Today is the 29th birthday of Peter Hoey, the brewmaster at Sacramento Brewing. Peter’s a great brewer and has become a good friend over the last few years. He first brewed for Sacramento Brewing ten years ago, but left to brew at Sierra Nevada and then Bison Brewing, before returning to Sacramento a few years ago. He also writes a brewer’s blog. Join me in wishing Peter a very happy birthday.

Peter with his wife Britany, as they take their new baby daughter Lorelai home from the hospital at the end of January, earlier this year.

Peter at the GABF Brewers Reception in 2007, along with Rich Norgrove from Bear Republic and Arne Johnson of Marin Brewing.

Peter, with Todd Ashman, from Fifty-Fifty Brewing at last year’s Northern California Homebrew Festival.

Peter, looking about twelve, and Steve Altimari, from Valley Brewing at the first Raley Field Beer Festival in 2007.

Today is the 54th birthday of Ken Grossman, who founded Sierra Nevada Brewing in 1980. I can’t say too much about how much Ken has done and continues to do for the craft beer industry, while at the same time being wildly successful. Join me in wishing Ken a very happy birthday.

Ken with two of his children, Brian and Sierra, both of whom work for the company. I took this in 2007 for an article I did for American Brewer on passing breweries from one generation to the next.

At the Craft Brewers Conference in 2007, John Harris, from Full Sail, Ken’s daughter Sierra, Ken, and Garret Oliver, from Brooklyn Brewery.

“Inside the Brewers Studio” at the 2006 GABF with Jim Koch of Boston Beer Co., Ken, Charlie Papazian, founder of what is now the Brewers Association, and moderator Tom Dalldorf of the Celebrator.

Today is the 36th birthday of Sean Paxton, a.k.a. The Homebrew Chef. Sean is an alchemist in the kitchen and puts on some wonderful food and beer spectacles. Plus he’s a terrific homebrewer and an even better human being. Join me in wishing Sean a very happy birthday.

At this year’s Great American Beer Festival last week. Bruce Paton, the Beer Chef, Sean and Dave Keene, from the Toronado, in the convention center.

In Sean’s garage bar, after a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner this past August.

Working with nitrogen at the 11-course Belgian Brunch, or Blunch, held at the Toronado.

My wife, Sarah, with Sean after the 10th annual beer dinner at the Northern California Homebrewers Festival held at Lake Francis Resort in Dobbins, California.

According to a story in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, a 28-year old graduate student (in chemistry, no less) was arrested last Friday for using dried poppy pods in his homebrew. Police believe that the student extracted opium from the poppy pods, converting it to morphine before using it the beer. That type of poppy — not the California poppy, California’s state flower — is a Schedule II drug, classified as a narcotic, by the federal government.

According to the student, Chad Renzelman, he bought the poppies on eBay (and wasn’t growing any) and used them last month to brew a beer with a group of friends that he homebrews in weekly in a co-op. Though all of the poppy beer is gone, it reportedly was slightly stronger but had nothing beyond a little “kick to it.” In addition to the Poppy Ale, the co-op has also recently made a chocolate mint stout and a mango blonde ale, so flavored beers are nothing new.

Renzelman also says in the article that “lab investigators from the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, chemists from the state Department of Justice and officials from county Environmental Health were called to survey [his] backyard because police suspected he was dumping hazardous poppy waste there.” Apparently some were even wearing those scary-looking hazmat suits to sift through his compost heap looking for his spent grain.

More from the article:

Police reported finding a pressurized canister of homemade beer laced with morphine in Renzelman’s garage, as well as lab equipment contaminated with opium alkaloids and other hazardous chemicals. Police suspected the poppies were used in the beer production, but that’s still illegal, Capt. Steve Clark said.

If convicted of the crime he was arrested for — suspicion of possessing and manufacturing a controlled substance — Renzelman could be sentenced to seven years in prison.

On one hand, it seems awfully silly that homebrewing with poppies caused such a scene, but I guess that’s the nature of our no tolerance drug policy. Where, by the way, do all the poppy seeds that end up on bread come from? But on the other hand, it seems pretty unlikely that a graduate student in chemistry wouldn’t know he shouldn’t be messing around with opiate poppies.

Today is Paddy Giffen’s 58th birthday. Paddy was the original brewer at Marin Brewing, did some distilling and was briefly with Bear Republic. I saw him a few months ago at the Hopmonk Tavern in Sebastopol, and these days he’s brewing at Lagunitas. Join me in wishing Paddy a very happy birthday.

Paddy and Britt Antrim, himself formerly with Anderson Valley, Kona and Great Divide, but now with Celestial Seasonings, at the Craft Brewers Conference in Austin, Texas.

At a beer dinner the other night at Hopmonk Tavern I had a chance to try Russian River’s newest beer, Happy Hops, whose name has an interesting story.

