before. But as long as they pay attention to their sanitation, they can turn out some pretty good beer.”

**********************

Original Gravity opened in November 2011 after Ammendolia worked in management at several retail stores. He has been a home brewer for 20 years.

Business has been good, he said. Home brewing, which was legalized in the United States in 1978, is seeing a growth spurt.

“When I first started, I did not have any friends that brewed,” he said. “Now, if somebody I am talking to doesn’t brew themselves, they know somebody that brews.”

Dave Leon, president of the James River Homebrewers, said other factors are contributing to growth in home brewing, including the emergence of websites and social media that provide online help on how to brew at home.

He thinks the economic downturn also may have been a factor. “I can go pay 12 bucks a six pack, or I can make my own beer for significantly less,” he said.

But Leon is quick to add that home brewers are not the enemies of the microbrewery industry. “Our folks are the ones trying all the (commercial) beers out there because they want to see if it is something they can re-create,” he said.

**********************

Richmond resident Jason Hamilton got into home brewing when his wife, Kristen, bought him a starter kit two Christmases ago.

“She got it for me because I like beer, and I am kind of a detail-oriented, meticulous kind of person,” he said.

With a brewing recipe book in hand, Hamilton started making beer, including the Belgian and Hefeweizen styles he likes so much. After brewing some batches using the basic ingredient kits, it is now hard for him to resist the urge to expand.

Hamilton said he’d like to buy more carboys, the glass containers used for in-home fermentation, so he can make more than one batch at a time.

“I would highly recommend doing it,” he said. “It is so much fun.”

**********************

An important thing for the home brewer to remember: It is not legal to sell your home-brewed beer.

Yet some home brewers do try to make the leap to professional, licensed status. Many of the Richmond-area’s new craft breweries are led by former home brewers.

With the growth of the microbrewing industry nationwide, “there is a shortage of trained brewers,” said Mike Killelea, head brewer at Center of the Universe Brewing Co. in Hanover County and chairman of the Virginia Craft Brewers Guild.

Trae Cairns, who opened Midnight Brewery in Goochland County early in 2012, was a home brewer for years before he decided to go into business for himself.

The name of the brewery comes from the fact that Cairns often found himself brewing beer at midnight.

“I had kind of an obsession with brewing, and I decided to take it a little different path than some do,” he said.

He loves the process of making beer, which he likens to constructing a building. “You build from the ground up and then you’ve created something,” he said.

With brewing “you take grain and water and hops and yeast and turn it into a beer,” he said. “The process has always fascinated me.”

**********************

Original Gravity has dozens of ingredient kits for making beers ranging from India pale ales to blonde ales, oatmeal stouts and Belgian-style ales. The store also offers an array of ingredients to add some extra flavorings to beer, such as fruit purees, chocolate, ginger root, coriander seed, lemon peel, dried mugwort and vanilla beans.

“So at the beginning level, you are spending about 200 to get everything you need,” Ammendolia said.

After that initial investment, “the sky is the limit,” he said.

Some hobbyists might catch a serious brewing bug and want to make the leap from using the pre-prepared malt extracts that come with starter kits to all-grain brewing, which means investing in more equipment.

It is possible to invest thousands of dollars in brewing equipment. Ammendolia has a 3,500 brewing equipment system in his store.

“A lot of our members have very complex systems that would be used by a professional brewery for their best batches,” said Leon.

___ (c)2013 the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Richmond, Va.) Visit the Richmond
Times-Dispatch (Richmond, Va.) at www.timesdispatch.com Distributed by MCT
Information Services

Jan 19, 2013

Terry Dustin

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News Nearby: Snellville Nanobrewery Racks Up Awards, Recognition

The self-proclaimed “Monkey Men” are back it, making a name for themselves in the world of craft beer by winning awards and moving forward with their business plans at a rapid pace.

Featured in Snellville Patch last October, they have since earned a couple of trophies at the 2012 Summits Holidaze Homebrew Competition, winning the People’s Choice Award for their “Very Merry Monkey Ale,” a spiced, Christmas-style dark ale, and Second Place Award in the IPA category for “Hop Monkey IPA.”

A couple of weeks later, Baxter was back – this time offering his liquid creations to the crowd at Summits Beans-and-Brews for Boobs breast cancer benefit event.

The team re-connected with Summits Wayside Tavern last month to participate in back-to-back tastings. These “Beer University” dinners pair craft beer with food and offer extensive knowledge of the products being served. On Dec. 10, Wayne was at Summits’ Cumming location, offering the crowd the chance to sample his “Hop Monkey IPA” and “Monkey Mama Milk Stout”, a full-bodied, chocolate milk stout, according to Baxter.

On top of that, the team was recognized at the Dec. 15 Max Lagers 1st Annual Brew Contest. Max Lagers, Atlanta’s oldest independent brewery restaurant, is renowned for its top-notch brewing picks. Monkey Wrench Brewing was awarded the 1st Place Best of Show and 1st Place in Christmas Category, both for the “Very Merry Monkey Ale.”

