Brewing at home is ‘dead easy’ says One Stop Home Brew Pub Shop owner

Tall Ales: Facts about Beer

QUEENSLAND Beer Week gets underway next month, with thousands expected to raise a glass and celebrate a great Australian tradition of sipping on an ice-cold, frothy brew.

For local brewers, attention is turning to the Mt Larcom Show Home Brewing competition, with 11 categories up for contention.

The categories on show include best beer, best stout, best cider, best sweet wine and best spirit to name a few.

The show will run from June 22-23, and long-time brewer and competitor Evelyn Witheridge said the entrants from the region always offered up quality brews.

“The products are exceptional in quality, one of the judges last year said one of the stouts he sampled was equally as good as the stuff over the counter,” Ms Witheridge said.

Now in its second year, the Queensland Beer Week will showcase Australian brewing talents across the state, with events held in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Cairns and Townsville.

Organiser Mark Midro said the home brewing scene was growing rapidly in Australia, and events like Beer Week offered great opportunities for home brewers to pick up tips from master brewers.

“Last year sold out so quickly we were pretty shocked, so this year we’ve put on larger, festival-style events to cater for the crowds,” Mr Midro said.

Bacchus Brewing Company Brew master, Ross Kenrick, said the week was a great chance for punters to sample some of the unique blends microbrewers have to offer.

“We recently won the Great Australian Beer SpecTapular against over 90 brewers around the world with our white chocolate and raspberry pilsener, so that gives some indication of our variety.”

Queensland Beer Week runs from July-21 this year.

Brewing at home is ‘dead easy’ says One Stop Home Brew Pub Shop owner

FOR something that is ‘dead easy’ to do, Colin MacAlpine is surprised more people have not taken up the hobby of brewing their own beer.

Owner/operator of the One Stop Home Brew Pub Shop in Oaka Lane, Maca, as he is known, said it was not hard to successfully brew your own tasty batch.

“It’s so easy mate, it’s just a matter of buying the right gear and you can make your own beer,” Mr MacAlpine said.

“Once you grab a starter kit you’re on the way to making quality beers.”

The only issue for Maca is that with so much money to be made in Gladstone, it has meant a decline in business for the store, which Colin has run for the past 13 years.

“It’s (home brew) not that big in this town these days, there’s too much money to be made,” he said.

“People seem to not worry about making their own when they can just buy their beer.”

The beauty of home brewing is that once the art is mastered, the options are plenty.

From stouts, pale ales, dark ales, Indian pale ales, lagers and pilseners, there are endless options for the innovative home brewer.

Mr MacAlpine said he was at the stage where he could brew just about whatever he felt like making.

“I can brew just about everything, it just depends on what I feel like at the time and I’ll brew that up,” he said.

Maca also said that the cost was relatively small to get a home brewing system set up.

“If you grab a starter kit, you’re probably looking at about $70 if you can provide your own bottles, if you need the bottles as well it’s closer to around the $100 mark,” he said.

“Basically you’re looking at somewhere between $70 and $130 and you can be making your own quality beer.”

Tall Ales: Facts about Beer

• A 45-degree angle is crucial to pouring the perfect beer
• The perfect head is between 3-5cm
• Belgians believe each beer should have a custom glass
• Glassware should not be chilled for serving beer
• Using the wrong glass can affect flavour and aroma of the beer

*facts gathered from beerguide.com.au

McEver has been brewing for only a couple of years. He loved to cook and wanted to be a chef when he was a child but didn’t go to culinary school. In college, he drank lots of coffee and tea and read about them constantly.

“I was enthralled by coffee and tea,” McEver said. “That changed after working on the farm. After 100-degree weather being in the hot sun all day, someone passed me a nice cold Yuengling, and I understood. I’ve been trying new beers since then.”

Brewing his own beer was a natural extension of enjoying professionally brewed beer, McEver said.

“It deepens the appreciation for the beverage,” McEver said. “I love having a commercially brewed beer and being able to taste flavors that I recognize from some of my brews.”

McEver became the owner of Flying Barrel in March. He worked with previous owner Bob Frank for nearly two years learning the business, which recently moved from smaller quarters on South Carroll Street to a larger space on North Market Street in Frederick.

McEver’s father was in the Army, so he moved around a lot. He attended high school and college in northern New Jersey, “so I consider that to be where I’m from.”

His grandparents and aunt and uncle live in Frederick, where he visited often growing up.

“I felt totally comfortable moving here and setting down some roots,” McEver said, believing that Frederick offers the ideal home-brewing atmosphere.

