“It’s interesting to hear how people approach their own versions of home brewing,” said group member Bill Updike. “For a lot of us, it’s about the local economy and learning to do things that folks did 100 years ago. Everyone knew how to make their food, make their own beer and be more self-reliant.”
The arts district offers tax incentives to those who sell art or operate art-related businesses. The home brewing group also includes members who live outside the district. Adam Ortiz, a member who lives in nearby Edmonston, said he has gotten close to making the perfect India pale ale with his friends.
“It was amazing,” said Ortiz, acting director for Prince George’s County’s Department of Environmental Resources. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the skill set to ever be able to reproduce it again, which is why we are going to keep on trying. We had the Holy Grail, and then we drank it.”
Maryland law permits home brewing beer without a permit or license as long as it is not for sale, according to a database of home brewing laws maintained by the American Homebrewers Association.
Ortiz said he never knew brewing beer at home was such a trend until he joined the group. The former Edmonston mayor said about a dozen people attended the first meeting of the group last year.
Another meeting last summer had about 25 people, said Christian Melendez, a Silver Spring resident who joined the group and works as the Edmonston urban farm coordinator for Eco City Farms, which sells fresh produce to local residents.
Ortiz said the group discusses brewing practices and brews they are working on, and members gently critique each other’s beer. Ortiz, who describes his skills as “below intermediate,” said the group has helped him learn better practices and new recipes.
Ortiz said he and fellow group member Updike, a former Mount Rainier city council member, brewed a strong batch of pale ale that contained a lot of hops — a flower used to give beer its bitter taste.
Making beer with Updike was fun because he is a much more experienced brewer, Ortiz said.
Updike, who has been brewing at home for about 15 years, has started to grow hops in his back yard to use with malt, sugar, grain and other ingredients to brew a variety of beers, such as pale ales, lagers, stouts and India pale ales. The ingredients are added to water, boiled, cooled and fermented with yeast and set out for a few weeks before being ready to drink, he said.
Updike brews beer because he enjoys being able to share it with friends at his home, he said. Updike said he also feels it is more ecologically sound, citing reports of large brewing companies that have been accused of contaminating nearby bodies of water.
Melendez, who said he has been home brewing for five years, said it was great to meet fellow home brewers in the group and that he was surprised to find out how many people were interested in the craft.
Cadejo is a new brewery in El Salvador … but it’s about more than selling beer. It’s about creating pride in something local.
On a muggy Friday afternoon in the hot Salvadoran summer, David Falkenstein sits at a small table on the tasting terraza of Cadejo Brewing Company, the brewery he co-founded in San Salvador, El Salvador.
It had been just over a month since Cadejo’s opening, the culmination of more than three years of careful planning and research.
Cadejo currently brews two beers: WAPA, a wheat American pale ale with a “citric hops” flavor, and Roja, an American red ale combining German malts with American and British hops.
WAPA is “loosely inspired” on the Kalamazoo, Mich.-based Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale, Falkenstein says, as it is brewed with the same Centennial hops. “We’re taking craft beers and tropicalizing them.”
The brewery does have plans to offer seasonal beers, such as a pumpkin ale in October or a porter or stout, but Falkenstein emphasized the importance of making a couple beers very well before expanding farther.
But when they do expand, customers will be ready for it. Cadejo provides their own taps to restaurants and bars serving Cadejo beer, and there’s room for four brews. The company also provides their own refrigerators and handles all deliveries in a refrigerated truck.
Apart from the brewery’s tasting terraza, the beer can be found at 15 restaurant and bar locations around San Salvador, including Republik, Zanzibar, Tony Roma’s, Bennigan’s, Buffalo Wings, Buffalo Pizza, La Ventana, Yemaya and Sushi Lounge.
Taking Things Farther
Falkenstein, who is from El Salvador and whose family is of German and Spanish descent, moved to New York to study electrical engineering Cornell University and lived in the United States for 17 years before returning to his home country in 2008.
“I knew I always wanted to come back to El Salvador,” he said.
“I’ve always been a beer drinker,” says Falkenstein, who, with his wife Shannon, eventually started home brewing with friends. “Then I had the opportunity to take the beer farther.”
