On a warm April evening, two city girls poke their heads through the entryway of the Burp Castle. With eyebrows raised in curiosity, they tacitly ask why the library-like pub is so uncharacteristically packed.

“This is the New York City Homebrewers Guild meeting,” I offer. After taking another glance at the crowd, which is listening intently to newly minted brew master Damian Brown explain how he intends to found New York’s next great microbrewery, the visitors respond with a deflated laugh and retreat into the East Village. “It’s probably a sausage fest,” one trails off as they make tracks for the next bar.

The Guild’s monthly meeting, which gathers brewers of all ages and skill levels to exchange notes and share a pint among friends, may not be as sexy as a Matt Timms takedown or as glamorous as one of the many other tastings, tweetups and cocktail events that light up this city’s every evening, but the passion of this assembly, which is one of the city’s best resources for the art of independent beer, cannot be so easily dismissed. Once all questions have been answered, the crowd of brewers breaks into a warm buzz, trading tastes of new batches and refining their art through communion.

Beer is Born – The Bronx Brewery

Brown, the Guild’s guest speaker, owns The Bronx Brewery, a business that is not waiting to be born. After surmounting the technical rigors of UC Davis’ master brewers program and earning his Institute of Brewing and Distilling diploma, Brown quickly set up shop in New York, acquiring all of the necessary paperwork, drafting a business plan, creating a brand and developing a core collection of beer recipes in less than a year. All he needs now is $1 million of investment capital to procure the space, equipment and logistical muster necessary for shipping kegs of craft beer to bars throughout the city.

“We’re not looking to re-invent the wheel here,” Brown declares when asked about his goals with the Bronx Brewery. “I think the most interesting thing to do with beer is to weave in parts of where it’s made, how it’s made, what it’s made of, as opposed to redefining styles.”

Channeling the science and sophistication inherent in creating beer, Brown explains how he will make a new mark in New York’s beer community. In addition to producing quality product, he plans to offer on-premise brewing courses that will allow first-time brewers to learn the process together. He envisions the Bronx Brewery engaging Brooklyn’s rooftop farms to grow hops for local brewers, and he aims to expand the American beer palate by introducing his future customers to variants of beer that he’s discovered while globe trotting. Brown’s hope, consistent with the core function of the Home Brewers Guild, is that by finding more to share in beer, he will lead casual quaffers to become true craft beer advocates.

Just a Few Hops Away -The Homebrewer Tour

My own path to the Guild meeting was paved by Joshua M. Bernstein, an advocate for craft beer on the other side of the ropes. A food and drink journalist who has long been familiar with the ins and outs of home brewing, Bernstein leads a regular home brewer tour to connect those who love to drink craft beer with those who love to make it.

“It’s not a spectacle,” Bernstein says of the event, which evolved from a dive bar crawl into the afternoon series of living room tastings it is today. Each tour, which occurs roughly every six weeks, visits three homes and knocks back anywhere from six to fifteen types of brew, is equal parts education and entertainment. The writer curates the proceedings with a kind of disciplined whimsy, helping wayfarers enjoy their buzz while maintaining the order of the day. His willingness to kick back at each stop belies deep stores of malted knowledge – Bernstein, who has imbibed extensively and thoughtfully in his work as a writer and editor, is now working towards a 2011 publishing date for his first book on the new world of craft beer.

Of Palates, Palettes and Pallets – Conner and Fields

The Conner and Fields loft, a regular stop on Bernstein’s tour, offers a taste of home brewing’s crafty nature. Run by Jon Conner and Josh Fields, who make their living as sculptors and fabricators, this cavernous Williamsburg workshop is a testament to workmanship. The loft’s entrance opens into Conner’s humble living room, where a top-opening chest freezer contains three small kegs of home brew, ready for tasting. Large double doors reveal two vast, sunlit studios, populated with building materials for Conner’s fabrication business and brewing pleasure.

Armed with a computerized milling machine used to craft models for artists and architects, Conner has customized every step of his and Fields’ brewing process. Every object in the loft that includes a hint of wood or plastic carries his signature; the duo’s custom-built brewing equipment includes a stir plate for pitching yeast, a bottle tree and barrel stands for drying empty vessels, a clay slab roller turned grain mill, and the kegerator itself, whose wooden lip houses its taps and spill tray. These homespun creations are accompanied by odd pieces of brewing equipment that Conner and Fields have acquired from various parts of the state – including a massive stainless steel mash tank, accompanied by the story of their march into a deathly, frigid night to obtain it during the last gasp of upstate winter.

Conner and Fields brew new batches of beer several times a week. Their brew days, much like their array of customized equipment, are ripe with experience. Every piece of the process is hands-on; every step of the brew yields a new tool, purchased or hand-crafted for one purpose. As the brewers crush grain, pitch yeast, weigh hops, test carbon dioxide levels, measure sugar content, recirculate mash, stir boiling wort, clean bottles and taste their fermenting creations, they work with the precise verve of scientists and the practical wisdom of carpenters.