“Frederick and home-brew go hand in hand,” the entrepreneur said. “I’m not sure if it’s the German heritage, or the great craft beer scene, or the agricultural presence, but there are a lot of home brewers in our area.”

He remembers coming home after closing up the shop one day. “My neighbor was brewing out in his yard with some buddies,” he said. “It was a great moment where I realized how communal of an activity brewing can be.”

McEver equates brewing beer to a backyard barbecue where everyone sits around the brewpot taking in the aromas and flavors, wondering how the batch is going to turn out.

“I have some customers who come in every two weeks like clockwork,” McEver said. “They keep their cellars full and are constantly brewing to keep beer or wine in their pipeline.”

The variety of people who home-brew is surprising, McEver said. His customers include yuppies, scientists, teachers, government workers, firefighters, and blue- and white-collar types.

In addition to selling ingredients, equipment and supplies, Flying Barrel lets customers rent brew kettles and offers guidance. The many steps involved in brewing can be intimidating to new brewers, McEver said, so having an experienced guide really helps getting started.

“We let the customer choose what they want to brew, and the options are pretty much only limited to their creativity,” McEver said. “I love it when a customer’s eyes light up when they realize they’ve entered into a new world of making your own beer, wine, cider, mead and any other concoctions you can think of.

“It takes a lot to make a great beverage and be able to reproduce success, but it’s a noble pursuit.”

Most of his friends have gone on to work on Wall Street for financial firms or large corporations.

“Even though I’m not making anywhere close to what they are, they’re sometimes jealous of all the fun I get to have,” McEver said. “They’re excited for me that I was able to make it happen and become my own boss. Some of my friends are aspiring to do the same, so I try to encourage them.”

McEver said he likes thought-provoking things.

“I tend to think about philosophy and spirituality a lot. I guess that’s what happens when your father and both grandfathers are ministers,” McEver said.

Dave Belcher is proud of his nephew.

“I mentored him, and I think he’ll be very successful,” Belcher said. “He’s a very smart kid. He got double bachelor’s degrees from Stevens Institute of Technology, and he was third in his class.

“I have faith in him, although I’m a little biased, but I think he’s got the right attitude and attention to detail to make it work.”

___

Information from: The Frederick (Md.) News-Post, http://www.fredericknewspost.com

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.”  

If you think the package store experience was the best preparation for his current gig, you’d be wrong.

“Somebody comes into a CD store and sings a bar, you have to know the artist and match them up with what they’re looking for,” said Loomis, now co-owner of the home-brew and winemaking supplies store.

It’s the same now. “They might know they want a red wine [kit] and they might know they want a stout,” he said, but it’s up to the staff to figure out what will please them most.

Bob Carangelo of Glastonbury was shopping there recently on a weekday afternoon, and he said he spends $30 to $40 on ingredients to brew beer a couple of times a year. He first shopped there almost 20 years ago, but hasn’t always been a regular customer.

“The fellow who runs the desk here is very, very helpful,” he said. “He’s extremely helpful and knowledgeable.”

That kind of customer service seems to be fueling steady growth for the store, though the economy is also playing a role, Loomis believes.

The growing popularity of craft beers can’t hurt. This week was CT Beer Week and Sunday is the American Homebrewers Association rally at Backeast Brewery in Bloomfield. Store staff will attend, and they’re donating prizes to the raffle.

Beer and Wine Hobby was founded 38 years ago, and Loomis started working there four years ago under the second owner, a wine lover who only owned it for two years.

Nearly three years ago, Loomis and a partner bought the place.

From the beginning of 2010 through the end of 2012, sales grew by 40 percent. And Loomis said while he hasn’t crunched the numbers in 2013, it seems like they’ve done four months’ worth of business in the first three months.

Brew and Wine Hobby moved in September, doubling its space to just under 5,000 square feet. Nearly all of its close neighbors are industrial businesses. But on a busy weekday, he’ll have about 35 customers, and on a busy Saturday, he’ll have more than 100.

Loomis now employs two people, though he’s about to lose Dana Borque to a new business Loomis will also have a stake in — Firefly Hollow, a brewery and tap room scheduled to launch in Bristol within two months.

Borque asked in 2010 if he could volunteer at Brew and Wine Hobby. Loomis said he’d hire him one day a week, because that was all he could afford. Now his employees add another 60 hours a week of coverage, not counting independent contractors who run hands-on classes.

Those workers make $10 to $12 an hour, and Loomis, who first decided to join the business because he had a child on the way, still makes just $40,000, about the same he did as a masseur, but he works at least 60 hours a week. “This wasn’t quite the jump up [in pay] I expected,” he said.

