Bill headed to governor clarifies rules for home-brewed beer – The State Journal

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.

Peter J. Rzeminski II, an information-technology manager who belongs to the Plainfield Ale and Lager Enthusiasts Homebrew Club, known as PALE, negotiated with the Associated Beer Distributors of Illinois to address the trade association’s concerns.

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.

To read the full bill, visit: http://bit.ly/homebrewbill.

Dan Petrella can be reached at 788-1532. Follow him at twitter.com/PetrellaReports.

A home-brewer’s lament: When will the state of Alabama join the 21st century?

A diary entry from an Alabama home-brewer:

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

Hank Zuber’s home-brewing beer bill heads to governor’s desk

Home-brewing beer will likely become a popular hobby in Mississippi if a law passed by the legislature this week is signed into law by Gov. Phil Bryant.
Courtesy Photo

OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi — Hank Zuber says it was a matter of fairness.

Zuber, a state representative from Ocean Springs, championed the cause of Senate Bill 2183, which allows home brewing of beer in Mississippi. The bill passed through the House of Representatives Wednesday by a 73-37 vote.

“It’s puts beer on the same level as wine,” Zuber said Friday. “It was a question of fairness to me.”

It has been legal to make both wine and beer at home since 1934, Zuber noted, but the home brewing of beer had a number of restrictions and requirements that wine did not.

“This law will remove all of those requirements and allow people to enjoy this as a hobby,” Zuber said.

Although there has been no word from Gov. Phil Bryant’s office, Zuber said he fully expects the governor to sign the bill into law. He has five days from receipt of the bill to sign or reject it.

Last year, Bryant signed into law a bill which allowed for the alcohol content of beer sold in Mississippi to be raised from 5 to 8 percent.

“I don’t have any indication he wouldn’t sign,” Zuber said of the home brewing bill.

The law would allow for persons 21 and older to brew beer in their home. Adults living alone would be allowed to brew up to 100 gallons per year and homes with two or more adults could brew up to 200 gallons.

The new law would allow home-brewed beer to be taken outside the home only “for the purpose of participating in a bona fide exhibition, contest or competition where homemade beer is being tasted and judged” and under no circumstances could home-brewed beer be sold.

In addition, the new law would not supercede laws in the 34 Mississippi counties which are “dry” and do not allow for the sale or consumption of alcohol.

Zuber also said he expects the new law to provide for economic development in the state, attracting large festivals to the state similar to those held in Florida and Alabama.

Paul Blacksmith, owner of Crooked Letter Brewing in Ocean Springs, agreed the new law would drive business.

“We expect several more breweries to ultimately open because of this bill,” Blacksmith said. “It’s a fun hobby, but you’ll have people like us to begin to take the hobby more seriously and it leads to a new business.”

Blacksmith said he and his wife, Wanda, began as home brewers about 10 years ago after being introduced to the hobby by a friend.

“We would never have reached the point where we are had we not started home brewing 10 years ago,” he said.

Blacksmith also said there is a “large home-brewing community” in Mississippi.

“This is definitely going to be good for business,” he said. “Competition is always good and it will be good for this industry. There’s no question you’ll have people who start home brewing and will want to take it to another level as Wanda and I did.”

Craft beer, home brewed: Personal beer manufacturing may come to Alabama

The state of Alabama may be a year away from the legalization of the personal manufacturing of beer, or “home brewing.”

In April 2012, The Alabama House of Representatives passed HB354 with a vote of 44-33. The bill, if approved by the senate, would effectively lift the ban on home brewing in Alabama. However, the bill was recently put on hold after the senate failed to vote on the measure before the end of the latest legislative session.

Republican Rep. Mac McCutcheon, from the 25th district, sponsored the bill along with other representatives.

According to the bill, anyone not convicted of a felony that is 21 or older will have the right to brew homemade beer, table wine, cider and mead for personal use. Along with the legalization, there will also be regulatory measures such as the prohibited sale of homemade alcohol and content restrictions limited to 8.5 percent alcohol by volume.

According to The Alabama Homebrewers Association, there are around one million home brewers living in the United States, with an estimated 5,000 living in Alabama. Alabama and Mississippi remain the only states in which home brewing is illegal.

Elliot Roberts, co-owner of Druid City Brewing Company in Tuscaloosa, said home brewing already has roots in Alabama.

“I think for the largest part, the people that want to brew beer are doing it, no matter what,” Roberts said. “If it’s legal, there will be more of a market to open stores for local commerce relating to it, and all of that money ultimately goes back into the local economy, which is what we are all about.”

