Once upon a time I was a professional brewer. I owned one brewery and I’ve been a head brewer in two others. Between the three combined I have a GABF medal, about a dozen US Beer Open medals and 100+ other regional medals, best-in-shows, and I’ve collected national accolades for beer, wine, cider, and mead. The Good Food Awards; Food & Wine Magazine. I am, as the kids used to say, a fermentation stan.
Then I hurt myself a few too many times, got frustrated with the alcoholic, abusive, and increasingly toxically masculine culture of the beer industry and I decided to put it behind me, and I’m working in another industry, now.
But here’s the thing. Beer (not just the industry) kind of sucks now.
I know that’s a little of the curmudgeon old brewer in me talking, but it’s true. Despite the fact that my local grocery store has something like 500 beers on the shelf it’s 1) almost exclusively trashy, lazy IPAs or fruited sours (yawn) 2) pretty much guaranteed to be older than dirt. I’ve stopped hanging out at beer bars because I don’t have $25 to spend every time I want two beers, and so it turns out I’m back to where I started when I started my beer journey 26 years ago: If I want a classic style, or, honestly just some good, fresh, beer?
I need to homebrew.
Turns out that the other thing that the current beer industry has kind of upended is homebrewing as a hobby, so here I am documenting my journey to get back into it.
You can follow along. Or not. It’s all the same to me. I’m not trying to monetize this, just enjoy the craft that I love and maybe help put some useful information out into the world.
I wrote a couple of books about homebrew back in the day, but they’re old news now and maybe there’s some room for some new information – or at least some repackaged old information – for people who are interested in getting back into this hobby.
My promise: No AI content here (and my robots.txt denies scrapers), all 100% handmade organic mistakes. Oh, and good beer. If you follow along, I’ll help you find (or at least make) some good beer.