He hopes that as the store continues to grow, he might be able to pay himself more. Loomis supports a family of four on that salary.

A distributor’s representative told him recently: “I expect you to do about a million in gross sales” in a few years. His response: “Really?!”

Hands-on classes at the store began at the beginning of this year, and are held most Saturdays. Since they began, about 10 percent of customers each week are first-time buyers.

On a recent Saturday, Peter Olguin of West Hartford and his wife, Betsy, were among those bottling beer they had brewed in the store a week earlier, under Borque’s supervision.

“You have to be a little bit of a do-it-yourselfer,” Olguin said to Borque as they worked, describing who would get hooked on home-brewing.

While the DIY aesthetic has blossomed in recent years, Loomis said he thinks that segment is about 20 percent of his customers.

“Those are the people that stick with it the longest,” he said.

But Loomis said the largest segment of his customers are those looking to save money — and that motive is why he thinks the poor economy is driving growth. You can get nearly 50 bottles of beer for $30 of ingredients, and 28 bottles of wine for $100. The frugality motive is also a challenge for the store. Home-brewers “bargain-hunt everything,” he said.

And speaking of bargain-hunting, Loomis said a Living Social deal he offered on classes is working beautifully. Most of the class attendees on a recent Saturday got the discount. Loomis said of a typical 12-person class, two households will buy the equipment and supplies that day, and he thinks two others come in over the next few months.

“We had a huge influx of people who were online shoppers, didn’t know we were here,” he said. And each class usually has two couples who have never tried it.

Jen Kirchner, 31, of Berlin, bought the class for her husband, Shaun Cecil, 33. She said they’d definitely start brewing at home.

“It’s super easy, it’s a minimal expense,” she said. “It gives couples something to do together.”

Brew and Wine Hobby Shop is located at 12 Cedar St. in East Hartford, 860-528-0592.

If you think the package store experience was the best preparation for his current gig, you’d be wrong.

• Topics
• 
  
  Rentals
  
• 
  
  Wines
  
• 
  
  Business
  
• See more topics »
• Maps

• East Hartford, CT, USA

“Somebody comes into a CD store and sings a bar, you have to know the artist and match them up with what they’re looking for,” said Loomis, now co-owner of the home-brew and winemaking supplies store.

It’s the same now. “They might know they want a red wine [kit] and they might know they want a stout,” he said, but it’s up to the staff to figure out what will please them most.

Bob Carangelo of Glastonbury was shopping there recently on a weekday afternoon, and he said he spends $30 to $40 on ingredients to brew beer a couple of times a year. He first shopped there almost 20 years ago, but hasn’t always been a regular customer.

“The fellow who runs the desk here is very, very helpful,” he said. “He’s extremely helpful and knowledgeable.”

That kind of customer service seems to be fueling steady growth for the store, though the economy is also playing a role, Loomis believes.

The growing popularity of craft beers can’t hurt. This week was CT Beer Week and today is the American Homebrewers Association rally at Backeast Brewery in Bloomfield. Store staff will attend, and they’re donating prizes to the raffle.

Beer and Wine Hobby was founded 38 years ago, and Loomis started working there four years ago under the second owner, a wine lover who only owned it for two years.

Nearly three years ago, Loomis and a partner bought the place.

From the beginning of 2010 through the end of 2012, sales grew by 40 percent. And Loomis said while he hasn’t crunched the numbers in 2013, it seems like they’ve done four months’ worth of business in the first three months.

Brew and Wine Hobby moved in September, doubling its space to just under 5,000 square feet. Nearly all of its close neighbors are industrial businesses. But on a busy weekday, he’ll have about 35 customers, and on a busy Saturday, he’ll have more than 100.

Loomis now employs two people, though he’s about to lose Dana Borque to a new business Loomis will also have a stake in — Firefly Hollow, a brewery and tap room scheduled to launch in Bristol within two months.

Borque asked in 2010 if he could volunteer at Brew and Wine Hobby. Loomis said he’d hire him one day a week, because that was all he could afford. Now his employees add another 60 hours a week of coverage, not counting independent contractors who run hands-on classes.

Those workers make $10 to $12 an hour, and Loomis, who first decided to join the business because he had a child on the way, still makes just $40,000, about the same he did as a masseur, but he works at least 60 hours a week. “This wasn’t quite the jump up [in pay] I expected,” he said.

He hopes that as the store continues to grow, he might be able to pay himself more. Loomis supports a family of four on that salary.

