Homebrew CSA: 2-3 pros, 20-30 cons

Brew Lab SF is a CSA-style homebrew club. Community Supported Agriculture is an awesome idea that even the USDA supports, but notice it doesn’t support CSHB (community supported home brewing.) I found out about it through the SFoodie/SF Weekly food blog written by my friend Jason Henry who took over my beer blogging duties there when I retired moved out of San Francisco. It was also covered in Urbandaddy

Not to be confused with Pacific Brewing Laboratories in San Francisco, an entity that gets miscategorized as a nanobrewery but is really 2 homebrewers, Patrick and Bryan, who also share their beer with the public for free and accept donations. I don’t know if I “fully” support their set-up, but I do stand behind it because they are talented, creative homebrewers who aspire to go pro through the proper, legal chanels and their events are community-based and offer the conviviality that gathering and drinking beer produces unlike sticking a 6 pack in one’s fridge (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

To be clear, nanobreweries are legal breweries licensed by the TTB. Only legal breweries can legally sell beer. They also must pay excise taxes. So, while I’m sure that founders Sam Gilbert and Emily Ford are well-intentioned and enterprising individuals who started this for great beer-promoting reasons involving proselytizing the merits of homebrewing, I can only think of 2-3 good reasons for this club and 20-30 bad ones.

Pros:
1. Free beer. Who wouldn’t like that?

2. Feedback. Each homebrewer gets feedback on his or her brew and even gets some of the costs associated with the hobby reimbursed.

3. Waste not, want not. Even when I make 5-gallon batches it’s sometimes hard to get through it all.

Cons:
Where to begin?

1: Selling homebrew is illegal. I know the argument here is that it’s not “selling homebrew” but c’mon. In their own words: We can only cover the costs of brewing and running the organization with the help of membership donation, and so each batch we ask our members to consider donating to the cause. Good luck getting the free beer without paying the donation, which they do not specify the suggested amount.

2: Don’t be nervous. You put the donation on the dresser. Donations by and large are given to nonprofit or other charitable organizations, or to political campaigns, or to…prostitutes. Just like it’s illegal to sell homebrew, it’s illegal to sell sex*. (Though I think that vices like prostitution and marijuana should be legalized and taxed to high heaven. The Dutch seem happy.) I’m well aware of the huge difference between homebrewing and human trafficking, but just calling payment a “donation” doesn’t make it charitable. Ask Rick Santorum.

3: Hurts homebrewing hobby. Any club like this makes it look like we homebrewers are in it for the moolah. Or it gives us the very false impression that our beer is worth buying. Much of it is. That’s why I’m writing a book about it! But much of it is not, despite once having someone insist on giving me $2 for bottles I brought to a dinner. Yes, I broke the law by accepting that money, but I only did it because even after I explained I couldn’t accept it, the guy insisted, and I liked the ego stroke.

4: Hurts professional brewers. Every 6 pack of BrewlabSF you buy, that’s one 6-pk of craft you didn’t. I once heard a craft brewer call this “share of mouth.” Some craft brewer’s kid is going hungry if you participate in this club.

5. Like homebrewers need help getting feedback. What homebrewer doesn’t already have friends, coworkers, neighbors, etc. already willing to offer that, especially in exchange for “free” beer.

6. Quality of/qualified feedback. From whom exactly? These club goers aren’t necessarily BJCP certified. IF, if, if they give feedback at all, it’s in the form of 1-4 star ratings and then maybe a quick line. And they can (and do) post some anonymously. Club co-founder Emily Ford reviewed one of the beers called Royale with Cheese—a Simcoe and Amarillo hopped pale ale fermented with a Belgian yeast strain—as “Fantastic!” That was the entire review. I’m sure she’s right and I’d love to try that beer. But that’s not constructive feedback.

7. Slave drivers? OK, probably not, but this reeks of BrewLabSF folks profiting from the hard work of others. How much DO they pocket off this little venture? And how much goes to the actual brewers (who, see #1, aren’t legally allowed to make anything off it anyway)?

8. TTB/ABC. Commercial brewers went through tons of trouble and jumped through tons of hoops to be allowed to sell their wares. Now homebrewers get to skirt those orgs and laws? I love loopholes as much as the next guy. Figure out a way I don’t have to pay taxes or get to run red lights and I’m there. But…

9. TTB/ABC pt 2. It’s not like we’re talking selling homemade jam or bread here, two hobbies related to homebrewing. This stuff has alcohol. That’s why it’s so highly regulated. Can you imagine a moonshine CSA? If there’s one out there, they’re smarter than putting it on the world wide web.

