How I Got Started: Jonathan Marting

As corny as it will sound, ever since my accidental (honest!) gulp of a family member’s beer at a relative’s birthday I’ve known that beer will always be a part of my life. I was way underage at the time; fourteen, if I’m being generous. Wouldn’t get another taste of beer until college. I drank the swill that is typical at college keggers. Disappointed in general with the options, but I of course kept doing it. Then somebody handed me a Killian’s Irish Red and my love affair with dark beer was born. Every party I went to was a chance to try a new style of beer (Mixer Sixers were a lifesaver). I quickly found ones that I would repeatedly come back to, such as Newcastle Brown Ale, Samuel (or Sammy as I like to call him) Smith’s Winter Welcome, Michelob Honey Lager and J.W. Dundee’s Honey Brown.

After I graduated college I moved back in with my parents in southeastern Indiana. They lived close to Cincinnati so I thought finding a job would be easier. Fast forward a couple of years and I’m still living with my parents and working at a dead end job that doesn’t pay me enough to live on my own. I went to a coworker’s party where she and her boyfriend revealed to me that they brew their own beer. Instantly intrigued and eager to dispel the image of a nasty bathtub full of beer, I asked all sorts of questions. They then tried to scam me by offering to go half and half on an ingredient kit from Brewer’s Best. The total cost they quoted me was $70. I trusted my gut instinct and said I wasn’t interested. Later my dad told me there used to be a homebrew store in Cincinnati somewhere. I looked into it and found a place called Listermann, pretty much across the street from Xavier.

It was a curious sensation entering that homebrew store for the first time. Overwhelming, yet accessible. Organized, but unkempt liked a well-used workshop. I would compare it to how the kids and parents felt when they first entered Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory just without all the whimsy. I probably spent an hour and a half just looking at everything. Eventually one of the store clerks offered to help me. I told him that I was very much interested in brewing my own beer but had zero ideas where to start. He helped me pick out an equipment kit which was the most expensive one they had, but it was also cheaper than the same kit is now (and well worth the price!). For an ingredient kit I chose Listermann’s kit for Irish red ale to honor the beer that set me down this path. At the checkout counter the store clerk, who was a middle-aged man missing a finger or two, gave me three pieces of advice that have stuck with me ever since:

  1. (For this one he jabbed the instructions for the ingredient kit with the stump of his right index finger which was severed at the first knuckle) Read the instructions. Front and back. Everything, including bottling. Go and do something unrelated for half an hour/forty-five minutes. Come back and read it all again.
  2. Take notes on everything you do. Especially if you think it will affect the flavor of the beer.
  3. Clean and sanitize everything.

Other than those three pieces of advice I was flying blind. My parents helped me, of course, but they had as much to go on as I did. What helped us was our collective experience in in the kitchen. That first beer kit ended up being a decent beer and I made many mistakes brewing it, but I kept brewing. Every time I went back to Listermann’s  I chose another style to try, which meant more notes, more equipment to wash, more instructions to read (twice!), and of course more experience. When I moved up to Indianapolis one of the first things I did was locate a homebrew store, i.e. Great Fermentations (there wasn’t an Avon store at the time). I kept the momentum going, always pushing myself to try something different. Last year I set about an annual challenge for myself. I’d ask my Facebook friends and family to suggest beers for me to brew, which were then voted upon. The one with the most votes would be the beer that I brewed, even if it was a style I didn’t really care for. And the challenge was for me to create the recipe, not brew an ingredient kit. I’ve had good results so far, but I’m always growing, always taking notes, always washing equipment, always reading and rereading instructions.

How I Got Started: Jeremiah Tyson

My entry into the homebrewing world was…let’s just say, slow. I bought a Mr. Beer kit and watched for years as it collected dust and eventually faded from my memory (I found it about 6 months ago randomly). I have always had an interest in the science aspect of it as well. I talked with a friend of mine from California who is a homebrewer, and had the opportunity to assist Jonathan Marting on several of his batches while I learned the process. All in all its been several years of learning, but I only just began brewing my own batches last year. I wanted to create something I knew I enjoyed but at the same time, satisfy the itch to perfect the craft that melds cooking and chemistry together. I am a particularly big fan of German festbier, probably due to my up close and personal exposure,  I think their process is also appealing to me. Once again, nobody is perfect but they strive for perfection with their process. So I particularly enjoy altbier, hefeweizen, and hellesbock. The altbier is probably my favorite to brew so far and I have a hefeweizen recipe I will be trying out for Big Brew Day!