His friend and business partner Mariano Salazar, who owns the Irish-themed bar Republik in San Salvador’s popular Zona Rosa district, asked Falkenstein whether he would be interested in brewing beer for the bar. That conversation in early 2010 didn’t go anywhere at the time, but the seed had been planted.
Falkenstein travels to St. Louis, Mo. every summer to visit his in-laws. And that particular summer, he also spent a lot of time researching beer, visiting different breweries and talking to brewers themselves.
“It was one year of refining the idea,” he said.
“It started out as making beer for Republik, but given the economies of scale, it’s not worth it” unless you are going to mass-produce beer,” Falkenstein says. “It takes 40 man hours to make one gallon of beer or 1,000 gallons of beer.”
Two years ago, Falkenstein, Salazar and two other partners formed Cadejo Brewing Company.
Letting the Dogs Out
The cadejo is a mythical dog from Latin American folklore. The legend varies from country to country, but generally the white cadejo represents a good spirit and the black cadejo represents an evil spirit. Some versions of the story say the spirits appear to travelers at night — the white to protect them and the black to harm them; other versions say they appear to drunk people.
“It’s just something … local,” Falkenstein says after a pause. “It’s fun and irreverent, which fits in with our company ideals.”
In El Salvador, there is a word for the mindset that things from the outside — such as imported beer, international styles or other foreign-made products — are better: malinche.
Cadejo Brewing Company is about creating pride in something local.
When asked whether the Cadejo Brewing Company dog is the white cadejo or the black cadejo, Falkenstein takes a moment to ponder the question.
“We’re going to have both,” he says finally, explaining that although the company adheres to a “not-too-serious, not-too-corporate” business model, they didn’t want to go too crazy with the launch. “The dogs are going to come out soon.”
Rusty Beaver Brewery sold its first beer Friday. The brewery is in a shopping center at U.S. 1 and Ladysmith Road in Caroline County.
Its opening marked the culmination of years of home brewing by Virginia Barbeque owner Rick Ivey and his son, Austin.
“I realized Austin didn’t really want to be in the restaurant business, and he was really into home brewing,” Ivey said. “So about a year ago, we opened a home brew shop called Hops Brew Shop.”
The home brew shop went into a former Virginia Barbeque location in Ladysmith. It has now become the brewery’s home.
The father and son duo turned to Patrick Bisha, who started working at Virginia Barbeque’s Lakeside location while studying business and marketing at Virginia Commonwealth University, for help with the new brewery’s marketing and advertising.
The brewery’s name comes from the 30-acre farm Ivey and his wife bought nearly 20 years ago in the Beaverdam area of northern Hanover County.
The company signed an agreement with Brown Distributing, which handles distribution for nearly all of Virginia’s craft breweries, including all of Richmond’s brewers.
The brewery will start off with four beers: an IPA, brown ale, stout and the “smashed bastard,” which draws its name for beers made with one type of malt and one type of hops, Ivey said.
The brewery also serves a “black and tan” style beer that is mixed from the stout and smashed brews.
“The Roy’s Big Bad Brown ale is named after a song by The Southern Belles, which are a jam band from Richmond,” Ivey said. “So we’re hoping that will be our signature beer and that we can pour it from the tap for the first time at (bar and music spot) The Camel on a night they are playing there.”
Ivey said distribution to local bars and restaurants will start next month when the brewery’s second batches of beer are ready.
Until then, the beer will be available at the brewery, which likely will be open from noon to 9 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, with shorter Sunday hours possible. Ivey said the brewery will have Virginia Barbeque available.
He said getting the brewery off the ground has taken the different skills of each founder.
“I’ve got the business experience, my son the brewing knowledge and Patrick the marketing skills,” Ivey said. “And my wife gets to do the paperwork and pay the bills.”
Jacob Geiger is director of Work It, Richmond. He can be reached at jgeiger@workitrichmond.com or by phone at (804) 649-6874.
Owner of the One Stop Home Brew Pub Shop Colin MacAlpine says that brewing at home is easy. Christopher Chan
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.”
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.”
I wasn’t planning on writing this article, but something happened Tuesday that I found compelled to write this while the memory was fresh.