After their humble beginnings as home brewers, Roberts and his Druid City Brewing co-founder, Bo Hicks, sought to legally bring their love for high quality craft beers to the public. Roberts believes the overall perception of home brewing is changing in Alabama due to microbreweries and groups that are vocal about alcohol legislation.

“I give all the credit in the world to Free The Hops folks,” Roberts said. “Those guys did so much for beer in Alabama that it created a market for good beer. When that happened more people realized that not all of it tasted like Bud Light, then people started to have a thirst for craft beers and began making their own.”

Free the Hops is a grassroots, non-profit organization focused on bringing high quality beers to Alabama.

A marquee talking point in the debate over legalization is the personal rights of American alcohol enthusiasts. One such home-brewing beer advocate happens to be the commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama. Obama’s personal recipe for White House Honey Brown Ale is the first alcoholic beverage to be brewed on the White House grounds and is available to the public on the official White House website.

Formal associations like AHA seek to remove the criminal stigma from a hobby that is cherished in the White House, but punishable by law in the state of Alabama.

Other grassroots groups, such as Free The Hops, have made headway in pushing for new alcohol legislation in Alabama. After extensive pressure from such groups, Gov. Robert Bentley signed the “Gourmet Bottle Bill” into law in May 2012. The bill, which took effect in August 2012, allows for looser restrictions on container size, paving the way for 22 ounce and 750 mL craft bottles. Until this bill was signed in to law, Alabama was the only state to regulate container size.

Caleb Morrison, a UA junior majoring in metallurgical engineering, said he sees promise for a college community in the passing of new alcohol legislation.

“If this bill passes, there will definitely be a higher influx of craft beers in stores,” Morrison said. “It would be nice to have more craft beers, and only a few places here have a selection past domestics – if microbreweries open as a result, that is jobs on top of products.”

Leading in today’s Crimson White:

Freshman duo make an impact for women’s team

Tin Top Restaurant and Oyster Bar trades beach atmosphere for quality seafood

Athletes’ GPA keeps up UA’s standard

Home Brewing Comes to a Head

If Kevin Kowalewski knew what he knows now about Mississippi’s home-brewing laws, he might not have moved here from the St. Louis area in August 2012.

“I was kind of shocked. I didn’t realize there were any states where home brewing is illegal,” Kowalewski said.

Mississippi and Alabama are the last two states where the legality of making homemade beer is in question. Hopefully, for hobbyists like Kowalewski, an effort to clarify the law and make home brewing legal in Mississippi will succeed this year.

Raise Your Pints, the beer connoisseurs who helped raised the alcohol-content limit of beer last year, is once again in the forefront of this year’s effort.

“Last year’s (alcohol-by-weight) bill is really helping craft brew culture,” said Craig Hendry, president of Raise Your Pints.

Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson, sponsored the legislation, which passed the Senate last week. Rep. David Baria, D-Bay St. Louis, has a companion bill in the Mississippi House.

To legally brew beer in the state, a person has to have a $1,000 permit from the Mississippi Department of Revenue. The law, doesn’t allow such permits for home brewers, which leaves home brewers facing possible fines if caught.

Horhn’s bill would differentiate between commercial sellers and hobbyists by exempting individuals who make less than 100 gallons and households making less than 200 gallons of suds per year from the state beer regulations.

Hobbyists could not sell their home brews, and the law would not apply to “dry” counties, where any sale of alcohol is illegal.

About 750,000 people home brew in the United States, according to the Boulder, Colo.-based American Homebrewers Association. Novices can purchase a starter kit for about $80 and spend as much as $45 on one 5-gallon batch of beer.

Jackson native Mac Rusling never made his own beer until 1973 when he bumped into a buddy carrying a sack full of beer-making ingredients and asked for the recipe. In December, he took his love of home brewing to the next level and opened Brewhaha, a home-brewing supply store in Jackson. Given the ambiguity in the state’s home brewing law, Rusling said he was nervous about opening the shop.

“I felt like it was time,” Rusling said. Rusling considers himself a traditionalist, preferring to make dark-hued Vienna lagers, while other hobbyists such as Kowalewski like to experiment with ingredients not ordinarily associated with beer, such as bananas, pecans and orange peels.

Kowalewski, who says he makes a decent American-style lager that’s sweet and slightly hoppier than macro-brewed lagers, also wants to experiment with ingredients that are unique to Mississippi and the American South, such as persimmon and Satsuma peel.

