Something Big is Brewing for Oktoberfest

Brew masters rejoice! Something Cheers-ful is brewing this fall for the homebrewers around the world as the beer aficionados and their beer-passionate friends are ready to taste their own creations in honor of the annual Oktoberfest celebration.

Today there are an estimated 750,000 homebrewers in the U.S. and the number of breweries is rapidly growing. So popular has the home-brewing beer become that Colorado State University students can now get credit for brewing and drinking beer. Wish they had something like that when I attended college.

CSU is planning to install a brewery in the Lory Student Center’s pub to provide students hands-on training. According to the Fort Collins Coloradoan, CSU sees a high demand for students who can work in the microbrewery industry. Not surprising: Colorado has more home brewers than any other state and it’s interesting to note that one of the most popular brewers on the circuit is Wynkoop Brewing Company in Denver, co-founded in the 1980s by laid-off geologist and now Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper.

My first introduction to the homebrewing phenomena started when my son-in-law Michael barricaded our garage with the set up of intricate equipment in all sizes, colors, and shapes. It looked like an out-of-space structure which kept growing wings and pipes in all directions.

His first bouquet of homegrown beer was eagerly anticipated and when it finally arrived, it was definitely worth the wait. With the uniqueness of the blend and the soothingly smooth flow in my mouth, I realized that Michael is a very creative and knowledgeable brew master.

Michael also connected me to his neighbors, members of the Brew Lab homebrewing club in San Francisco. On my recent visit to their brewery, I met Sam, Matt, Angelica and Emily. According to Sam, all craft beer companies started as home brewers. After the prohibition, people in the States were not allowed to brew beer at home and only the conglomerate beer manufacturers were given the opportunity to apply for the license to earn this privilege. But after 1970, some laws were put in place to make home brewing legal.

Angelica, a new kid of seven months on the brewing block, sees a close similarity between her profession as a microbiologist and brewing: both require maximum cleanliness to make the product perfect. She mostly bottles the beer at home and joins the Brew Lab team for a fun social life.

“It is amazing how many friends you have when you brew,” observes Sam, who founded Brew Lab over two years ago. A graduate of Harvard University with a degree in software developing, he and his partners brew beer with hops and cilantro, which they grow in Sam’s backyard. They ground their own hops, barley, and yeast, which are the essential ingredients used in the process of beer making. In addition, they buy all the necessary ingredients at San Francisco Brewcraft, a very popular and extremely busy supply store.

Matt, one of the partners in the Brew Lab venture, explained that some people use their garage space to park their cars, but they use their garage to brew their beer. And those of us who live in the heart of Silicon Valley, as I do, know that the best innovations (such as Apple Computer) start in garages.

Emily, a Stanford graduate who works as a Project Manager at Google, compares brewing to the technique of a perfect art craft. Emily demonstrated for me the art of sandblasting glass bottles and glass beer mugs for their future beer bottling and drinking.

With my curiosity and quest to learn more about the homebrewing business, I turned to the wisdom of Derek, Mike, Jim, Keith and Steve, just a few of the forty active brew masters of the established in 1997 Silicon Valley Sudzers homebrew club, who very graciously responded via e-mail and iPhone communications to a few of my questions.

I learned that some started their homebrewing hobby after receiving a brewing kit as a present for Christmas. Most said they prefer to homebrew instead of buying beer in the store since it gives them tremendous pleasure to create their own brand and they strive to be original and achieve better quality.

Everyone I spoke to loves the social aspect of it: getting together with friends, having lots of fun, barbecuing and spending a wonderful weekend with the people who share their interests. “You are never lonely, when you brew,” concludes Sam. They also enjoy attending the beer can-ventions.

I was touched by this answer from Derek to my question of what inspired him to start brewing, “The Discovery Channel had a program called ‘How Beer Saved the World.’ And watching my first beer ferment and coming to the conclusion that beer is a living creation and not simply some product made by some large company.”

I found the Sudzers I corresponded with to be extremely creative in their choice of names for their beer, such as Go Go Brewing, J&L Brewery, Cloud Street, Solid Citizen Pale Ale, Jumbo Hops, Two for Tango, and Hollywood Blonde, just to name a few.

What’s nice about being a home brewer is that you don’t need to wait for Oktoberfest to sip your own beer, just visit your garage and invite a few friends over. Weekends get a new meaning for these folks.

Lina Broydo immigrated from Russia, then the Soviet Union, to Israel where she was educated and got married. After working at the University in Birmingham, England she and her husband immigrated to the United States. She lives in Los Altos Hills, CA and writes about travel, art, style, entertainment, and sports. She hardly cooks or bakes, not the best of «balabostas» her beloved beautiful Mom, Dina, was hoping for. Therefore, she makes reservations and enjoys dining out.

By Lina Broydo