A few weeks ago, I drove out to Flying Dog Brewery in Frederick, MD to pick up a Stove Topper. What’s a Stove Topper you ask? A Stove Topper is a homebrew kit offered by Flying Dog Brewery to clone one of their beers. Each month a different selection drops at the brewery and a few select stores.
The monthly selection usually matches up pretty well with the brewing calendar for appropriate styles. For example, their August selection will be The Fear Imperial Pumpkin Ale which should be ready around October if you brew it immediately. Perfect for fall.
The selection for May was Single Hop Imperial IPA with Citra. Flying Dog’s Single Hop Series has been one of my favorites for a while. Sure I like some varieties of hops more than others, but I haven’t had one from this series that I didn’t like. Since this month’s selection was the Citra varietal, I was really excited. As Citra has become very popular, and can be hard to come by.
During Frederick Beer week I ran into Ben Savage, Flying Dog’s VP of Marketing, and he told me that some homebrewers had been purchasing the Single Hop Citra kit just for the hops inside. I thought this was silly, since there are easier ways to get Citra. In fact, the day I purchased my Stove Topper kit I also stopped by Flying Barrel in Frederick for some home brew supplies, and noticed that they had Citra in stock.
I think it is extremely cool that a brewery is reaching out to the homebrew community with brewery sponsored clone recipes. Now, this kit isn’t perfect, and I will touch on that later. For now, let’s walk through what you get.
All kits will be different, but here’s what was in mine. 2 (large) malt bags, with Pale, Rye, Carapils, and Biscuit Malt. 5 portioned bags of hops. A packet of yeast nutrient and kettle finings. Some gypsum if you need to make water ion adjustments. 2 vials of yeast and 50 Flying Dog bottle caps. And of course instructions.
One thing you will notice in what was in the box, or what was NOT in the box. No Dry Malt Extract or Liquid Malt Extract. While DME and LME are prominent in the bulk of home brew kits made, it is not a part of this. Flying Dog calls the Stove Topper series “A Home Brew Clone Kit for Advanced Home Brewers”
One of the obstacles that home brewers face that professional brewers do not, is finding the time to brew. For the professionals, it’s their job, and many breweries are 24 hour a day operations. My home brewery is not a 24 hour operation. Mostly because I do not operate for 24 hours, and my day tends to get pretty carved up between work and my family. I am mentioning this because finding the time to brew this particular batch was becoming difficult. Every weekend had something that needed to be done. Whether it was a social event, cutting the grass, or watching my kids while my wife is working, there was always something in the way. I was starting to lose hope for finding a 6 hour block of time.
Then while talking with a co-worker he mentioned that he likes to brew at night after work. Why didn’t I think of that? So I found a Tuesday that I could brew. I had to skip my homebrew club meeting to do it, but I figured what is more in the spirit of homebrew than actual brewing? Nothing.
Five o’clock is here. Time to stop working, and start brewing! Those of you that brew, especially all-grain brewers, know that brewing is work. Actual physical labor too, which is a change for us Millennial Information Workers.
Here’s where I’ll mention some of the flaws of this kit. They are mainly in the instructions. The instructions are detailed, but a selective in what details are provided. For instance, there is no breakdown of the ingredients. I have no idea how much Rye Malt I added or Carapils or even Pale Malt which was the bulk of it. I understand that Flying Dog is trying to protect their product, but this made things a little more difficult for me. Only because I, like many brewers, basically take the instructions from a kit like this, and throw them in the trash. I am being figurative of course, there is still some very important information contained in those pages. But I like to add all of the ingredients into my brewing software, which is customized for my equipment profile and brewing style.
My garage brewery
I’ll provide a couple examples: “Increase mash temp to 160° F and rest for 5 minutes” That’s great if you are someone that uses a Mash Tun with a heat source. But many of us use a more passive approach with cooler and other similar apparatus. When using software I am able to calculate how much water, and what temperature to add to achieve a suitable temperature to “mash out.” For those unfamiliar, mashing out is raising the temperature of the mash to stop the conversion of sugars. This prevents unwanted off flavors. Next I was told to head 2.5 to 3 gallons of sparge water. Which for my equipment is not enough. This was to collect 6.25 to 6.75 gallons of water in the boil kettle. Once again, this is too low for my purposes. I calculated I would need 8.27 gallons of water in my boil kettle to have 5.5 gallons remaining post-boil.