10. Hooch. I have no clue what the authorities would do if they busted sellers and/or brewers. Probably assess a fine. Prisons are overcrowded. But before I started writing about beer, I wrote about music. (And I write about these things because I’m a better writer than I am musician/brewer.) One of the indie/punk rags I wrote for had a recipe on prison hooch. Crush a bunch of oranges in a trash bag, add a ton of sugar, fill with water, then wait and “burp” it as needed. Just to be on the safe side, let’s keep these homebrewers making quality beer.

11. 21+. How do we know the club members are of age? Yeah, there’s an “I am 21+ years old” button that they have to click saying they are, but are IDs checked before the sixer is dropped off or picked up?

12. Free beer is a bad idea. I know brewers hear all the time how amazing, borderline unfair it is that they get paid to make beer. But brewing is hard work with long hours. They DESERVE to get paid. Beer is WORTH paying for. This makes it seem like beer should ever be free. But of course, it’s not really free. Would they actually allow a member to NOT make a donation? C’mon!

13. For the geeks. I’m not saying only homebrewers should drink homebrew. Far from it. But is this really turning people on to brewing? I hear membership is so popular, they can’t allow everyone in. And most people who love and support homebrewing know where/who to get some from.

14. It’s a hobby. Why do any homebrewers believe their beer is worth buying? Of course, again, a good amount of it is. But they shouldn’t do this for that reason. That’s why it’s a hobby! Mountain bikers don’t get paid to mountain bike. Girls who go to Stitch’n’Bitch knitting sessions probably don’t sell their scarves that often. We ALL have hobbies, and just because you’ve been doing it for a few years doesn’t mean you’ve reached the major leagues. Hell, I started home masturbating decades ago. I got really great at it. Wanna make a donation? Want a 6-pk of what I’ve made?

15. Hobby Pt 2. Lots of great homebrewers aspire to go pro. But other than the fact that you’ll almost never see a rich brewer, another reason not to make the leap is it turns brewing from an avocation to a vocation. If the member brewers start thinking of it as work, it could take the fun out of it.

16. 40 bottles!? A 5-gallon batch yields roughly 2 cases. Sure, it’s supposed to yield 53 12-oz bottles, but c’mon, who’s gonna bottle the gook at the bottom of your carboy? So, the homebrewers go through all the trouble involved in a brewday just to get to enjoy a sixer or two of their own beer while the rest goes to strangers?

17. Those strangers. This may sound like #5 a lot, but if I’m going to share my homebrew, I want it going to people I know with palates I trust. It doesn’t have to go to people with the most sophisticated palate, but someone whose evaluation I value. Sorry club members, but maybe you really know how to enjoy and critique beer—and maybe you don’t.

18. Fresh’n’clean. You’d think that since the beer doesn’t go through any of the 2nd-tier channels, ie: a distributorship, that the club organizers are delivering the freshest beer possible. And it very well might be! But maybe the contributing brewers are using this as a bottle-dump to rid the closet of old or questionable bottles. Lord knows I’ve done that at parties. And while every good homebrewer knows the 3 essentials are sanitation, sanitation, and sanitation, there’s no guarantee the contributors follow all 3 steps the way commercial ones have to do if they want repeat customers. (Trust me, when word gets out about spoilage in a commercial brew, it hits them in the bottom line.) Lastly, look at the last batch of sixers that went out on their blog (scroll down). Green bottles?!

19. No CRV. OK, I don’t really think that Calif. Redemption Value is an argument here, just trying to stretch to get to an even 20.

20. As the story on Chow put it, BrewLabSF is a labor of love. I don’t know if they’re operating in the black at this point with their newfound popularity, but I doubt they’d continue to run it if they’re losing money on it. Still, it can’t be making them rich. However, the blog post ends: “it's only a matter of time before this idea is picked up by other home-brewers around the country.” And where others go with this idea and what they’re motivated by, I’m afraid to consider.

So, there ya have it. What do you think? CSAs like BrewLabSF a honky-dory idea or well-intentioned but ought not to exist? Do you have an additional 17 reasons to make the pros outweigh the cons? Or perhaps 10 more negatives to flesh out the “20-30” I thought I’d come up with. I expect this post to be updated frequently.

