Weekly Brew: Homebrewers among us

Saturday was National Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day, and no, I am not going to tell you how to brew beer in your dorm room (I would really like to keep this job), but the event itself is noteworthy. Homebrewers are responsible for the current state of beer and the only reason why you can walk into any decent package store and find American beer that is better than most beer made around the world.

But let's take a step back first, back to 1919, the year prohibition began. This being America, obviously some people had a problem with this and some of them did something about it. Many breweries, instead of closing their doors forever, started selling cans of malted barley syrup with instructions that provided information if you just happened to be curious how to make beer out of it. Thus, in the ultimate time of need, homebrewing was born.

Let's continue our little trip through time to the year 1933 when the 21st Amendment is passed and alcohol consumption is once again legal, including the production of wine in households. But just wine; due to a clerical error, beer was left off the amendment and homebrewing continued to be illegal.

Now it's the year 1945 and American soldiers are returning home from World War II and many days spent abroad. They're also bringing back with them a taste for European beer they can not find anywhere in the US. A spark is lit and the desire for beer increases.

In 1978 Jimmy Carter signed H.R. 1337, an amendment that removed the taxation from beer brewed at home, thereby allowing people to brew beer for personal use. It went into effect February of 1979, and for the first time in 50 years beer brewing at home was once again legal.

This brings us to today, in terms of history at least. There are still several states. But, where homebrewing remains illegal; these include Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi.

So you have a bunch of people who have just recently been allowed to actually make beer themselves and can't get a hold of the kind of beer they actually want. So they start brewing beers like German hefe-weizens and Belgian dubbels and English bitters. Some of them get pretty good at it too. Probably under the influence, they decide they want to open breweries of their own.

Here is a list of breweries started by homebrewers: Brooklyn Brewery, Dogfish Head, Sierra Nevada, Surly Brewing, Bell's, Firestone Walker, etc. That's only the tip of the iceberg.

Homebrewers are also responsible for a lot of recent beer trends and sudden upsurges in popularity of certain styles. Here's an example; there is a homebrewer named Denny Conn who is famous among homebrewers for his Rye India Pale Ale, something he started doing years ago. Not too long ago, the company He'Brew started making a Rye IPA named Lenny's Rye IPA, which is supposed to be named after Lenny Bruce, but personally I'm still not buying it completely.

On the west coast, beers made with ridiculous amounts of hops are commonplace; another homebrewing trend. Sour beers are becoming more and more common. This has entirely homebrewing origins. Any bizarre or rare beer style produced by an American brewer was probably the result of a homebrewer saying, "Hey, no one makes a good ____. Why don't you guys?" This is how a group of people that don't even make up a quarter of a percent of the U.S. population have drastically changed beer across the country.

Professional brewers remember where they came from and will go out of their way to help homebrewers. Many places will sell grain to homebrewers at cost or give them some of their yeast right out of the fermentation tank. No other industry works so hand-in-hand with the amateurs at home; it shows the real spirit of beer and what it does to people.

Next time you're enjoying a beer, just remember the guys that helped get it there.

Until next time, sláinte!