Home-brewing for fun ... and custom beer

Basement hobbyists keg and bottle it just the way they want it

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By Tim Blangger | Of The Morning Call

January 16, 2008

Chris Bowen surveys the crowd at the monthly meeting of the Lehigh Valley Homebrewers on a chilly Bethlehem Tuesday and laughs quietly.

''You can always spot a home-brewer,'' Bowen says with a smile. ''We tend to be males, in our 30s or early 40s, a little overweight'' -- here he pauses to rub his modest beer belly, underscoring the fact that he is talking about himself, too -- ''and we have beards,'' he adds, stroking his own facial hair. ''We talk about whether the beer has Centennial hops or two-row malts. We're geeks.''

Bowen, 40, laughs again, but, truth be told, there are few places he would rather be on this early December evening except, perhaps, in the basement of his west Bethlehem home, where's he has fashioned a small-scale, well-organized home brewery, complete with enough custom gadgets and gizmos to satisfy the most fervent technology buff. In an adjacent room, he keeps a stash of mostly home-brewed beers and ales substantial enough to stock a neighborhood bar, some fermenting, some ready to enjoy.
 

But for now, Bowen is rubbing shoulders with about 45 other kindred spirits, yes, mostly males, bearded and a few slightly overweight, who stand informally around a table containing two open plastic trays filled with ice and unlabeled dark brown 12-ounce bottles of home-brewed beer. Club members pop the gold bottle caps off with an opener and sip samples from small plastic cups, sharing a single bottle among several club members.

The tubs of bottled beer and convivial chatter circling the room suggest it's a fine time to be a home-brewer, and in many ways it is.

The costs involved with starting the hobby are relatively small. For about $100, beginners can buy a kit that includes all the basic tools and ingredients needed to brew beer at home. The kits offer beginners a choice of beer styles and include hardware a home-brewer can reuse to make subsequent beer batches.

The additional costs for each batch vary by recipe, but most batches cost between $30 and $50. At the lower end, the ingredients match the current price for a case of premium, commercially produced beer.

''The best thing about home-brewing is that you can make the beer exactly the way you want it,'' says Homebrewers President Mike Lessa, whose favorite home-brew is a Black Pepper Porter, made with chocolate malts, East Kent Golding hops and an ounce of freshly ground black pepper. But, Lessa avoids disparaging what home-brewers call the commercial brewers. ''I know how hard it is to produce a consistent beer. It's very difficult. My problem is that I just don't like the [commercial] beer.''

The rising price of beer and craft brews in particular may further spur interest in home-brewing. Simply put, the costs of home-brewing a good case of beer have approached the cost of a case of quality, craft-brewed beer. But exact cost comparisons are difficult. Cost comparisons don't include the hours spent over a brewing kettle, time home-brewers consider a labor of love. Most home-brewers keg their brews, rather than taking the additional steps necessary to bottle. But your typical batch of home-brew -- roughly five gallons of beer -- represents about a case and a half of commercially produced beer.

 

 

Home-brewing supplies at Chris Bowen's house include malt and hops. Bowen won a coveted Great American Beer Festival award last year. (Demetra Stamus, Allentown Morning Call / January 16, 2008)

Like most serious home-brewers, Bowen makes his brew using a three-pot, all-grain method. The all-grain process is more expensive and involves more steps. Most beginners use a method referred to as extract, a sort of instant coffee method of making beer. The $100 beginner kits use the extract method.

Bowen, usually starts his brewing early in the morning, setting up his brewing kettle in the backyard brew shed of his Bethlehem house. It takes him about six hours to produce a batch of beer, which then is allowed to age, or ferment, for a week or more in kegs he keeps in his basement.

If things go well, the entire brewing process is finished by around 9 a.m., Bowen says. ''I don't sleep much, haven't for years,'' says Bowen, who uses the time most of the Lehigh Valley is asleep to brew his beer. ''By 9 or so on a Saturday, the beer is brewed and in fermenters, ready to age,'' Bowen says. By that time, most of his family, his wife, Leslie, and their three children, Alex, 8, Sarah, 14, and (when he is on break from Kutztown University) Christopher Jr., 20, are awake and ready for the day. And Bowen has the best of both worlds, his hobby and time to spend with his family.

When he isn't actually brewing, Bowen uses his skills as a craftsman, woodworker and electronics hobbyist to his advantage. He designed and welded his own immersion cooler, a tight coil of copper tubing that courses running water over the outside of his 10-gallon ''mash pot,'' the large pot involved in the first step of the brewing process. He also built his own yeast multiplier, a flat, electronic stir plate that roughly doubles the yeast cell count by gently vibrating the base of a beaker containing brewer's yeast. Having a well-developed batch of yeast is one of key steps toward making quality home-brew, says Bowen.

Bowen credits friend and fellow home-brewer, Phil Burtner, with introducing him to the hobby just over two years ago. Bowen went to the Bethlehem Keystone Homebrew Supply shop to buy a Christmas gift for Burtner and ''ended up spending two hours in there,'' says Bowen. ''I was fascinated with all the gadgets. So, I bought Phil a gift, but I also bought a home-brew kit for myself.''

Over those two years, Bowen, who sells insurance for Guardian Life and also works as a financial planner, has achieved quite a bit.

''Chris has really come a long way,'' says Judy Parsons, who manages Keystone Homebrew's Bethlehem store. The shop also sells supplies for wine making and sponsors the local home-brewing club.

Like many home-brewers, Bowen consulted books by the home-brewing guru, Charlie Papazian -- he keeps dog-eared copies of the books in a reverential library in his home brewery. He also joined the local home-brewers group, which maintains a helpful Web site that includes a forum where home-brewers can ask questions, trade recipes and offer tips on the craft.

Late last year, after working with Beau Baden, the brewmaster of the Bethlehem and Allentown Beer Works, family-owned brew pubs, Bowen entered a version of his English India pale ale in special professional-amateur category at the Great American Beer Festival, the largest and among the most prestigious beer festivals in the United States.

Bowen's entry, which he helped Baden brew using the brew pub's 500-gallon brew facilities, won a gold medal. Forty-seven other amateur-professional teams entered the category. He has also won regional awards for his brews in contests sponsored by the American Homebrewers Association.

The gold medal, which Bowen hangs discretely on a wall near his main beer refrigerator in the neatly appointed brewing corner of his basement, has generated gallons of local feel-good factor for Bowen, Brew Works pubs and the club.