Cheers,
Brian

The Session #41: Craft beers inspired by homebrewing

This month, the Wallace bros. from Lug Wrench Brewing Co. ask Sessioners to blogtificate about "how has homebrewing had an affect on the commercial beer we have all come to love?" Talk about open-ended.

It's no stretch at all to say that every single craft beer out there is an extension of a homebrew. Unlike the days of yore in the countries of olde, where brewing fathers begat brewing sons and the trade passed down generationally, 99% or more of today's master brewers began making their own beer in their kitchens or garages and are largely self-taught. Sure many talented ones went to brewing academies like Siebold's or UC Davis, but those are really like finishing schools after they were home schooled by the likes of Papazian, Eckhardt, and more recently, Mosher, Daniels, Palmer, and the gang.

Some would claim that homebrew-inspired breweries out there only constitute the new kids on the block, the ones making newfangled beers like Short's Key Lime Pie, Cigar City's Mochaccino Bolita, or the Bruery's Autumn Maple featuring yams. One trend among these particular beers is that, well, they're all pretty desserty. And if your mama taught you anything, you can't eat dessert till you've had your dinner. "Growing food" as my sister beseeches my nieces to eat. Somehow, in these people's eyes, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale,

Widmer Hefeweizen*, and New Belgium Fat Tire are so far removed from small batch craft beers that they border on behemoth corporate concoctions. It's called "fundamentals," son. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, these beers were first brewed on systems smaller than most mid-sized craft breweries' pilot systems. (*Granted, the young Widmer bros. intended for their Alt to be their flagship, not their wheat beer, but the market demanded it.)

By contrast, even the Big Two, a.k.a. BMC, are proffering not "craft beers" but "beers that are crafted" and include everything from the hotcake-selling Blue Moon witbier to misguided attempts such as Michelob Hop Hound Amber Wheat. The point being, virtually every American-made beer not being advertised at a major sporting event is, in some way, inspired by homebrewers be they Ken Grossman (Sierra Nevada), Jeff Lebesch (formerly of New Belgium), Mark Carpenter (Fritz's right hand man at Anchor whose future there is now

TBD), or mid-revolutionaries such as Sam Calagione (Dogfish Head), Dan Carey (New Glarus), and Alan Sprints (Hair of the Dog) to the new bumper crop mindblowing talents including Patrick Rue (The Bruery along with head brewer Tyler King), Scott Vaccaro (Captain Lawrence), and possibly anyone reading this who has high hopes of opening his or her own brewery.

And with few exceptions (sorry, I've never met an Amber or a Helles I liked), as a beer lover, I love 'em all and am indebted to all brewers: both home and pro alike.

Photos by me: (top) Ken Grossman with two of his kids--Brian and Sierra--at Sierra Nevada. (bottom) Homebrewer Ben Miller who won the Sam Adams Longshot competition AND Great American Beer Fest's Pro-Am competition on the same day.

D'oh

The morning after putting my second-ever batch in primary. Considering the first one didn't even gurgle, not sure if this is a step in the right or wrong direction.

SFBW Day 7: Mad Zymurgists club meeting

Hello Pleasanton!!!

The ball for this event at the Hop Yard started rolling four months ago, when I met the posthumous, er, de facto president, Brian Cooper, at GABF. That seems like ages ago.

I was excited about this event for many reasons (it was my way of being part of an SF Beer Week event, my first East Bay event, my first homebrew club meeting + I'm now a homebrewer) but one that got me jazzed is that I was able to do a new spiel. I LOVE doing author events, truly, but I felt freer to speak off-the-cuff, since there was very little I could tell this room about America's craft brewing industry they didn't already know. Plus it gave me an opportunity to tell the story about hanging out in a VIP lounge in Denver and having my biggest promoter, Half Pint, chatting up dude at our table about how her boyfriend wrote a beer book, only to have me lean over and discreetly whisper, "That's Charlie Papazian."The nearly-all-male audience (there was one wife/club member, Jade, and a girl named Michelle who saw the event listed on the SF Beer Week site) had great questions and afterward told great stories. It's clear they love the community and it's one I'm proud to now, with my first batch still in secondary fermentation, be a part of.

Beforehand, as Brian went through the talking points, I drank a short pour of Pliny the Younger and a Deschutes brown ale. Afterward, the homebrew started flowing. A Belgian dark ale, some mead, and most notably, a Traditional Bock, brewed by the guy pictured below, Alex Drobshoff. Why most notably? This is the beer that will start showing up on shelves as part of Boston Beer/Sam Adam's annual Longshot contest honoring homebrewers. Think Spielberg directing your home movie.Huge thanks to Judy from Towne Center Books for coming out, selling books, and partaking of the homebrews. And of course, danke schön to Brian Cooper, below...