“One thing led into another,” said Wayne Baxter, founder of the company. “We have some good momentum going, so we’re just trying to keep that up.”

He’s hoping to sign with a well known distributor soon.

After home brewing for 16 years, his dream of owning his own microbrewery will become a reality this year. He has a fantastic team, including social media guru Joseph Dreher, sales and marketing manager Ashton Cheatham and co-head brewer Doug Nace.

“There’s a lot of pride that comes along with making something yourself,” said Nace, who has been in the brewing scene for over a decade. Nace attended the University of California’s Master Brewers back in 1995.

Nace also brewed for the Cherokee Brewing Company, Percy’s Fish House and Brewery, Rock Bottom Brewery and Rubicon Brewery. He then took a hiatus from the brewing world to work for the CDC, but he’s happily picked up his main passion again with Monkey Wrench.

Both Nace and Baxter are Snellville residents, and if they can find the right location in town, they’ll set up a microbrewery right here in Snellville.

Keep up with this local company through Facebook, Twitter, and Website. If you’re an investor, contact Wayne Baxter at wayne@monkeywrenchbrewing.com.

This initially ran on Snellville Patch.

Dec 14, 2012

Mike Kitner

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New things brewing in Utah beer world

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Here are few new things “brewing” in the Utah beer world.

1. The new Bonneville Brewery in Tooele (formerly Tracks) is still being remodeled, but customers don’t have to wait to taste the beer that head brewer David Watson is making. It’s available now at the All-Star bowling and fun centers in Sandy, West Jordan and Tooele. A bowling alley may be a strange place for micro-brewed beer, until you learn that All Star lanes owner Brad Shepherd, is the new owner of Bonneville Brewing.

2. Cruser Rowland, owner of Jack Mormon Coffee Co., will soon be adding beer to the list of vices he sells to Utahns. Rowland is in the process of launching the Jack Mormon Brewing Co. While the brewery is still in the early stages, its first beer will be — surprise! — a Jack Mormon Coffee Stout. Rowland has been testing batches with local brewer Chris Detrick (whose by day is a photographer for The Salt Lake Tribune). Until the project gets off the ground, fans can purchase Jack Mormon Coffee Stout t-shirts (see photo) at coffee shop, 82 E. St.

3. • A nano-brewery, called Avenues Proper and Publick House, is in the works at 376 8th Ave., in Salt Lake City. Rio Connelly, formerly of Epic Brewing, is the man behind the project, that also will include a restaurant.

Nov 24, 2012

Mike Kitner

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Small breweries being crafted to quench beer lovers’ thirst

Mike DiCicco brews his beer at home, his setup piled on a wooden stand that sits next to the cherry red Mercedes parked inside his garage.

His love of craft beer ignited with his first sip of Shiner Bock. And after tasting the sudsy fruits of his own labor, there was no going back.

Brewing has consumed DiCicco’s life for more than a decade, and now he looks to go from hobbyist to professional with plans to open Busted Sandal Brewing Co., a small craft brewery.

It’s just one of several brewing operations planned to open in the coming months in San Antonio. Currently, the Alamo City has two brewpubs and one craft brewery.

Texans, like the majority of Americans, still prefer to throw back highly commercialized light, fizzy beers, but craft brewers are confident that tastes are changing.

“Nowadays, there’s nothing off limits when it comes to beer,” said DiCicco, the company’s founder and head brewer. “It’s wide open.”

Already this week, the brewpub Granary ‘Cue Brew opened, offering brown and blonde ales, an India pale ale and a rye farmhouse ale, which uses Belgian yeasts to produce tropical fruit and pepper flavors and aromas.

Toward the end of the year, the craft brewery Branchline Brewing Co. will be in operation. By next year, Busted Sandal and Alamo Beer Co. will join the ranks.

It’s a small step, but breweries such as Alamo Beer, which will build its $8 million brewery east of downtown near the Hays Street Bridge, are reawakening an industry that has a deep history in San Antonio.

“There’s more than 100 years of brewing history in San Antonio. It’s great to see the craft growing,” said Eugene Simor, president of Alamo Beer, who hopes to be brewing his Alamo golden ale at the East Side facility by next summer.

“Texas is very under brewed and San Antonio is as well,” he said.

In Texas last year, the economic impact of craft beer totaled an estimated $608 million — a fraction of the state’s total beer industry, which is estimated at nearly $20 billion, according to a study by the Texas Craft Brewers Guild.

Craft beer made up less than 1 percent of beer consumed in Texas, but craft breweries employ about 1,250 people on a full- or part-time basis. That makes up more than half of all brewery jobs in the state, the study mentions.

“When we were opening, people were skeptical that more than one brewpub in the city could work. We’ve proven it can,” said Scott Metzger, founder and CEO of San Antonio’s Freetail Brewing Co. “People’s palates are changing, and the numbers reflect that. San Antonio is a great market for craft beer. We’re small now, so to double in size doesn’t take much, but it’s a step in the right direction.”

