trends
Home Brew
By Ezra Wolfe
Kansan staff writer
n basements and back bedrooms all over the country, it's brewing.
Bottles and barrels are filled with a bubbling, fermenting broth. People are brewing beer at home, and the hobby is more popular
than ever before. Brewers say the process is simple,fun and rewarding Allan Hanson, professor of anthropology, has been brewing beer for several years.
"The home-brewed beer is much fuller-bodied and better tasting than anything you can buy," he said.
Hanson said he has brewed eight to ten different kinds of beer and gets a great reaction from his family.
"Often people have a great anxiety about drinking home-brewed beer, but everybody who has tasted it likes it." Hanson said.
Howard Baumgartel, retired professor of psychology at KU, said he had been interested in brewing beer since he was in high school.
"In those days, we just had a crock and went to the grocery store to buy supplies," he said.
Baumgartel said he started brewing beer after World War II, when he was in graduate school. He said he did not have a lot of money at the time so he started brewing his own beer.
Today, Baumgartel has two five-gallon kegs and a 2-1/2-gallon keg in his basement. Each is filled with a different kind of beer.
Walker's basement is filled with
Alan Walker, director of KU's fire service training program, also brews his own beer.
Patrick Thomkins / KANSAN
Alan Walker, director of the fire service training program at KU, describes how he makes homemade beer.
cases of bottles — some full, some empty.
"You'd be amazed at how much better it tastes than commercial beer," he said. "I can't drink commercially brewed beer anymore. It tastes like water with bubbles."
"Contrary to popular belief, home brew doesn't have to be cruddy looking," he said, while showing off his clear golden "American Light."
For Walker, who brews as many as eight cases a week, brewing beer is part of a larger idea about how to relax.
"Every year I take two weeks off," he said. "I go out to my boat and bring seven to eight cases of beers, a few steals and a bunch of Jimmy Buffet albums."
Brewing beer at home is not just for university professors.
"The idea of brewing beer at home appeals to all kinds of people," said
Charlotte Killner, employee of Bacchus and Barleycorn, 8725 Johnson Drive, a Kansas City, Kan., home-brew supply store.
"It's mostly men, but we get some women, too," Killner said. "The average age is around 30."
There is no age restriction on the purchase of beer kits or on home brewing.
Jim Conant, chief administration officer for the Kansas division of Alcohol Beverage Control, said home brewing was exempt from the age restriction laws. But it is illegal for brewers to distribute beer outside their families, he said.
Killner said she gets a lot of customers who are students at the University of Kansas, and that the popularity of beer brewing has increased immensely during the past two years.
Killmer, whose favorite beers are dark, heavy and strong, said the store could set a customer up with beer-brewing equipment and supplies for about $60. She said that more expensive setups, with higher quality supplies, more complex recipes and equipment for sealing beer in kegs instead of bottling it, were also available.
Walker said that once a brewer has invested in the equipment, it costs about $6 to brew a case of beer.
Bacchus and Barleycorn's most popular items are their beer kits. There are hundreds of varieties of kits, which differ in flavor, foaminess, body, sweetness, aroma and fermentability.
"That's why making your own beer is so nice — because you can make it the way you want, and everyone likes different kinds," Killner said.
"Most people are very successful the first time they brew beer," Killmer said.
The process of brewing beer at home takes about four weeks, but some types of beer can take longer.
Brewers who do not use kits have to purchase hops, barley, sugars and follow recipes — a more complex process.
"It's like the difference between make brownies from a Pillsbury brownie mix and making them from scratch," Walker said.
The story of suds is 6,000 years old
By Ezra Wolfe
Kansan staff writer
On a college campus, beer may seem ubiquitous and overemphasized, but those attributes are part of a tradition that goes back thousands of years.
According to Nat Collins, owner and brew master of the Woodstock Brewing Company, Kingston, N.Y., beer developed by accident. It was used for trade and also was responsible for man becoming non-nomadic.
Collins said beer developed about 4000 B.C in Mesopotamia.
"The concept of beer came about when people soaked grains in water so they could crush them by hand," he said. "The liquid was naturally fermented by floating yeast and some one found that if they drank it, they got good results."
Charlie Papazzi, in the book "The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing," said that throughout history clean drinking water often was scarce. Beer, with its mild alcohol content, was one of the few liquids safe to drink and, therefore, became valuable.
"Beer was used as salt was, for trade in a market economy," said Collins. "We stopped being a nomadic culture so we could grow grains for beer and breads."
David Edgar, assistant director of the Institute for Brewing Studies, has
studied and written about the history of beer.
In Edgar's article from the program of the 1990 Great American Beer Festival, he said clay tablets have been found that indicated beer was carried on Noah's Ark.
Edgar said some of the more peculiar items added to beer have included oyster shells, crab claws and eggshells.
Gloria Franconi, owner of Party Creations, Red Hook, N Y., said brewing in the United states took a hard hit during prohibition. She said a malt extract, which can be used for brewing beer, was sold at that time in grocery stores.
"People bought Blue Ribbon Malt and yeasi and floated it on top of a piece of bread and added fruit," she said. "The label had instructions on how to brew beer, but it also said, 'Please realize that brewing beer is illegal.' I've tasted beer brewed like that during the 60s, and it tasted pretty awful."
Collins said prior to prohibition there were 3,000 commercial brewers in the United States.
"By the late 1960s four or five breweries owned all the brewing companies in the country," said Collins. "But by the early 70s breweries began to flourish. Now there are 300 small breweries across the country."
Source "The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing"
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