How I Got Started: Erik Howell

Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Erik Howell. I’m an Indianapolis native that recently moved to Portland, OR and have been brewing for just over 10 years. I love all forms of fermentation, and would consider myself a “maker/survivalist”. Haha. Sounds better than “doomsday prepper” doesn’t it? I first got introduced into craft beer in the early 2000’s when I was in college. There was a craft beer bar just down the street from my house called The Heorot Pub and Draught House that had an excellent selection of great beer from all over the country/world. They had a mug club that allowed you to get a special mug if you bought one of each beer they offered in the bar. I tried as many different beers as I could afford, however there was no touching that achievement 🙂

I remember a friend’s misfortune with his Mr. Beer kit in college, and I was absolutely certain I could do better. I ended up with the same Mr. Beer kit as a Christmas gift in ‘06 and went absolutely nuts. I did a bunch of reading (The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, How to Brew, Radical Brewing, etc) and went a little overboard on sanitizing. In the very beginning I was literally wearing a facemask and covering my countertops with Saran Wrap sprayed down with StarSan solution. It was like a scene out of Breaking Bad. My roommate at the time was super inspired, and footed the bill for a 5 gallon kit from Great Fermentations that I started using pretty regularly. I was an extract brewer for a long time (admittedly the first 5 years). The beer I was making was OK. I continued to acquire equipment and fine tune my brewing practices and things got much better over time.

I started a small beer tasting group/blog in 2012 called Beer is My Passion or B.I.M.P. We organized blind tastings in an effort to educate ourselves about what we liked and disliked about different styles of beer. Later I formed a homebrew club out of the group, and started pouring homebrew at beer festivals. It was so much fun! Right about this time I met my soon to be wife Jenn, and we started brewing together. We got involved in competitions, more beer festivals, and networking in the Indy beer community. We were officially out of control. Soon we were branching out into cider, wine, pickles, etc. Beer turned into a gateway for all things fermented.

After a few years running BIMP, I found that many of my friends were more interested in the blind tastings than they were in brewing competitions. I was now working part time at my local homebrew shop, and was meeting other like-minded homebrewers that were also entering competitions. We were all competing independently even though we supported each others successes and failures. Ultimately this new group of brewers grew into Circle City Zymurgy. Now that I’m in Portland, I certainly miss my friends, the meetings, and social events that CCZ hosts. I still have a small hand in maintaining CCZ’s website, and still enter beers via our club. Recently I’ve been making various meads, wines, and beer in my new home. I’m hoping to build steam for the coming year’s competitions, and who knows maybe I’ll see some of you at NHC in Portland next year!

How I Got Started: Allen Brown’s Story

I started brewing when I was 29, back in 1994.  This was about 2 years after my wife and I got married.  We’ll be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary this year, which has been 23 of the best years of my life!…(and don’t tell Kim I said that!)

Back then, my LHBS was Great Fermentations in Indianapolis, located on 82nd street.  I purchased a “Complete Homebrew Kit” for $39.99, a “Glenbrew 7# Irish Stout” kit for $22.49, a copy of “Complete Joy Of Homebrew” for $10.00, and a two page printout by GFI titled “Basic Brewing Instructions for the Beginner Using Hop Flavored Malt Extracts.”  The receipt is dated one day before my 29th birthday, so it must have been my birthday present from my wife!  So I went home and learned how to brew beer. In the early 90’s, our choices on ingredients and yeasts were not even close to what we have now.  The internet wasn’t really available to the public yet, and I was brewing extract kits only.  The recipes I got from GFI were printed out on dot-matrix printer paper, and yes, I still have every one of them!  Most of them included liquid malt extract and dry yeast, and no telling how old that can of LME was that came over from England!

Of course back then I was bottling, and I was using bleach and water for all of my sanitizing because that’s what we did.  For the first two years I brewed about every other month.  Each time I did, I set back a six pack of brew I made for safe keeping.  Then, I had a big beer party… I had about 4-5 cases of multiple flavors of six packs and I asked everybody that came to the party to bring a six pack of beer that they have never tried before.  The reason was, none of my friends drank anything but “big beer”, so I wanted to expand everybody’s pallets a little bit.  That party was a HUGE SUCCESS!  I got rave reviews for my beers, and ended up the next day with a BUNCH of free beer in my fridge!