“There’s a science to it and an art to it,” Kowalewski said. “You have total control over what goes into your final product. You can make something that’s better than what you can get commercially.”

Comment at www.jfp.ms. Email R.L. Nave at rlnave@jacksonfreepress.

Rayburn pastor creates microbrewery to educate, enjoy – Tribune

By Tim Karan

Published: Monday, November 5, 2012, 12:01 a.m.

Updated 8 hours ago

Pastor John Smith is on a mission, but not one that you might expect: He’s on a crusade to restore the good name of beer.

Smith, who has been pastor of Pine Creek Baptist Church in Rayburn for 15 years, along with his son, Ben “Dennis� Smith, 24, of Beaver Falls and family friend Ben Duncan, 30, of Templeton, recently established Reclamation Brewing Co., a fledgling microbrewery with lofty aspirations.

“Our desire is to both make really good beer and to educate people about its history,� said Smith, 44. “We want to help people overcome some of the negative ideas they might have about the culture and to present beer the way it ought to be.�

It started about a year and a half ago when a trip to Ireland inspired the company founders to bring back the ideologies they were immersed in.

“We went to one pub in a small village, and they welcomed us as foreigners as if we were one of their own,� Smith said. “Pubs have historically been a place where people would gather, connect with each other, talk about life and celebrate. In America, that by and large, got subjugated during Prohibition when the beer culture was forced underground and its reputation never really recovered.�

Upon their return, the trio turned their attention to brewing a quality homemade beer for their own use.

“It really started because all three of us have a love for craft beers,� Smith said. “Ben (Duncan) had some extra raspberries that we used to make some wine, and that quickly morphed into making beer for personal consumption and then some for a wedding and other small events. But as more people tried it, everyone said we really had to try to make it more widely available.�

Although none of the men had training in brewing, they quickly began experimenting with unique recipes that appealed to their taste buds and their shared spirituality. “Promised Land Imperial Ale� is a milk and honey flavored brew that references the biblical description of the holy land. “Carey Me Home Imperial IPA,� named in honor of 19th-century Baptist missionary William Carey, blends grapefruit, orange and tropical fruits with caramel.

“The name ‘Carey Me Home’ also is playing on the fact that it’s 10 percent (alcohol by volume),� said Smith with a laugh. “So someone might actually have to carry you home.�

For now, however, there are only a select few places you can try any of Reclamation Brewing Co.’s beers. In order to be licensed, Smith said federal and state laws state that the company must first secure a physical location to sell from. Although they’re in negotiations with a few different building owners in the Butler area, Smith said the microbrew can only offer their drinks at tasting events like the upcoming Butler Brewfest on Nov. 10.

In an effort to raise the $35,000 needed to get their business off the ground, Reclamation Brewing Co. has set up an online crowd-funding campaign that anyone can contribute to on Kickstarter.com. The fundraiser runs through Nov. 21 and if the company fails to reach its goal, the company won’t receive any of the donations.

“It’s going well,� said Smith. “Eighty-two percent of the projects (funded on Kickstarter) that reach 20 percent of their goals go on to succeed, and we’re already above that mark.�

If their brew pub becomes a reality, Smith said, the last thing Reclamation Brewing Co. will need to do is convince remaining non-believers.

“When people find out a pastor is a brewer, sometimes, it raises some eyebrows,� said Smith. “But while the Bible condemns improper excessive use of alcohol, it never condemns proper use. There’s no contradiction between being a follower of Christ and a lover of good beer.�

For more information and to pitch in, visit ReclamationBrewing.com.

Tim Karan is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 724-543-1303 or tkaran@tribweb.com.

You must be signed in to add comments

To comment, click the Sign in or sign up at the very top of this page.

There are currently no comments for this story.

Subscribe today! Click here for our subscription offers.

Home brewing big in Brookings, SD

BROOKINGS, S.D. – “Roll out the barrels, we’ll have a barrel of fun.”

OK, so Brookings home-brewing beer barons don’t turn out big wooden barrels of ales and stouts; but they sure do have a barrel of fun making small batches for themselves and their beer-drinking buddies.

Carey Bretsch and Mike Lapka, engineering professionals who work together at Civil Design Inc. (CDI) in Brookings, are professionals in the world of amateur brewing for home consumption. They’ve been in the home-brewing business for about nine years. Lapka’s won a “couple blue ribbons” for his brewing skills, but he claims no special secrets for turning out good brewskis for drinking at home.

