Ballast Point Brewing Company San Diego California

Beer lovers learn to brew-it-yourself

Jeff McDonald
STAFF WRITER
12-Sep-1999 Sunday

Call it night school for the thoroughly thirsty.

A short line at the tasting bar, and these would-be brew masters sniff grains, savor scents and swallow with pride while the man behind the counter nods knowingly.

Yuseff Cherney, you see, is a professional brewer -- and these are no simple suds.

"Crunch a few kernels in your mouth," Cherney tells a handful of students gathered alongside bucket after bucket of custom grains just minutes before beer-making class.

"If you like the taste, it will probably go well with the beer."

A half-dozen home brewers are on hand for this course, a beginner's seminar held every four or five Thursday nights in the war room of the Ballast Point Brewing Co. in Linda Vista.

Some classes draw as many as 20 wannabe brewers; others lure only a handful. And the teacher likes questions as much as the students like samples.

Cherney advises most first-timers to start with a bulk extract, a thick syrup that contains most of the fixings required for home-brewed beer. More experienced brewers graduate to strictly dry grains, water, hops and yeast. "Think of this as orange juice from concentrate," he tells the class as he measures out 11 pounds of pale malt extract for the batch of Scottish ale he is preparing.

"Some people would get offended by that, but all-grain is like freshly squeezed."

Opened seven years ago in a strip mall, the Home Brew Mart runs an impromptu brew school alongside the grains, hoses, bottles and buckets it sells to customers who craft specialty beers.

Beginners classes are free, but they make good business sense. Home brewers buy almost everything they need at the store.

On this night, Jim Courtney is among the students. The state land agent pays close attention as Cherney mixes a nylon bag of crystal malt, roasted barley and other mashed grains in a pot on top of a propane burner.

It is a process called steeping. Home brewers use the bagged grains to tweak the flavor and color of their favorites.

"You don't bring the grains to a boil, do you?" Courtney interrupts.

"Right, you just heat them up to 170 degrees or so," answers Cherney, still stirring the nylon bag around the heated pot.

When the mashed grains have bled their contents into the not-quite-boiling water, Cherney removes the bag from the simmering pot. Only then does he add the thick syrupy extract and bring the mixture to full boil.

"Go ahead and boil it for 5 or 10 minutes, then add your hops," the brewer says. "If you add your hops in the first 5 minutes, you have no idea how much you'll lose in the steam."

Once the hops are stirred into the mix, teacher and students retreat to the counter at the back of the sales floor. There, they taste select recipes and discuss what they know.

"I'm getting into it," says Joe Gunches, a Navy man from Santee who had bottled his inaugural batch of home brew the night before.

Others mill around the sales floor, pricing supplies or flipping through recipe books and how-to magazines. Most everyone sips a Yellowtail Pale Ale, Ballast Point Copper or some other blend brewed on the premises.

Class is called to order a few minutes later, and the teacher begins explaining perhaps the most difficult of home brewing steps: siphoning the beer into a separate bucket so it can be easily bottled.

"Sanitizing all of your equipment is critical," Cherney reminds his students. "Anything that touches the brew after boil can contaminate it."

Brewers wait 10 to 12 days before bottling their home brew, depending on various factors. When the time comes, a racking cane and tubing are used to siphon the brew from the fermenter into a bucket with a tap at its base.

At that point, plastic tubing is attached to a spring-loaded spout that, when pushed against the bottom of a bottle, allows the fluid to pass through.

Sanitized caps should be at the ready, the teacher cautions. Even bacteria floating through the air can fall into an open container and contaminate beer inside the bottle.

"The key to bottling is to fill the bottle to the top," Cherney says. "When you pull the bottler out, it will give you that perfect top."

Even so, it's another two weeks -- at least -- before the bottles should be opened and the contents consumed.

People have been fermenting grains to make beer, ale and mead for more than 5,000 years. George Washington had his own brew house at Mount Vernon, and a 1757 recipe written in his hand exists to this day.

In the United States, which banned alcohol for 13 years after World War I, brewing beer at home was not made federally legal until 1978, according to the American Homebrewers Association.

Some 1.5 million Americans brew their own beer, the association says. But the ultimate legality of home brewing remains up to individual states.

And today, 10 state legislatures have not expressly permitted people to brew beer. An additional seven states have ambiguous rules, the association says.

"It is time to bring the hobby of home brewing legitimately and legally into the next century," says the group's Web site, which encourages visitors to urge their legislators to change the laws.

California legalized microbreweries in the early 1980s, and brew pubs popped up all over the state. San Diego County is home to a dozen or more small breweries, and a handful of home brew supply stores.

"It all started about 15 years ago with a couple local home brewers getting together to brew beer," says Tod Fitzsimmons of Quaff, the Quality Ale Fermentations Fraternity, a San Diego brewing club of 50 or so members.

"It was the lack of quality beer," he says. "A lot of people had been to Europe, either through the military or just traveling, and had tasted all of these wonderful beers that just weren't available here."

Cost is also a factor, Fitzsimmons says. Brewers can scare up a 5-gallon batch for about $20 -- enough to fill two cases -- which might cost $50 retail.

"Plus, you can brew a beer just the way they want it," says Fitzsimmons, a home brewer for seven or eight years. "It's kind of like being a chef. You can create your own recipes and fine-tune them to your own palate."

George Murphy runs a place for would-be brewers who may be shy about buying equipment or leery about a mess in the kitchen. At Murphy's Custom Brewing in Bay Ho, adventuresome customers brew up beer in 12.5-gallon batches.

"The industry term for it is brew-on-premises -- BOP -- but I like to call it personal microbrewery," says Murphy, who figures his customer base at 2,000 and growing 10 percent a year.

Two hours after Cherney launched into his Thursday night lesson on Scottish ale, only a couple of novice beer makers remained behind.

He had long before siphoned the wort -- unfermented brew -- into the carboy and is now answering pointed questions of his students. The brewery has been closed for nearly two hours, but Cherney is in no hurry.

"Once you have a basic understanding of what grains go into what beers, it gets a lot easier," he tells the small lingering group.

Copyright Union-Tribune Publishing