Want good beer brewed in Alabama? Support homebrewing.

Two articles were published in the past week, one in Birmingham and one in Auburn, each including statements that bring an interesting fact to light. The fact is this… if you’re a consumer who desires to see the availability of good commercial craft beer, brewed right here in your home state of Alabama, then you should be supporting Alabama’s homebrewing community.

The Auburn news article quoted Jeremy Pate, brewer at the Olde Auburn Ale House, saying:

Pate got his start in brewing in 1997, when he began home brewing. In Alabama, because of a law left over from Prohibition, home brewing is still considered illegal. “I was breaking the law in Alabama,” he said.

The Birmingham article explained about Jason Malone of Good People Brewing:

Along the way, he started homebrewing as a hobby. His friends liked his beer so much they kept encouraging him to go into business.

The point is clear. Want good beer brewed locally in Alabama? Support Alabama homebrewers.

A Very Short List of Popular Commercial Craft Breweries started by Homebrewers

• Olde Towne Brewing Company (Huntsville, Ala.) - Don Allan Hankins
• Boston Beer Company (d/b/a Sam Adams) - Jim Koch
• Dogfish Head Brewery - Sam Caligione
• New Belgium Brewing Company - Jeff Lebesch/Peter Bouckaert
• St. Arnold Brewing - Brock Wagner
• Sierra Nevada Brewing Company - Ken Grossman
• Rogue Ales - John Maier
• Alesmith Brewing Company - Skip Virgilio
• Santa Clarita Brewing Company - Mark Van Leeuwen
• Russian River Brewing Company - Vinnie Cilurzo
• St. Somewhere Brewing Company - Bob Sylvester

The full text of the articles are below:

The Opelika Auburn News article on July 20, 2008…

Local brewpub puts own spin on taste
Brittany Whitley
Staff Writer
Published: July 20, 2008

A store-bought domestic beer can quench a person’s thirst on a warm summer day, but specific tastes are causing some locals to turn to specialty beers.

One place that local Auburn dwellers can satisfy their taste for high-end beer is the Olde Auburn Ale House, located in downtown Auburn.

Craft beer selections change regularly at the Ale House, but on any give day a patron can find a handful of selections including Peach Lite, Tiger Tail and the Full Monty Stout.

Olde Auburn Ale House is not a microbrewery because the beer never leaves the premises. It is a brewpub, where the beer is brewed and served on site.

“I’ve always liked the pub atmosphere,” said Daryl Cargile, owner of the Olde Auburn Ale House and a self-proclaimed “Hop Head.” Cargile went to Auburn University, but he acquired his appreciation for specialty beer abroad in the brewpubs of Europe. “I’ve been enjoying them (specialty beers and brew pubs) since before they were popular.”

Cargile said his pub uses a lot of hops (which gives beer its flavor), English malts and yeast to make their handcrafted beers.

“A lot of our stuff comes from England and Germany,” he said.

As for summer sipping, Cargile recommends lighter beers.

“The best summer beers are the Tiger Tails (similar to a Coors), the Peach Lite (which has a hint of peach flavoring) and the Hefeweizen (which is a German white beer).”

The number one seller at the pub is the Tiger Tail, which takes around 10-14 days to brew.

“Some (beers) take 30 to 45 days,” he said, examples of beers with long brew times are stouts and hoppy beers like India Pale Ales (IPA).

Jeremy Pate, who specializes in German beers and ales, is the brew master at Olde Auburn Ale House.

“Here I get to meet people,” he said. “I brew what I like, it just so happens a lot of people agree with my taste.”

“It’s art and science,” he said. “I’m very critical of my own beer.”

There are four ingredients in beer, Pate said, barley, hops, water and yeast. Byproducts of yeast are alcohol and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide naturally carbonates the beer, Pate said.

Many of the beers Pate brews have changed over time, as he tweaks them to perfection.

In the back of the Olde Auburn Ale House, there is a plethora of brewing equipment including a hot liquor container, a mash turn and brew kettle, fermentation and serving tanks - all resembling giant vats.

“The entire unit is called a brew house,” Pate said.