So despite my petty complaints about the instructions, I was able to getting 8.27 gallons of wort into my boil kettle to begin the final 90 minute boil. This is where I really enjoyed the simplicity of this kit. All of my hop additions were in clearly marked bags ready to be dropped in the kettle when the time was right. As the boil went on, I started to become very concerned that my calculations of 8.27 gallons was way too much. Oops. I started making contingency plans for a longer boil or just resigning myself to the fact I screwed up. And then my 90 minute boil was up, and the moment of truth was here. 1) What would my post boil volume be and 2) What would my SG (starting gravity) be?
It took the water a minute or two to settle down to where I could get an accurate volume reading. And behold! The post boil volume was exactly 5.5 gallons! I was very happy. The next step was to get the wort cooled, and get a gravity reading. Woohoo! The target SG for this kit was 1.082 and to my wonderment and surprise I was slightly more efficient and had a reading of 1.084. Wow. I really couldn’t be happier. That isn’t really true, I had blood running down my thumb and all over the ground. For some reason Blichmann Engineering makes the treads on their plate chillers razor sharp. This is not my first cut on that piece of equipment, and likely not the last.
So at that moment, I was ecstatic. Time to pitch the yeast, clean up, and go to bed. I had made a yeast starter the night before with the Flying Dog Chico Ale yeast they had supplied. Unlike store bought yeast, it was not brown, it was a bright green. As it was harvested for Flying Dog’s fermenters. I pitched the yeast, and aerated the wort well, and went to bed.
What I hope to see
Upon awaking, I wanted to go check on my baby. I have become accustomed to seeing beer fermenting wildly after just a few hours since I have begun making yeast starters and a stir plate. This was not the case. I had an inch thick film of yeast cake on top, but not the 6-8 inches that I am used to. I haven’t made a decision on what to do yet, but I really need to figure it out, or I may have wasted 6 hours in my garage this past Tuesday.
Overall, I would say that this is a great product, and a great brewing experience. Many brewers will reach out to the home brew community by holding home brew competitions. Some, like DuClaw will even brew the winner’s beer. Some might work with a retailer to sell a clone kit. But this is the first time I have heard of a brewery making their own kits, from their stock of malt, hops, and house yeast. Truly Awesome!
FREDERICK, Md. (AP) – James McEver credits his uncle for introducing him to brewing beer, and at 25, he recently became the new owner of Flying Barrel – a Frederick beer-making company for more than three decades.
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.”
FREDERICK — James McEver credits his uncle for introducing him to brewing beer, and at 25, he recently became the new owner of Flying Barrel — a Frederick beer-making company for more than three decades.
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.”
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.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
First, there was the lockout. And we didn’t get our Flyers hockey until far later than we deserved.
Then came the losing. And it was far more frequent than we desired.
Finally, there was elimination; and it was just as final as we remembered.
As fans across the Delaware Valley sigh and pack away their Flyers gear for another long summer, Paul Lahm puts his in a box on his grandmother’s porch.
Lahm and his girlfriend Ashley live on a quiet property deep in Bucks County, the backyard of which is shared by homes owned by his parents and uncle. A manmade creek bed catches leaves and lawn clippings next to a pool still hibernating from the winter. A mother sparrow pokes her head in the birdhouse dangling above our heads.
“She’s got a few babies in there,” Lahm’s grandmother tells us with a grin.
And here, under the awning on this serene springtime voyage, is a furious Zac Rinaldo, about to brain the Blackhawks’ Andrew Shaw with a flying right hook.
He eyes the label on the bottle of his homemade Rinaldo Right Hook Rye.
“If you told me last year I’d make a beer about him, I’d have called you crazy,” he says. “But he really turned it around this year.”
This isn’t the first time this porch has been covered in a series of tubes and boiling water. Rinaldo is one of several Flyers honored by Lahm’s home brewing. In his basement fridge, he’s got Ron Hextall’s Double Minor Double IPA, Danny Briere’s Fist Pump-kin Ale, and the Jakob Voracek, Claude Giroux, and Scott Hartnell Ginger Line Strawberry Wheat.