...and this is why I call her Half Pint...

Crossroads ESB

I'm the world's newest homebrewer.
Don't get into homebrewing to save money on beer. Longterm? Yeah. But if my arms fall off and I never brew again, I spent as much on these instruments and ingredients as I would've on 25 great six-packs of beer (and my batch will only yield as much as almost 9 six-packs).

But I didn't worry. I relaxed. And had a homebrew. (Thanks, Greg, for the Belgian Noir)

Steeping the grains (obviously my first batch was only partial-grain, the rest LME).

Prepping primary fermentation.

Which requires pitching the yeast. Look, Ma, I'm a zymurgist.

So what'd I make? An ESB. Though I'm all about American craft beers, I wanted to brew an easy-going British bitter. Since I'll have a ton, I needed to brew a session beer. And what was my soundtrack for homebrewing? It had to rock. I wanted it to be British. And I wanted it to reflect early steps. Disc 1 from Clapton's box set rocks his pre-classic stuff: Yardbirds, Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and of course Cream. So, as I switch paths from the freeway of commercial brew drinker to the road less traveled toward homebrewing..."Crossroads ESB."

And now we wait...

Beer Dinner II: Locavores

For the second installment of the Beer Dinner, we went with local beer (as opposed to la cerveza loco, the crazy beer). High-minded pairing be damned, I just filled the fridge with offerings from throughout Northern California, and one tipple only those present can smack their lips and reminisce fondly.
The opening round called for Butte Creek's Organic Revolution Imperial IPA (Chico) paired with crudite (I called a plate of veggies crudite), hummus, and three cheeses: raw, 16-month aged “San Juaquin Gold,” smoked gouda, and an awesome and stylish cheddar Irish porter, which I didn’t bust out my lone bottle of Anchor Porter, mainly because I was so digging the Imperial India Pale Ale, and that's not really like me. Everyone agreed it was a winner to wake up our taste buds.

Second bottle to be uncapped was MateVeza's Yerba Mate Ale (Chico) And to complete the Chico trifecta, I poured what Jesse called the farthest local beer possible: Sierra Nevada’s Southern Hemisphere Harvest Fresh Hop Ale. (But now how will the Kiwis hop their brews?)

For K’ro’s creation, she concocted a broccoli-riccota-chive dip (with beer) and we fashioned a recipe for sundried tomato, pimento-stuffed olives (and beer) bread into a thick crust for something akin to pizza using fresh mozzerela, roasted chicken, and a bottle of bbq sauce that we pilfered yesterday (scroll down for previous post!).

Jesse & Eliana arrived toting the pieces de resistance (or as Gavin is fond of saying, amuse bouche). Our intrepid homebrewer flaunted his bottle-conditioned Belgian Triple with Vanilla Bean, which astoundingly complemented the alumna of the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) Eli’s empenadas. Two kinds: lentil veggie and North African spiced lamb. When it comes to beer and nosh, they rocked the Casbah.

Richard, who I think wasn’t quite prepared for the depth of a beer dinner, brought a cheese pizza pie and his conversational reparte, such as his analysis about his current reading selection, God Against the Gods.
I then busted out a bomber I guess I picked up down in Banana Slug country: Santa Cruz Ale Works’ Hefeweizen. Not exactly a show stopper/dinner topper. So sue me.

Lora, one of my oldest friends who is out visiting from NYC, is scratching and clawing and julienning her way into the culinary world. I won’t even get into all the tasty vittels she made in my “test kitchen,” but will simply say this for her offering: Chocolate bread pudding with a Pyramid Apricot Ale reduction topped with farm-fresh raspberries. Pouring: Chocolate Stout from Bison Brewing (Berkeley, ergo organic). Delicioso. (Lora’s special friend Dan poured the last of the Belgian Triple and along with it, the vanilla bean. Unlike the worm, it’s not recommended drinking.)

Two last libations were brought out: Eli’s homemade apple (and pear) cider and El Toro’s Oatmeal Stout that, were it not for the fact that it’s from Morgan Hill and pretty tasty, is hardly worth mentioning after that cider.

Now I need to figure out the theme for the next beer dinner; fortunately this feast should last me until then.