Pate got his start in brewing in 1997, when he began home brewing. In Alabama, because of a law left over from Prohibition, home brewing is still considered illegal.

“I was breaking the law in Alabama,” he said.

Despite the law, many folks in Alabama find it lucrative to home brew, making their own specialty beer at a discounted price.

“You can get into home brewing now for $60 or $75 bucks,” Pate said.

John Little, an attorney who helped start the Auburn Brew Club, a local group of home brewers, said there are a growing number of amateur beer brewers in the Auburn-Opelika Area.

“Since I moved here a little over a year ago, I’ve met over 40 people in Lee County who brew their own beer for personal consumption, typically styles not commercially available or that are best enjoyed fresh and un-pasteurized,” he said. “And for every brewer here in the Auburn-Opelika area, there are another two or three interested in learning how to brew for themselves.”

Little said there are many ways to get started in home brewing.

“Some start with the popular Christmas gift, Mr. Beer, but the results of this cheapest possible method are usually less than desirable,” he said. “A better method for beginners is to purchase a beginner’s equipment kit online or from one of Alabama’s local homebrew supply stores.”

The kits usually included fermentation and bottling buckets with lids and airlocks, siphon tubing, bottles, bottle brush, filler, capper and caps, a hydrometer (for measuring sugar content), sanitizer, kettle and ingredients such as malt extract, hops and yeast.

“These beginner kits usually cost around $150,” he said. “For many, the process of brewing is half the fun, the other being enjoying the final product.”

Home brewers tend to produce small, around five gallon, batches of beer, as opposed to brewpubs, which typically produce 150-gallon batches at a time, and microbreweries that produce around 600 gallons at a time, Little said.

Throughout the year, home brewers will make beers to fit particular seasons, such as fall or summer.

“Pumpkin ales are hugely popular among the home brewing community in October and November., as well as spiced ales around Christmas,” he said. “In anticipation of hot weather we tend to brew beers that, while lighter on the palate, still quench our desire for quality.”

Home brewers can work their way through The Beer Judge Certification Program, which is a list of beers, mastering each brew.

“When a hobby brewer really begins to master the process, he or she can easily brew beer that is much better than that purchased off shelves,” he said.

Ingredients used in brewing:

- Malt - Barley that has been tricked into beginning to sprout before the process is cut short by drying in a kiln. Grains other than barley, such as wheat, oats and rye can also be malted. Malt can range in color from pale to black, and brewers combine various malts to produce a range of flavors including caramel, coffee and sweetness.

- Hops - Green, fluffy, cone-shaped flowers that produce thick, tarry resins and aromatic oils used for bitterness, flavors and aroma in beer. Hop character in beer may described as resiny, floral, citrusy, clean, spicy, mellow, herbal or perfumey.

- Yeast - Converts sugars to ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide during the fermentation process. Depending on yeast strain used, the characters produced may be described as clean, fruity, crisp, beady, oakey, apple, clover honey, pear, mineral-like, banana, clover, spicy, tart, plum, acidic, earthy and peppery.

- Water - Various water profiles around the world, such as Dublin, London, Pilsen, Germany, lead to the distinctiveness of the beers produced in those regions. Water chemistry is one of the more advanced topics of study in homebrewing. Auburn’s water, unadjusted, is particularly well suited for the production of English Bitters, American Pale Ales, Oktoberfest and French Saisons.

- Other - In violation of the Reinheitsgebot, the famous German Purity Law implemented in 1516, modern brewers often also utilize ingredients other than malt, hops, yeast and water in the production of beer. Fruits, vegetables, honey, sugars, syrups, spices and other ingredients are often used in production of craft beer today.

Source: John Little, Auburn Brew Club

The Birmingham News article on July 19, 2008…

Beer brews again in Birmingham
Good People Beer Co. rolls barrel out slowly

Saturday, July 19, 2008
THOMAS SPENCER
News staff writer

After a long drought, beer is brewing in Birmingham again.