A distributor’s representative told him recently: “I expect you to do about a million in gross sales” in a few years. His response: “Really?!”

Hands-on classes at the store began at the beginning of this year, and are held most Saturdays. Since they began, about 10 percent of customers each week are first-time buyers.

On a recent Saturday, Peter Olguin of West Hartford and his wife, Betsy, were among those bottling beer they had brewed in the store a week earlier, under Borque’s supervision.

“You have to be a little bit of a do-it-yourselfer,” Olguin said to Borque as they worked, describing who would get hooked on home-brewing.

While the DIY aesthetic has blossomed in recent years, Loomis said he thinks that segment is about 20 percent of his customers.

“Those are the people that stick with it the longest,” he said.

But Loomis said the largest segment of his customers are those looking to save money — and that motive is why he thinks the poor economy is driving growth. You can get nearly 50 bottles of beer for $30 of ingredients, and 28 bottles of wine for $100. The frugality motive is also a challenge for the store. Home-brewers “bargain-hunt everything,” he said.

And speaking of bargain-hunting, Loomis said a Living Social deal he offered on classes is working beautifully. Most of the class attendees on a recent Saturday got the discount. Loomis said of a typical 12-person class, two households will buy the equipment and supplies that day, and he thinks two others come in over the next few months.

“We had a huge influx of people who were online shoppers, didn’t know we were here,” he said. And each class usually has two couples who have never tried it.

Jen Kirchner, 31, of Berlin, bought the class for her husband, Shaun Cecil, 33. She said they’d definitely start brewing at home.

“It’s super easy, it’s a minimal expense,” she said. “It gives couples something to do together.”

Tuesday, May 7

Dear diary,

My heart is heavy. I feel ashamed and guilty. If the law finds out, I could go to jail as a convicted felon. A convicted felon! I wish I had someone to talk to so I could get this burden off my chest.

But gosh knows my sinning was fun.

What a weekend! It was a rainy mess, so I stayed home and brewed another batch of my own peculiar style of homemade beer. I’m not quite sure if it’s a lager or an I.P.A. because it turns out different every time; I’m no master brewer heading to Boston to work for Sam Adams. I simply love to brew, just like my neighbor Steve loves to golf.

The difference is the state of Alabama says golfing is OK — but that I have committed a felony because it’s illegal to brew at home. To be honest, that makes me feel like a first cousin to dudes who cook up meth in their kitchen. As if.

It’s soooo Alabama, isn’t it? This state is the only one in America in which home brewing is still illegal. The only stinking one. It’s as if we live in some backwater place where people still think if you make a few bottles of beer at home each month that you’re automatically giving some to your 15-year-old nephew. Even Mississippi says it’s OK to brew a few beers at home. How embarrassing.

A few of my buddies still believe those jokers in the Legislature will finally pass this home-brewing law before they go home for the year. Yeah, right. Fool me once, fool me twice, or whatever they say. How many years has Montgomery skipped over or conveniently ignored a home-brew bill?

I’ll believe it when I see it.

In the meantime, I’m not sure what to do. Do I quit my hobby? I’m hurting no one. Do I stop making beer in my kitchen? I’m no criminal, and I do feel bad for doing something “illegal.” What if someone rats me out? I’ve watched those prison shows on TV, and I wouldn’t fare well there, if you know what I mean.

Until the Legislature brings Alabama into the 21st century, I suppose I have two choices — keep brewing illegally or stop brewing.

Guess which one I’ll pick.

Signed,

A Guilty Conscience in Alabama

Emily Dixon (center) and Matthew Wilson (R) are sampling the Southern “Belle”gian during the Brew Durham, a home brew benefit for The Scrap Exchange, at The Belt Line Station at
the Cordoba Center for the Arts.

The Herald-Sun | Bernard Thomas

Elise Weidner is sampling 27701 Durham Mild Ale during the Brew Durham, a home brew benefit for The Scrap Exchange, at The Belt Line Station at the Cordoba Center for the Arts.

The Herald-Sun | Bernard Thomas

Now in its fourth year, the annual BrewDurham homebrew festival can give the city’s better-known and much larger World Beer Festival a run for its money in the taste department.

The event, a benefit for The Scrap Exchange, brought 35 brewers to the Golden Belt business center on Saturday to present their concoctions to a couple hundred happy tasters.

And while most of them were pure hobbyists, they clearly approach the task of brewing as seriously as the commercial microbrewers who each fall take over one of Durham’s downtown baseball stadiums for a full day of tasting sessions.