Over the next few years I slowed down a little bit, to a couple of batches a year.  Then when we had kids, I went probably another two or three years without brewing. I know, nobody wants to admit it, but it happens to all of us.

The next few years I got back into it and brewed 2-3 batches a year.  Then I started to get motivated again, and started brewing on a regular basis. At this point, I was probably 15 years into my brewing career.  Keep in mind, I am still just brewing extract kits after all this time.  I was really into the ease and convenience of kits, and I was brewing some very good beer.  At least that’s what my friends told me when they came over to drink free beer!  It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I started brewing all grain.  I know that most people get into all grain much sooner than that, but people need to know, you can can make some really good beer brewing extract beers!  I happen to know several people who have won awards brewing extract kits in big competitions.

So, jump back to 2009.  My wife and I started really enjoying drinking dry red wine, as well as beer.  I had tried a few peoples homemade wines in the past, but they all sucked, so I wasn’t really that motivated to try making my own wine.  Well, in 2009 we decided to go to Austria to visit distant cousins that we’d never met before.  Turns out that we have two cousins that live in this little village in Austria that have commercial wineries, and we can even buy their wines here!  After finding out that I came from a long line of winemakers, that motivated me to start making wine.  So, I started researching on the internet.  Turned out there was a HUGE amount of information out there, and there was a bunch of people out there actually making good wine.  Who’d a thunk it?

My first wine I made was a honey mead wine.  The recipe I used was “Joe’s Ancient Orange Mead.” It’s a very simple mead recipe using 3.5 pounds of honey protein gallon, one orange cut into quarters, one cinnamon stick, one whole clove, a handful of raisins, and a pinch of nutmeg.  Mix it together, and add Flieschmanns bread yeast, and let it sit for two months without touching it.  At two months it will clear and most of the fruit will drop out.  (I know, you are thinking that’s just crazy talk using bread yeast, but it’s a tried and true recipe that been made millions of times successfully).

Even though I’ve never entered a single beer into a beer competition, I decided to enter this mead into the Indy International Wine Competition.  I ended up winning Honey Wine Blend Of The Year 2010!  I’m sure if the “mead aficionados” knew I made a mead with bread yeast they’d verbally crucify me! The next year, I started buying kit wines from Great Fermentations made by WineExpert.  I started making a bunch of kit wines.  I also started entering my wines in the Indy International. In 2011 I won Indiana Amateur Winemaker of the year! The next year, I got red wine juice from Easley Winery.  I got some Chambourcin juice that was grown in southern Indiana, fermented it, and then did a malolactic fermentation on it, entered it, and won Indiana Grown Wine Of The Year!  In a three or four year period I won about 30 medals, bronze, silver, gold, and even three Double Golds!  Now, I usually buy about 30 gallons a year of fresh juice from GFI, ferment it, keg it, and keep it on tap with nitrogen.

I don’t think that the reason I won all these awards were some kind of magic mojo I have, I honestly believe that it is because I followed the directions and recipes EXATLY TO THE TEE!  I made sure my fermentation temperatures were just right, my sanitation was perfect, my timing of racking, oak additions, malolactic Fermentations, etc., followed time tested schedules, and most of all, I TOOK MY TIME.  It’s all about consistency.  You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just follow the dang directions!

Fast forward to last year, I decided to up my game!  I built a single tier R.I.M.S. System brew stand.  I now have a 15 gallon Spike HLT, a 15 gallon Spike MLT, and a 20 gallon Blichmann brew kettle.  I’m now brewing 10-15 gallon batches, twice the amount of beer in the same amount of time!  I now also use BeerSmith software for designing my recipes.  It really has helped me get my recipes figured out, and helped me to brew consistently.  The last thing I want to share is I have really started to get my brewing water totally dialed in.  I purchase Primo Water for my brewing.  It’s five gallon jugs of R.O. Water that has minerals added to it.  I took a sample of my home city water, and a sample of the Primo Water, and sent them off to Ward Labs to be tested.  My local water came back SO BAD, that it really can’t be used for brewing.  It’s not that it’s contaminated, it’s that the Bicarbonate, HCO3  is 515 ppm, and the Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 is 426 ppm… way too high for brewing. So, I take those results from the water test, and I enter it into John Palmer’s water spread sheet, (free from his website), and it tells me exactly what I need to add to the water to get the BEST BEER for the style I’m making.

Needless to say, I am now making some pretty darn good beer.  Just ask me!