He said, “There’s books and the Internet. But it’s trial and error.”

However, the brewer duo did sit down for a visit with The Brookings Register this past week and share some basics of homemade beer.

From start to finish to drinking, the time for turning out a good brewski can be a moving target. They may take as long as two to three months to turn out a quality batch of home brew.

“It’s just a lot of waiting,” they both agreed. They brew the equivalent of about two cases (48, 12-ounce bottles) per batch. Home-brew can’t be sold, but CDI employees “participate in the brewing process.”

Lapka explained, “If they want to brew a batch, they just basically pay for the ingredients and then we’ll brew it up.”

Bretsch said, with a smile, “It’s our employee incentive program. It’s a morale booster. It’s a teambuilding exercise.

“When we built this facility (CDI) here, we set it up so that we could brew beer in the garage.”

He added, “The philosophy is that it takes beer to make beer. So while we wait around for the beer to reach its next stage, we sit around and consume a beer or two from a previous batch.”

Lapka said they usually start in October and November: “We might brew a batch a week for a month. That gets your system started.” Bretsch added, “It gives us enough beer so that we can brew another batch.“

He and Lapka are willing to brew whatever their contributors of ingredients provide. Wheat beer and stout are popular . Lapka continues his own quest for a brew that comes close to Guiness.

To make five gallons of beer requires about 10 pounds of grains, some hops and yeast. Ingredients are easy to come by and can be ordered from readily available suppliers.

The average cost of a homebrew for the duo is “about a buck a bottle.” When they first started brewing, they used plastic pop bottles. Both pointed out that some commercial brewers use plastic bottles.

However, Bretsch noted, “The good beers use glass; we pretty much use all dark glass right now.“

Bretsch added that Lapka has built much of the equipment that they use. They have a capper, and they sterilize and reuse bottles. They then insert CO2 and condition the beer and then put it into bottles using a “beer gun.” But first they put the beer in kegs.

Bretsch explained, “It’s a two-part system. The beer gun actually squirts CO2 into the bottle first. Then you drop the beer in and then cap it.” Bottle vs. keg

One question is often raised in the world of both commercial beer and home brew: Is there a change when beer goes from keg to bottle or can? Can a bottled beer taste as good a draft beer? Sometimes.

Lapka said, “There is a slight difference. It depends on your beer. I think a dark stout tastes better in a bottle after about a year than it does in a keg.

“In a keg it has a tendency of overcarbonating. In a bottle it won’t overcarbonate, because you have such a small volume of it. In a stout you don’t want it to be overcarbonated. The best stouts we’ve had are a year or two old.” Bretsch added, “Typically, the darker, heavier beers, usually they’re a lot better after they’ve aged for a while. Usually a year is a good aging period for a beer like that.“

Lapka explained, “We try to stay away from the lagers. They’re really hard to make because they’re temperature controlled. And they require a special yeast. And you can taste your mistakes so much easier, because there’s very little other taste to hide it.“

And “light beers“? Don’t even think about it. They laugh about an episode involving a request for a light beer. They pretty much brewed a regular beer and got it to the light stage by watering it down.

Carey and Mike really like the stouts; a big reason is that stouts allow for much more flavor variety, such as a hint of coffee. Home brews have about a 6 to 9 percent alcohol range. That can be raised even higher by adding more sugar, up to a point.

If there’s a month that’s tied to beer drinking, it’s got to be October, with its beer festivals across the nation and in parts of Europe, especially Germany. Maybe that’s why October seems to be a good month to brew beer.

Sunday afternoon in Brookings found Joe Portz and Chris Bessler hard at work in Portz’s kitchen making a total of 12 gallons of home brew: five gallons of Kinderweisse, “a lightly soured ale, once synonymous with wheat beer in Europe, but now a living dinosaur of a style. It’s a grainy pils and wheat malt character underscored with gentle earthy lemon-like sourness that used to be a common thread in beers like this“; five gallons of Belgian Strong Golden Ale; and two gallons of Aztec Mexican Cerveza, with “light golden color, clean refreshing taste with a crisp finish, best served ice cold with a slice of lime.“

In about six weeks, Joe and Chris will be ready to pound down a pint or two of their new brew.

Portz is the more experienced brewer of the two, with about 15 years’ experience in the homebrew business.