These efforts may not yet pay off in salaries, but they yield dividends of flavor that surpass many professional microbrews. Especially tasty are the Bankrupt State, a refreshing California Common with a full, plum-like sweetness, the Land Lover, an American brown with a smoky sense of bitter, La Tondeuse, a Belgian-style blonde that retains all of the floral notes of its genre without the aggressive yeast and alcohol flavors that usually accompany them, and the Robot Small, a crisp, rice-tinted, unfiltered pale ale with a nice bite of lemony bitterness. Demonstrating a broad mastery of the craft ale and a sense of curiosity that unlocks exciting new flavors, Conner and Fields, like Damian Brown and many other of New York’s home brewers, have the talent needed to create a wonderful product.

What’s stopping them from loosing their taps on the public is the money they don’t have to scale their production to large-batch brewing. Those who dream of turning their lifestyles into livelihood face a number of logistical and professional hurdles, but Josh Fields boils everything down to the $50,000 investment minimum he and Conner would need to put serious movement behind their ten years of brewing experience.

Brewing It All Back Home – Fritz Fernow

Many home brewers beyond Conner and Fields have also considered the dream of making beer for a living.
Fritz Fernow is no such man.

As he beckons visitors into his bedroom, where he’s set aside a tiled alcove for tidy brewing, Fernow creates one of the more intimate experiences of the Home Brewer Tour. Jennifer Welte, his wife and original brewing muse, makes a point of measuring the distance – in nightcaps – from his kegerator to their bed. The Cobble Hill couple exemplify a sense of comfort that I’ve come to recognize in the home brewers I’ve met, serving homemade snacks, getting to know their guests on a personal level and opening up discussion to all things tasteful.

This description is not meant to deny Fernow’s inner beer geek. The man’s eyes positively twinkle when he gets a chance to talk about his purest hobby, and when I inquire about how many batches he’s brewed, he almost immediately declares that his newest Belgian triple is batch #58. Fernow is a regular at Guild meetings and on beer message boards, begins the first step of his weekend brew days before he puts on clothes, and often hovers over an array of glasses, discussing flavors and de-constructing recipes with his fellow beer lovers.

Fernow’s creations, heavily favoring IPAs and Belgian styles, are not as inventive as those of Conner and Fields; still, they share the sense of balance that tames strong tastes into highly drinkable beers. In fact, fine-tuning flavors that many beer advocates prize for their extremism may be a more common thread among home brewers than among microbreweries, which have several incentives to prioritize distinction over nuance.

Does becoming a home brewer fundamentally change one’s perception of the nectar? Fernow, who took on the craft four years ago, rarely buys 6-packs of beer anymore; instead, he brings home mixed boxes of bottles for the purpose of tasting. His inquiries, however, are not limited to the new. As he divulges life to me over peanuts and ale in his kitchen, Fernow notes the brewer’s appreciation for batch consistency, which he asserts from time to time by coming back to a classic like Hoegaarden or Pilsner Urquell.

And though he will delve into discussion on the components of beer at the drop of a hat, he does key on the importance of restraint and hopes that his favorite pastime will not grow into a zen obsession: “If I do find something I love, or if I want to just chill and not think about it, I’ll order the same beer twice, and that second one is when I really relax. I stop examining it and smelling it, and just… you know, hey: It’s a beer. Enjoy it.”

The Beeriest Borough?
As Joshua Bernstein sips his maibock and ruffles the fur of Sammy, his newly adopted corgi/chihuahua mutt, he tells me that craft beer is in enjoying its biggest upswing in history.

“In the downturn…this so-called ‘luxury market’ has posted gains,” he highlights, pointing out that a place like Washington Commons, where we’re currently tying one on, could not have stayed in business ten years ago. He also notes that America is now home to the highest number of breweries since the era of prohibition.

Brooklyn, New York’s hotbed for new entrepreneurs in food and drink, is an opportune environment for the city’s most dense collection of home brewers. While the Home Brewer Tour isn’t limited to this borough (and home brewing certainly predates its heady local food movement), there’s something to the confluence of brewers in this locavore’s petry dish, which is now home to three sources of home brewing equipment, ingredients and expertise: The Brooklyn Kitchen, Brooklyn Homebrew and the Brooklyn Brew Shop.

The laid-back vibe, focus on craft and sense of hands-on ownership here may not translate into a night on the town, but they are undeniably refreshing. After finishing my pint with Josh and Sammy and scribbling down the date of their next tour, I leave Prospect Heights with a renewed thirst for going against the grain.

All beers described in this story were provided free of charge (though not explicitly for review purposes) by the brewers who made them. For information on the New York Home Brewer Tour, please contact Joshua M. Bernstein via e-mail.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 2:11 am and is filed under Brooklyn, New York.