Over the last few months, Jason Malone has been laboring in the basement brewery next to the Five Points Grill in Southside, reviving and cleaning old equipment, mixing hops and malts in a quest to bring local brew back to Birmingham.

The first kegs of Good People Pale Ale are now flowing from the taps of the Five Points Grill and at The J. Clyde on Cobb Lane. Next week, Good People expects to be online at Bottega Cafe and On Tap Sports Cafe in Lakeview. The company plans to expand slowly, making sure it can keep pace, and eventually move into bottling its beers.

“We want to grow organically: quality over quantity,” Malone said.

Birmingham has been without a locally produced brew since about 2000, when the last survivors of the first wave of post-Prohibition breweries closed.

After the passage of a 1992 law that allowed for their return, several breweries and brew pubs opened in Birmingham and Mobile. During the mid-1990s, Birmingham produced a succession of beers. Red Mountain Red Ale, Vulcan Beer and Mad Monk were bottled here. The city was home to several brew pubs: The Magic City Brewery, Southside Cellars and the Breckenridge Brewery.

But, for a variety of reasons, the businesses all went flat.

Some despaired that Southerners were content with easy-to-quaff lawn mower beers, the mass-market varieties suitable for drinking after a day working in the yard.

But current players in the beer business believe that consumer tastes have matured since then, helped along by growing regional brewers in neighboring states.

Paul Gatza, director of the national trade group The Brewers Association, said the Southeast, which lagged other regions in its acceptance of craft beers, is now leading the nation in terms of growth in the market.

A thirsty market:

Craft beer sales in the region grew 31.6 percent in 2007, Gatza said. That has been helped along by the success of regional brewers such as Georgia’s Sweetwater, Terrapin and Atlanta Brewing Co., Louisiana’s Abita, Mississippi’s Lazy Magnolia, and Yazoo in Nashville.

This month also marks the return of Huntsville’s Olde Towne Brewing Co., which has opened operations in a new brewery after its original brewery burned. The company hopes to have its beer back on store shelves this fall.

Gatza and Malone both suspect that Birmingham is one of the largest metro markets in the U.S. without a local brew.

The venture is something of a homecoming for Malone. He was born in Birmingham, but his family moved to Nashville when he was 6. He graduated from Auburn University with a finance degree and earned an MBA from Belmont University in Nashville. He was working at a bank and as a financial planner.

Along the way, he started homebrewing as a hobby. His friends liked his beer so much they kept encouraging him to go into business.

Finally, with the blessing of his wife, the 34-year-old decided to take the plunge.

He shed the coat and tie for a baseball cap and shorts and let his beard grow out bushy and red. He now looks the part of someone who might drive the old, beat-up pickup that serves as the company logo.

“We’re a Southern company, and you can’t get any more Southern than a beat-up truck,” Malone said.

`Building a brand’:

But the beer is sophisticated. The Pale Ale starts with a burst of hops and finishes smooth. Five Points Grill owner Gerry Nemet said the single Good People tap accounts for 30 percent of the draft sold out of his 12 taps.

Nemet also likes what he sees in the business savvy of those involved with Good People. “They are building a brand, and that is what it is all about,” he said.

The small brewery, which was last operated in 2000 as Southside Cellars, can produce about 300 kegs a month, Malone said. Good People is trying to build inventory and will be adding a brown ale, an amber and other varieties as it goes along, including seasonal offerings such as porters and stouts in the winter and a hefeweizen in the summer.

Stuart Carter, president of the beer enthusiasts group Free the Hops, said he’s excited to finally have a local beer on the market again.

He is particularly looking forward to having a steady supply of Good People’s American Brown Ale, which he described as “one of the best of that style.”

The future of another local brew venture, a plan to convert the former Jimmie Hale Mission into the New Vulcan Ale House brew pub, is unclear. The partnership involved was supposed to close on the building last month, but that has been postponed. Efforts to reach the partners involved were unsuccessful.

Nationally, sampling a local beer has become a part of the tourist experience, and until now Birmingham had nothing to offer, Carter said.

“You go on vacation somewhere and you want to eat the local food and drink the local beer,” he said. “To me, that is the fun of going somewhere.”

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