“It’s definitely brewed at our home, but we love it like it’s our job,” said Lara Murphy, who was joining husband and brewing partner Paul Hobson in just the fourth public serving of their work.

Murphy and Hobson brought to BrewDurham a science experiment in the best sense of the term, three different porters based on recipes identical in all but one respect: Each used a different species of yeast.

One – call it the control – produced a normal-tasting English porter. But for the other two, Hobson and Murphy opted to brew with the sort of yeasts that more typically go into pale beers like lagers and saisons.

And they produced very different results, both to the English-style control and to each other. One was dry and Guinness-like; the other almost fruity.

The point, Murphy said, was all about “really isolating what flavor the yeast will give in the same beer, [so] you can see how it plays with the chocolate and the roasty malt.”

Tasters could signal their approval of each brewer’s offerings by tossing a torn ticket into a glass on the brewer’s table.

Hobson and Murphy – who blog about home brewing at citralovessorachi.com – by mid-way in Saturday’s first tasting session had collected more than a dozen tickets, making them early contenders for one of the festival’s best-of trophies.

Across the way, fellow Durham resident John Glazer was taking a somewhat more conventional approach, handing out samples of a chocolate and vanilla stout, a double IPA and an apricot wheat beer.

Glazer – like Murphy a transplant from Brooklyn – said he’s been brewing off and on for about three years and wanted tasters to experience a gamut of styles. He was participating in BrewDurham for the first time but is a regular in two different Triangle homebrew clubs.

“Everyone here is just so friendly,” he said of the other brewers, the tasters and the organizers.

Scrap Exchange Marketing and Promotions Coordinator Ruth Warren said the event is the brainchild of local homebrewer Kile Jansen, who four years ago “brought the idea to us,” both to help the Triangle homebrew scene and raise money for the reuse center.

Warren said Saturday’s festival was on track to raise nearly $7,000 for The Scrap Exchange, which relocated to Golden Belt in 2011 following a partial roof collapse at its old quarters, downtown’s Liberty Warehouse.

Golden Belt has “been really a good space for us,” Warren said. “We’ve been able to grow [and] grow our programming.”

Laine DossPaul and Young Ron congratulate Angry Union for their superior home brew.

At stake? A table at the Paul and Young Ron Brewer’s Alley and VIP access to Brew at the Zoo, this Saturday, May 4 at Zoo Miami.

See also:
- Get $5 Off General Admission $10 Off VIP with promo code CTS2013 Through May 3

Laine DossContestants…and friends.The home brewing community is a tight-knit group, so before the competition the groups sampled and critiqued each others creations, shared tips, and caught up. When Paul and Young Ron entered, however, it was game on.

Each brewer, in turn, presented one selection to the judges, who rated it on a scale of one-five. The beers were (in order of presentation):

Ross Allen, AJ Guerra, and April Ramos of 2 Live Brews presented a peach blonde ale. Paul Castronovo noted the “nice bouquet”.

Keith Spencer of High Noon Brewing served a light brown ale that was nutty and a bit on the hoppy side.

Josh Levitt and Liz Dutra at Invasive Species brought out a 1 1/2 year old whiskey barrel stout. Castronovo noted that the stout was “smooth and strong”.

Angry Union Brewing’s Eric Guerrero and Jeff Evans poured a Belgian strong ale with cherry and coriander notes.

Beer Snob Ales dropped off some bottles of their tropical IPA for the tasting, but didn’t stick around for the competition.

Laine DossBeer tasting is serious work.Though all the beers were well received, Angry Union’s Belgian strong ale won the competition. We asked Eric Guerro how it felt to win. “It feels awesome!”

Want to judge the beers for yourself? Angry Union will be at Brew at the Zoo, sampling their winning Belgian Brew Dog ale. In addition, the AU guys will be serving their Patriot APA, Poolside Pilsner, and Neanderthal APA.

You’ll also be able to taste beers by Invasive Species, 2 Live Brews, and High Noon, in addition to over 200 beers from around the world. There’s also good food, and a live concert by Naughty by Nature.

Tickets are $35 prepaid online through May 4, at 2 p.m.; $45 at the door for general admission. VIP tickets, which allow you an extra hour of beer time and access to the exclusive VIP area, are $75 prepaid online through May 4, at 2 p.m.; $85 at the door. Purchase tickets online here.

Through May 3, you can get $5 off general admission or $10 off VIP access with promo code CTS2013.

Follow Laine Doss on Twitter @LaineDoss and Facebook.

Location Info

Venue

Map

Zoo Miami

12400 SW 152nd St., Miami, FL

Category: General