Bessler is a rookie, trying his hand at brewing for the first time. But he isn’t brand-new to turning out alcoholic beverages at home: he’s made wine. And in a fashion, his wife, September, got him started in beer brewing: The Aztec Mexican Cerveza was a gift from her. It’s a simple all-in-one kit for someone who wants to get started in brewing beer at home: “Mr . Beer.“

Meanwhile across town Richard Drawdy and Thijs Hammink, two members of the South Dakota State University Brew Club, were in Drawdy’s garage turning out about 10 gallons of a Hop-forward Pale Ale based on a recipe by Nebraska Brewing Company’s Cardinal Pale Ale. Drawdy, an accountant at Daktronics, is in his second year in the SDSU club, which has about 15 members. He said they meet “every second Thursday at about 7 p.m. set up through our Facebook page ’SDSU Brew Club.’” The Club has been approved by the Student Association; its members include faculty, students and a cross-section of the Brookingsarea community.

Hammink, 24, an SDSU student majoring in electrical engineering technology, has been home brewing for about two years. Like Bessler, he started out with a Mr. Beer kit.

The club does enough bulk buying of brewing ingredients, such as 50-pound bags of grain, to keep costs down. And they re-use yeast, which might surprise someone unfamiliar with home brewing. Drawdy explained, “It’s a living organism; it’s basically just populating and living and growing in your fermenter; so you can take what you’ve done in one batch and actually split it three ways into three more batches. You keep going and going.“

While they keep going and going, they won’t even come near the home-brewing legal limit of 200 gallons a year: “It’s pretty tough to reach that volume. If we did that, we’d have to be brewing every weekend,” Drawdy explained.

But the beauty of home brewing is in the quality, not the quantity. Good beer, like all good things in life, should be enjoyed in moderation.

—-

If you go: The Club will be meeting at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 13, at Heist Brewing, 611 Second St. S., for a brewing event. It’s open to the public.

‘Barrels of fun’: Home brewing big in Brookings

BROOKINGS | “Roll out the barrels, we’ll have a barrel of fun.”

OK, so Brookings home-brewing beer barons don’t turn out big wooden barrels of ales and stouts; but they sure do have a barrel of fun making small batches for themselves and their beer-drinking buddies.

Carey Bretsch and Mike Lapka, engineering professionals who work together at Civil Design Inc. (CDI) in Brookings, are professionals in the world of amateur brewing for home consumption. They’ve been in the home-brewing business for about nine years. Lapka’s won a “couple blue ribbons” for his brewing skills, but he claims no special secrets for turning out good brewskis for drinking at home.

He said, “There’s books and the Internet. But it’s trial and error.”

However, the brewer duo did sit down for a visit with The Brookings Register this past week and share some basics of homemade beer.

From start to finish to drinking, the time for turning out a good brewski can be a moving target. They may take as long as two to three months to turn out a quality batch of home brew.

“It’s just a lot of waiting,” they both agreed. They brew the equivalent of about two cases (48 12-ounce bottles) per batch. Home-brew can’t be sold, but CDI employees “participate in the brewing process.”

Lapka explained, “If they want to brew a batch, they just basically pay for the ingredients and then we’ll brew it up.”

Bretsch said, with a smile, “It’s our employee incentive program. It’s a morale booster. It’s a teambuilding exercise.

“When we built this facility (CDI) here, we set it up so that we could brew beer in the garage.”

He added, “The philosophy is that it takes beer to make beer. So while we wait around for the beer to reach its next stage, we sit around and consume a beer or two from a previous batch.”

Lapka said they usually start in October and November: “We might brew a batch a week for a month. That gets your system started.” Bretsch added, “It gives us enough beer so that we can brew another batch.”

He and Lapka are willing to brew whatever their contributors of ingredients provide. Wheat beer and stout are popular . Lapka continues his own quest for a brew that comes close to Guiness.

To make five gallons of beer requires about 10 pounds of grains, some hops and yeast. Ingredients are easy to come by and can be ordered from readily available suppliers.

The average cost of a homebrew for the duo is “about a buck a bottle.” When they first started brewing, they used plastic pop bottles. Both pointed out that some commercial brewers use plastic bottles.

However, Bretsch noted, “The good beers use glass; we pretty much use all dark glass right now.”

Bretsch added that Lapka has built much of the equipment that they use. They have a capper, and they sterilize and reuse bottles. They then insert CO2 and condition the beer and then put it into bottles using a “beer gun.” But first they put the beer in kegs.

Bretsch explained, “It’s a two-part system. The beer gun actually squirts CO2 into the bottle first. Then you drop the beer in and then cap it.” Bottle vs. keg

One question is often raised in the world of both commercial beer and home brew: Is there a change when beer goes from keg to bottle or can? Can a bottled beer taste as good a draft beer? Sometimes.