At my request, he hands me a Broad Street Barleywine.
“You sure? Don’t you have to drive?”
The man’s got faith in his beer’s alcohol by volume.
It’s been a busy season in Lahm’s beer fridge. Over the winter, the same basement held Gary Bettman Bitters, Fly-P-A, and a Jakob Vora-Czech Pilsner. He mentions plans to eventually craft brews for Peter Laviolette and Wayne Simmonds, but today, our target is even more obvious (To view all of Paul’s beers and labels, click here).
Rumors have been swirling for what seems like forever over goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov – whether he’ll be on the team next year, whether he’s worth the trouble, whether something was lost in translation during that whole Stalin thing – but regardless of his long-term future, Bryz is about to be immortalized, and he doesn’t even know it.
“I’m not ready to give up on Bryz,” Lahm says, setting a stainless steel, five gallon pot of water on a burner set to 170 degrees. “Not until I see him play a full season and not be forced to play 22 games in a row. Then the already [bad] defense goes through an absurd amount of injuries? Dude was getting pounded.”
He finishes what he’s doing and claps his hands together.
“You ready for a beer?”
Ashley looks at us. It’s10:30 in the morning. But we’re also home brewing. Which isn’t actually a reason to drink before noon, but we agree it sounds like one.
Leading to what, in retrospect, was an obvious label.
Lahm’s more than just the best home brewer on this porch; according to Philly Beer Scene, he’s one of the best in the city.
Yes, the Rinaldo Rye holds the distinction as the first beer in the country to feature an opposing player getting a vicious beat down, right on the label.
But it has received recognition for being more than just a satisfying label for those in mid-bloodlust. It was this concoction that won Lahm the first round of the Philly Beer Scene home brew competition. At the moment, his follow-up entry for the second round is resting gently in a barrel downstairs, waiting to be judged at the American Home Brew conference this June in Philadelphia (and will presumably feature a label with Shaw unconscious on the ice as Rinaldo is led to the penalty box, waving his arms to the delight of a raucous crowd).
Also catching on fast is the Ginger Line Strawberry Wheat. A hit amongst his friends and family – the chief consumers of this process, given the inability to sell his beer because of those pesky liquor and copyright laws – it’s one of the beers in his arsenal that has been made repeatedly.
“I printed out an 8 ½ x 11, hi-res copy of the label and got Hartnell and Voracek to sign under their pictures,” Lahm says. “This year I’m going back and getting Giroux’s to complete the trio.”
But for now, he’s content out on the porch with Bryz.
“It’s just a type I’ve never made before,” Paul says when I ask him why Hefeweizen, why Bryz, why now. “This is just because…Paul’s thirsty.”
His Hextall Double IPA I’m holding is tough to keep around. It is so terrifically hoppy that it bounces out of the bottle and into your mouth – which makes sense, given its origins.
“Have you ever had Pliny the Elder?” he asks. “It’s a tweak of that. I’d never done an IPA before, so I figured, start with the best. Then I’ll tweak it from there.”
Lahm talks about his best friend Anthony and his family, who are responsible for his fandom, and by extension, this beer in my hand.
“They’re the people who got me hooked,” he recalls enthusiastically. We’re at the part of home brewing during which you literally wait for water to boil.
“If I had to point to one game that made me think, ‘Holy [poop] this is awesome, I need to watch this every day,’ it was when we played Ottawa in 2004 and it was the record-breaking penalty minute game with the huge brawl. That was the first game they made me sit down and watch. And they had no idea what was coming, they were just like, ‘Every time we play Ottawa, there’s always awesome fights.’ I thought, ‘I’ll try to get into this.’”
“I was like, ‘This is [expletive deleted] awesome.’ I was hooked.”
The home brewing hooks were in him a bit later, but with equal intensity. And once the starter kit arrived in the mail last March, he was off to the races.
“I’ve just been slowly accumulating more and more stuff since then. But I usually buy stuff in bursts. As soon as I got the turkey boiler and the two pots, those were the last big things.”