And it’s a fun step, too.

“Brewing craft beer is an experience. You can have a good time without beer but it does help,” Robert Garza, 39, the beer architect and partner at Busted Sandal.

Beer’s past

Austin, which has more than a dozen breweries and brewpubs, remains the state’s craft brewing capital, but the industry is making a comeback in San Antonio, a city that has a brewing history that began in the mid-1800 with the influx of German immigrants into the area.

Beer brewing was among the first industries to blossom in San Antonio.

There are some accounts that beer brewing was the first industry established by William A. Menger and Charles Degen, who opened the Western Brewery next to the Alamo in 1855.

The brewery produced about 1,600 barrels annually and became the state’s largest brewery in 1878, the same year it closed. Compare that to the more than 1 million barrels Lone Star Brewing Co. was producing annually by the mid-1960s.

Other late-19th-century and early-20th-century San Antonio breweries include Peter Bros. Brewery along East Commerce Street, Schober Ice and Brewing Co. near Josephine St., and William Esser’s brewery, which was located on North Flores Street, according to texasbreweries.com.

“San Antonio has deep brewing roots, and I’m happy to be a part of that history,” said Jason Ard, owner of Branchline Brewing, a manufacture brewery expected to open by year’s end.

The Alamo City’s dominance as a brewing town withstood the hand of Prohibition but ended when the Lone Star brewery was closed in 1996 and Pearl Brewing Co. was shuttered in 2001.

Those brewery buildings still stand. The Pearl has become a mixed-use development effort that has encouraged investment along the Broadway corridor near downtown.

The Lone Star brewery remains vacant along the Mission Reach portion of the San Antonio River. The company’s original building before it moved farther south on the river, which was built in 1904, now is the San Antonio Museum of Art.

In the 1990s, there was a craft beer resurgence in San Antonio with the opening of establishments such as Blue Star Brewing Co., Frio Brewing Co., Laboratory Brewing Co. and Yellow Rose Brewing Co.

Of those, only Blue Star, which opened in 1996, still is in operation, serving standard beers such as pale and amber ales, roasty stouts and high-alcohol barley wines.

Joey Villarreal, owner of Blue Star Brewing, said that string of breweries mostly failed because the public’s tastes hadn’t matured.

“Today, the acceptance level is a lot higher. It took a while for people to accept what we were doing, that it’s not about pounding beers. It’s about drinking less and drinking better,” he said.

Plus as the trend continues for all things local, demand for more locally brewed beer will continue to grow.

“People want something local,” he said. “The connection with a locally grown product is very powerful. So there’s room for growth.”

Beer’s future

Although the predictable trio of Miller, Budweiser and Coors still rule the market, craft brewers are confident that drinkers’ tastes are changing, fueling the confidence to continue a tradition and enter a market where they are the underdog.

DiCicco, an IT professional by day, will team up with some friends and long-time brewing buddies to assemble a nearly 2,000-square-foot brewery with a tasting room in an industrial warehouse at Fredericksburg Road and Loop 410.

The near $100,000 project is expected to get off the ground early next year, said DiCicco, 40.

For now, DiCicco and his team are brewing test batches in his garage, mostly ales such as hop blasted India pale ales, a chocolate peppermint stout and an American wheat beer infused with basil.

“There are a lot of people in San Antonio who don’t know good beer,” Ard said. “But that just means there are more people to educate.”

After Ard, 31, gave up playing music in bands, he searched for another way to fill his free time. He enjoyed craft beer, so home brewing seemed like a good fit, he said. Ard has been home brewing for about three years and it didn’t take long before he got the idea to turn pro.

“My first beers weren’t great, but I drank it,” he said. “What people don’t understand about craft beer is that it isn’t just a social lubricant. There’s a romance to it. It’s an art.”

For the past year, Ard has been working to piece together his 10-barrel brewery, which will be located in an industrial park near International Airport.

The operation cost about $300,000 and the 3,600-square-foot facility will have a 600-square-foot tasting room with 10 beer taps. The breweries initial offerings will be a hoppy amber ale, a wildflower honey blonde and a rye India pale ale.

While Ard is putting the finishing touches on his operation, Mad Pecker Brewing Co. still is early in the process.

The Mad Pecker crew still is in the planning phase of their three-barrel brewery, which they’re looking to open by fall 2014, said Jason Gonzales, a home brewer and co-founder.

Currently, the Mad Pecker team is saving pennies and looking for investors for their $50,000 venture. Exactly what they’ll brew hasn’t been determined, but Gonzales said that will focus on hop-forward India pale ales and small specialty batches.

“We want to start small and keep our home-brewing mentality,” said Gonzales, 34. “… The craft beer scene in Austin has blossomed into something great there. We just need to get people involved, and San Antonio can take off, too.”

vlucio@express-news.net

Nov 22, 2012

Mike Kitner

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Beer! New wave of microbreweries coming to SA