Lapka said, “There is a slight difference. It depends on your beer. I think a dark stout tastes better in a bottle after about a year than it does in a keg.

“In a keg it has a tendency of overcarbonating. In a bottle it won’t overcarbonate, because you have such a small volume of it. In a stout you don’t want it to be overcarbonated. The best stouts we’ve had are a year or two old.” Bretsch added, “Typically, the darker, heavier beers, usually they’re a lot better after they’ve aged for a while. Usually a year is a good aging period for a beer like that.”

Lapka explained, “We try to stay away from the lagers. They’re really hard to make because they’re temperature controlled. And they require a special yeast. And you can taste your mistakes so much easier, because there’s very little other taste to hide it.”

And “light beers”? Don’t even think about it. They laugh about an episode involving a request for a light beer. They pretty much brewed a regular beer and got it to the light stage by watering it down.

Carey and Mike really like the stouts; a big reason is that stouts allow for much more flavor variety, such as a hint of coffee. Home brews have about a 6 to 9 percent alcohol range. That can be raised even higher by adding more sugar, up to a point.

If there’s a month that’s tied to beer drinking, it’s got to be October, with its beer festivals across the nation and in parts of Europe, especially Germany. Maybe that’s why October seems to be a good month to brew beer.

Sunday afternoon in Brookings found Joe Portz and Chris Bessler hard at work in Portz’s kitchen making a total of 12 gallons of home brew: five gallons of Kinderweisse, “a lightly soured ale, once synonymous with wheat beer in Europe, but now a living dinosaur of a style. It’s a grainy pils and wheat malt character underscored with gentle earthy lemon-like sourness that used to be a common thread in beers like this”; five gallons of Belgian Strong Golden Ale; and two gallons of Aztec Mexican Cerveza, with “light golden color, clean refreshing taste with a crisp finish, best served ice cold with a slice of lime.”

In about six weeks, Joe and Chris will be ready to pound down a pint or two of their new brew.

Portz is the more experienced brewer of the two, with about 15 years’ experience in the homebrew business.

Bessler is a rookie, trying his hand at brewing for the first time. But he isn’t brand-new to turning out alcoholic beverages at home: he’s made wine. And in a fashion, his wife, September, got him started in beer brewing: The Aztec Mexican Cerveza was a gift from her. It’s a simple all-in-one kit for someone who wants to get started in brewing beer at home: “Mr . Beer.”

Meanwhile across town Richard Drawdy and Thijs Hammink, two members of the South Dakota State University Brew Club, were in Drawdy’s garage turning out about 10 gallons of a Hop-forward Pale Ale based on a recipe by Nebraska Brewing Company’s Cardinal Pale Ale. Drawdy, an accountant at Daktronics, is in his second year in the SDSU club, which has about 15 members. He said they meet “every second Thursday at about 7 p.m. set up through our Facebook page ‘SDSU Brew Club.’” The Club has been approved by the Student Association; its members include faculty, students and a cross-section of the Brookingsarea community.

Hammink, 24, an SDSU student majoring in electrical engineering technology, has been home brewing for about two years. Like Bessler, he started out with a Mr. Beer kit.

The club does enough bulk buying of brewing ingredients, such as 50-pound bags of grain, to keep costs down. And they re-use yeast, which might surprise someone unfamiliar with home brewing. Drawdy explained, “It’s a living organism; it’s basically just populating and living and growing in your fermenter; so you can take what you’ve done in one batch and actually split it three ways into three more batches. You keep going and going.”

While they keep going and going, they won’t even come near the home-brewing legal limit of 200 gallons a year: “It’s pretty tough to reach that volume. If we did that, we’d have to be brewing every weekend,” Drawdy explained.

But the beauty of home brewing is in the quality, not the quantity. Good beer, like all good things in life, should be enjoyed in moderation.

Home brewing beer big in Brookings; South Dakota buddies pros in world of …

BROOKINGS, S.D. — “Roll out the barrels, we’ll have a barrel of fun.”

OK, so Brookings home-brewing beer barons don’t turn out big wooden barrels of ales and stouts; but they sure do have a barrel of fun making small batches for themselves and their beer-drinking buddies.

Carey Bretsch and Mike Lapka, engineering professionals who work together at Civil Design Inc. (CDI) in Brookings, are professionals in the world of amateur brewing for home consumption. They’ve been in the home-brewing business for about nine years. Lapka’s won a “couple blue ribbons” for his brewing skills, but he claims no special secrets for turning out good brewskis for drinking at home.