Home brewing in general is a hobby greatly rewarding for those willing to experiment, and involves a lot of what the Flyers seemed to lack this year – chemistry.
Lahm’s tweaks to the Russian River Brewing Company’s Pliny the Elder masterpiece have made it his own, as do every other shift, strain, or alteration that change the volume, method or temperature of the end result.
“I’ll find recipes online, then tweak them to how I like my beers. I might tweak the hops that are used, or the amount of hops or the mash temperature just to get a dryer, sweeter beer. I tend to like them dry and hoppy so I’ll add some more, change the variety, or just ferment lower. Stuff like that.”
The Black IPA resting quietly in the dark of the basement (next to Ashley’s homemade wines) is the first of Lahm’s creations that isn’t the hybrid of a baseline recipe and his own preferences; it’s composed by way of ingredients and procedure that are all his own.
“It’s my first real creation,” he says.
“And since it’s for the competition, I don’t get to name it,” he explains, after I presume there’s some “Black Eye-P-A” label in the works. “I actually don’t even get to drink any of it. The first one of these, the home brewing contest actually sold out, so I couldn’t even get into the event.”
There are 15 gallons down there, and every one of them is required for judgment in the contest. It’s a cruel twist, one that clearly preoccupies the beer’s maker on occasion.
But the process must go on, even as the rain intensifies. Lahm drains his pot and slowly pipes the mixture into a water cooler. The mash, the boil, and fermentation; the procedure in its entirety includes a plethora of uniquely shaped and titled items.
“What awesome name does this have?” I asked, brandishing a utensil somewhere between a spatula and an oar.
“That’s a mash paddle,” he replies.
“Awesome.”
Like the Flyers, Lahm is forced to play the waiting game for now. As an ale, it’ll be a week before Bryz’s brew is even drinkable -something like a lager takes closer to a month). Afterward, it’s passed into bottles, where it will carbonate for three more weeks.
Patience: It’s key to being a Flyers fan, and the main part of home brewing. It only makes sense that one fan – with, sadly, more time than ever away from his team to spend on hobbies – fills his grandma’s porch with the tender majesty of home brewing. Hobbies are important for distracting from work, whether that work is in an office, or watching an endlessly frustrating hockey team.
Like Lahm, the Flyers are all at home now watching other teams combat each other for the Cup. Only one of them, however, will be competing in the second round of Philly Beer Scene’s Home Brewing contest this month. But there’s apprehension for Lahm when it comes to embracing this skill as a career, regardless of how talented he is.
“I kind of feel, not to completely rule it out in the future, but it kind of seems to me like one of those things where doing it as a hobby, it’s something you love, but doing it as a job, you quickly grow to hate it,” he says. “Only because there’d be stress and deadlines and it would become work.”
It can be tough to repress all the “work” Flyers fans did while their team finished with less than 50 points and missed the playoffs for only the ninth time in human history.
Lahm sips his Barleywine.
“The reason I enjoy it so much is because it’s what I do to get away from work.”
The Prairie Schooners Homebrew Club was a fixture at the first two years of the Springfield Oyster and Beer Festival, but the group’s presence was scaled back last year after state regulators started cracking down on sampling of homemade beer at public events.
A bill that unanimously passed both houses of the General Assembly this spring and awaits Gov. Pat Quinn’s signature clears the way for the Prairie Schooners and other clubs to resume serving free samples of their brews at festivals.
In addition, the bill clarifies that home brewers may share their beverages “at any private residence or other private location where the possession and consumption of alcohol is permissible” as long as they aren’t sold or shared with the general public.
It also allows stores that primarily sell home-brewing equipment to brew and serve small free samples. Stores that only sell brewing equipment and supplies won’t have to get liquor licenses but will be required to have the proper insurance.
“It will legalize officially all of the things we’ve always done,” said Prairie Schooners member Bill Tubbs, an editor for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency who’s been brewing for about 18 years, since “back when people got into home brewing because there was no good beer out there.”
The issue came to a head last year when the Illinois Liquor Control Commission told the Peoria Jaycees that the organization no longer could allow clubs to serve beer brewed at home during the annual Peoria International Beer Festival.
For nearly two decades, clubs had poured free samples of their brews in exchange for free admission to the event.