He said, “There’s books and the Internet. But it’s trial and error.”

However, the brewer duo did sit down for a visit with The Brookings Register this past week and share some basics of homemade beer.

From start to finish to drinking, the time for turning out a good brewski can be a moving target. They may take as long as two to three months to turn out a quality batch of home brew.

“It’s just a lot of waiting,” they both agreed. They brew the equivalent of about two cases (48 12-ounce bottles) per batch. Home-brew can’t be sold, but CDI employees “participate in the brewing process.”

Lapka explained, “If they want to brew a batch, they just basically pay for the ingredients and then we’ll brew it up.”

Bretsch said, with a smile, “It’s our employee incentive program. It’s a morale booster. It’s a teambuilding exercise.

“When we built this facility (CDI) here, we set it up so that we could brew beer in the garage.”

He added, “The philosophy is that it takes beer to make beer. So while we wait around for the beer to reach its next stage, we sit around and consume a beer or two from a previous batch.”

Lapka said they usually start in October and November: “We might brew a batch a week for a month. That gets your system started.” Bretsch added, “It gives us enough beer so that we can brew another batch.”

He and Lapka are willing to brew whatever their contributors of ingredients provide. Wheat beer and stout are popular . Lapka continues his own quest for a brew that comes close to Guiness.

To make five gallons of beer requires about 10 pounds of grains, some hops and yeast. Ingredients are easy to come by and can be ordered from readily available suppliers.

The average cost of a homebrew for the duo is “about a buck a bottle.” When they first started brewing, they used plastic pop bottles. Both pointed out that some commercial brewers use plastic bottles.

However, Bretsch noted, “The good beers use glass; we pretty much use all dark glass right now.”

Bretsch added that Lapka has built much of the equipment that they use. They have a capper, and they sterilize and reuse bottles. They then insert CO2 and condition the beer and then put it into bottles using a “beer gun.” But first they put the beer in kegs.

Bretsch explained, “It’s a two-part system. The beer gun actually squirts CO2 into the bottle first. Then you drop the beer in and then cap it.” Bottle vs. keg

One question is often raised in the world of both commercial beer and home brew: Is there a change when beer goes from keg to bottle or can? Can a bottled beer taste as good a draft beer? Sometimes.

Lapka said, “There is a slight difference. It depends on your beer. I think a dark stout tastes better in a bottle after about a year than it does in a keg.

“In a keg it has a tendency of overcarbonating. In a bottle it won’t overcarbonate, because you have such a small volume of it. In a stout you don’t want it to be overcarbonated. The best stouts we’ve had are a year or two old.” Bretsch added, “Typically, the darker, heavier beers, usually they’re a lot better after they’ve aged for a while. Usually a year is a good aging period for a beer like that.”

Lapka explained, “We try to stay away from the lagers. They’re really hard to make because they’re temperature controlled. And they require a special yeast. And you can taste your mistakes so much easier, because there’s very little other taste to hide it.”

And “light beers”? Don’t even think about it. They laugh about an episode involving a request for a light beer. They pretty much brewed a regular beer and got it to the light stage by watering it down.

Carey and Mike really like the stouts; a big reason is that stouts allow for much more flavor variety, such as a hint of coffee. Home brews have about a 6 to 9 percent alcohol range. That can be raised even higher by adding more sugar, up to a point.

If there’s a month that’s tied to beer drinking, it’s got to be October, with its beer festivals across the nation and in parts of Europe, especially Germany. Maybe that’s why October seems to be a good month to brew beer.

Sunday afternoon in Brookings found Joe Portz and Chris Bessler hard at work in Portz’s kitchen making a total of 12 gallons of home brew: five gallons of Kinderweisse, “a lightly soured ale, once synonymous with wheat beer in Europe, but now a living dinosaur of a style. It’s a grainy pils and wheat malt character underscored with gentle earthy lemon-like sourness that used to be a common thread in beers like this”; five gallons of Belgian Strong Golden Ale; and two gallons of Aztec Mexican Cerveza, with “light golden color, clean refreshing taste with a crisp finish, best served ice cold with a slice of lime.”

In about six weeks, Joe and Chris will be ready to pound down a pint or two of their new brew.

Portz is the more experienced brewer of the two, with about 15 years’ experience in the homebrew business.

Bessler is a rookie, trying his hand at brewing for the first time. But he isn’t brand-new to turning out alcoholic beverages at home: he’s made wine. And in a fashion, his wife, September, got him started in beer brewing: The Aztec Mexican Cerveza was a gift from her. It’s a simple all-in-one kit for someone who wants to get started in brewing beer at home: “Mr . Beer.”

Meanwhile across town Richard Drawdy and Thijs Hammink, two members of the South Dakota State University Brew Club, were in Drawdy’s garage turning out about 10 gallons of a Hop-forward Pale Ale based on a recipe by Nebraska Brewing Company’s Cardinal Pale Ale. Drawdy, an accountant at Daktronics, is in his second year in the SDSU club, which has about 15 members. He said they meet “every second Thursday at about 7 p.m. set up through our Facebook page ‘SDSU Brew Club.’” The Club has been approved by the Student Association; its members include faculty, students and a cross-section of the Brookingsarea community.

Hammink, 24, an SDSU student majoring in electrical engineering technology, has been home brewing for about two years. Like Bessler, he started out with a Mr. Beer kit.

The club does enough bulk buying of brewing ingredients, such as 50-pound bags of grain, to keep costs down. And they re-use yeast, which might surprise someone unfamiliar with home brewing. Drawdy explained, “It’s a living organism; it’s basically just populating and living and growing in your fermenter; so you can take what you’ve done in one batch and actually split it three ways into three more batches. You keep going and going.”

While they keep going and going, they won’t even come near the home-brewing legal limit of 200 gallons a year: “It’s pretty tough to reach that volume. If we did that, we’d have to be brewing every weekend,” Drawdy explained.

But the beauty of home brewing is in the quality, not the quantity. Good beer, like all good things in life, should be enjoyed in moderation.

—

If you go: The Club will be meeting at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 13, at Heist Brewing, 611 Second St. S., for a brewing event. It’s open to the public.

___

Information from: Brookings Register, http://www.brookingsregister.com/

White House beer kits a hit with home-brewers

It appears home-brewers are thirsty for a taste of presidential beer.

This month, Roseville-based home-brew supply company Northern Brewer released two beer ingredient kits based on the White House’s own home-brews, and customers responded by buying more than 1,000 units online, making them the company’s top-selling beer kits.

“It’s definitely the most successful kit launch in Northern Brewer’s history,” said Chip Walton, a member of Northern Brewer’s marketing team, calling it “crazy.”

President Barack Obama talked up the White House’s homemade beer for weeks before the recipes for the honey ale and honey porter were released Sept. 1. The honey ale is believed to be the first beer ever brewed at the White House.

As soon as the recipes were made public, it was clear home-brewers were interested.

“The day they released the recipe, we had a lot of people come in to the store asking if we had seen it,” said Patrick Tarufel, assistant manager for Northern Brewer’s retail location in St. Paul, where the kits are top sellers.

Staff at Northern Brewer worked quickly and in just a few days their White House Honey Ale and White House Honey Porter kits were on the market.

“The day after Labor Day, we got back in here and it was just bonkers,” Walton said. “People were blowing up the Twitter feed and the Facebook and the emails.”

The White House used simple “old guard” recipes for their home-brew, Walton said. One element that stands out, he said, is the

honey used for the beer, which is produced on the White House grounds.

Northern Brewer has adjusted the recipes to match its available ingredients, replacing the White House honey, for instance, with honey sourced from Minnesota, Walton said.

The White House says it has been brewing beer since last year. In a YouTube video released by the White House on Sept. 1, assistant chef Sam Kass said staffers brew the beer in their spare time and the president paid for the equipment and ingredients himself.

“The president, inspired by brew masters brewing in their homes and garages all over the country, wanted to try this out,” Kass said.

Gary Glass, director of the American Homebrewers Association, said home-brewing is growing across the country and the White House’s “foray into brewing beer seems to have stimulated increased attention and interest.”

“Current estimates suggest that approximately 1 million Americans are making their own beer and wine at home — and it’s exciting to count the White House among those,” Glass wrote in an email.

Walton said Northern Brewer is brewing a couple batches of the White House beers, but because the brews take at least four weeks from start to finish, staffers have yet to taste them. Based on the recipes, both “look good,” he said.

Northern Brewer sells its White House Honey Ale and White House Honey Porter kits for about $45 and $37, respectively. Equipment for brewing is sold separately.

This report includes information from the Associated Press. Andy Rathbun can be reached at 651-228-2121.

Follow him at twitter.com/andyrathbun.