“The reason we call it home brewing is because you serve it at home to friends and family and invited guests,” a state spokeswoman told the Peoria Journal Star at the time. “That doesn’t include anybody that walks through the gates at a festival — that’s a different kind of event than your kids’ graduation party.”
Court Conn, owner of the Inn at 835 and organizer of the Springfield Oyster and Beer Festival, said festivalgoers last year missed being able to sample creative home-brewed concoctions, like the Mountain Dew beer someone brought a couple of years ago.
“Home brewers are extremely creative people,” said Conn, who started brewing at home several years ago and has since opened Obed Isaac’s Microbrewery Eatery with his wife and two sons. “All of these things were really awesome.”
Since the festival couldn’t allow the Prairie Schooners to bring their beers last year, Obed Isaac’s brewed and served a brown ale from a recipe created by club member Brian Dahl.
If Quinn signs the bill in time, the club is hoping to be back at the festival on Sept. 7, said Tubbs, who last weekend brewed a Russian imperial stout that will age till December with oak spirals soaked in bourbon and pinot noir.
After the state crackdown, brewing clubs and equipment shops got together — with some help from the American Homebrewers Association — to form the Illinois Homebrew Alliance.
Rich Placko is a member of the St. Charles-based Silverado Homebrew Club. Because of the Liquor Control Commission’s decision, the group wasn’t able to take part in a fundraising event last year in Elgin in which it had previously participated.
“Myself and everyone in the club thought it was kind of ridiculous,” said Placko, who works in direct marketing by day and has been brewing for about 15 years.
Right now, he’s waiting to bottle a batch of pale ale made with hops from New Zealand that he brewed for a friend’s 40th birthday.
Placko decided to research the more lenient home-brewing laws in Wisconsin and Indiana, and used the Wisconsin law as a model for an initial draft of what became House Bill 630, which state Reps. Keith Farnham, D-Elgin, and Michael Tryon, R-Crystal Lake, sponsored.
Attorneys Andrew Kriz, Russell J. Chibe and Ashley Bradnt, who runs the Libation Law Blog, helped craft the bill.
Bill Olson, the trade group’s president, said beer distributors wanted to have “homebrew recognized as an intoxicating beverage and treated as such.”
“They aren’t making root beer,” he said. “They’re making an alcoholic beverage.”
The bill creates a $25 special event permit for organizations that want to serve free samples of homemade beer at public events and makes them subject to the same limitations on sampling as retailers.
Rzeminski said he and other brewers across the state are looking forward to having the “ability to go back to those homebrew festivals and share the product of our hobby.”
He and other PALE members are hoping to serve their beers at the Midwest Brewers Fest Aug. 24 in Plainfield.
Quinn spokesman Dave Blanchette said the governor doesn’t have a position on the legislation and “will review it when it reaches his desk.”
If the he signs it as expected, beer enthusiasts from Chicago to Carbondale will be able follow the mantra of home-brewing pioneer Charlie Papazian: “Relax. Don’t worry. Have a homebrew.”
***
Bill highlights
Establishes that no license is required for people 21 and older to make, possess, transport or store “homemade brewed beverages” as long as the brewer is not paid and the beer is not sold. Home brewers can only produce 100 gallons in a calendar year in households with one person of legal drinking age and 200 gallons in households with more than one.
Clarifies that home-brewed beers can be consumed “at any private residence or other private location where the possession and consumption of alcohol is permissible” as long as they aren’t sold or made available to the general public.
Allows shops that sell home-brewing equipment to brew and serve free samples on their premises.
Establishes requirements for home-brewing competitions.
Creates $25 special event permit for serving samples of home-brewed beer at public events.
A few weeks ago, I drove out to Flying Dog Brewery in Frederick, MD to pick up a Stove Topper. What’s a Stove Topper you ask? A Stove Topper is a homebrew kit offered by Flying Dog Brewery to clone one of their beers. Each month a different selection drops at the brewery and a few select stores.
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“If you told me last year I’d make a beer about him, I’d have called you crazy,” he says. “But he really turned it around this year.”
Lahm’s more than just the best home brewer on this porch; according to Philly Beer Scene, he’s