In talking about it with Vinnie, he declared that it was his new favorite beer, which is essentially a well-hopped blonde ale. Russian River’s website refers to the new beer as a: Hopped-Up Blonde Ale, 5.4% ABV Not really a Blonde Ale, not a Pale Ale, not an IPA. Happy Hops is a light colored refreshing ale with a pronouced hop character. You may also see a special version of this beer once a year called Happy Hops Harvest, which is brewed with fresh “wet” hops grown locally. It’s light and nicely refreshing with a nose reminiscent of hops’ cousin, Mary Jane. Although it’s over 5% and thus not truly so, it does feel like a hoppy session beer. Maybe that’s a relative thing, but a hoppy beer that’s also clean, light and refreshing I think is a great addition to Russian River’s lineup. Its name comes from a historical Santa Rosa brewery, Grace Brothers, which operated on 2nd Street under that name from 1897-1969. The hops business runs in cycles and so, just like today, there was a hop shortage in the late 1940s and hops were rationed for a time. To get around the allotments imposed, Grace Brothers Brewing created another beer company, North Bay Brewing Co., which operated from 1946-52, so they could get two allotments of hops. That brewery’s lineup included a beer called Happy Hops, which, according to the information on the can, was a lager. I love that era’s graphic design. They’d put a face on anything and personify it. The hop man serving up himself for your enjoyment just cracks me up. In case you can’t read the red banner at the bottom of the can, it reads “We grow our own hops, we make our own malt.”

Tuesday night I traveled up to Sebastopol to Dean Biersch’s new place, the Hopmonk Tavern, for a beer dinner featuring the beers of Russian River Brewing. Hopmonk looks like they’re going to be stepping it up and having regular beer dinners roughly every two weeks on Tuesday evenings.

The evening began with a new Russian River beer, which Vinnie declared was his new favorite: Happy Hops, which is a well-hopped blonde ale, but more about that beer later. The meal was four courses and the pairings quite good. We started out with a small salad, including tarragon flatbread and a local artisan goat cheese, which worked especially well with Temptation.

Hopmonk Executive Chef Lynn McCarthy and Russian River brewer Vinnie Cilurzo.

Our second course, scallops in a tomato cream sauce, was paired with two different Damnations, the current batch and one from a year ago.

The main course was Rabbit Pappardelle with a cream sauce, paired with Salvation.

After a dessert of Humble Pie (key lime pie in reality), Lynn McCarthy, Dean Biersch, Natalie and Vinnie Cilurzo.

As I’ve done for the last few years, Saturday morning I drove up to Moonlight Brewing to help out with picking the hops on Brian Hunt’s modest hopyard. It’s always a fun time, and harkens back to the time before hops began being picked by machinery. In those days, hop-picking was a community event, with entire families spending the day in the fields. When I told my own family my plans, my four-year old daughter Alice said she wanted to come along to pick hops, which warmed her father’s heart. So the day became “Take Your Daughter To Hop-Picking Day.”

Me and my daughter Alice, having her first hop-picking experience.

Moonlight Brewery owner Brian Hunt cutting hops from his hopyard to make his fresh hop ale.
 

For more photos from this year’s hop harvest at Moonlight Brewery, visit the photo gallery.
 

When Tom Dalldorf and I came up with the idea for Beerapalooza six years ago, our original vision was a week-long series of events celebrating all the wonderful beer here in the Bay Area, California. Unfortunately, there was just two of us, and we could never quite find the time to pull it together in a way that matched our imagination of what it should have been. Beerapalooza became static, with essentially five annual events—which were all great fun—but that was it. It started off with the Bistro’s Double IPA Festival and finished up with the annual Celebrator Anniversary Party. In between there was the cheese tasting at Rogue’s San Francisco Public House, the Beer Chef’s Beer & Chocolate Dinner and the legendary Toronado Barleywine Festival.

Then earlier this year, Philly Beer Week blew our socks off. What Tom Peters and Don Russell were able to pull off their first year was nothing short of amazing. We were envious and a little guilty that we hadn’t managed to put the same effort into to a similarly grand event here in the Bay Area. We returned from Philadelphia re-energized and committed to pulling it together.

So five of us involved in one capacity or another in the beer world formed an ad hoc committee to organize and promote the successor to Beerapalooza, which we’ve dubbed “SF Beer Week,” which will be held over ten days next year, February 6-15, 2009.

Philly Beer Week characterized their town as being “America’s Best Beer Drinking City.” Since we’re friends with the Philadelphia beer community — hell, I’m originally from Pennsylvania, having grown up just a hour west of Philly — we thought we’d have a little fun with an East Coast/West Coast smackdown and so we’re calling the Bay Area “America’s Original Craft-Beer Drinking City.” Not only are we having a bit of fun with the faux rivalry, but we think we have a pretty good claim to that title. With both Anchor Brewing and New Albion in the Bay Area, not to mention Sierra Nevada and Mendocino Brewing (started with New Albion’s eqiupment), and the fact that three of the first five brewpubs were located in the Bay Area, we feel confident of our claim to that title.

The plan is to showcase the legacy and heritage of beer in the Bay, with a goal of coordinating 100-150 events. The week will be anchored by the Bistro Double IPA Festival, the Toronado Barleywine Festival and will end with a new full-blown Bay Area Beer Festival. In between there will be beer dinners, cheese and beer pairing events, other gourmet food events savoring our world-class cuisine, meet the brewer evenings, homebrewing demonstrations, music, films and even a museum exhibition exploring the history of Bay Area brewing, from Monterey to Sacramento and beyond.

A new website went live over the weekend, in conjunction with handing out postcards announcing SF Beer Week at the Slow Food Nation convention. There’s not much there yet, but you can sign up to receive a newsletter to follow along as we add information over the coming months leading up to the 10-day celebration. Instead of just a few people doing a lot of work on SF Beer Week, we’re enlisting the help of as much of the beer community that’s willing and interested in helping. In that way, our goal is to create an event that’s not just for beer enthusiasts, but by them as well. We also hope to get the support of the wider community in the form of recognition by the City or cities and possibly the state along with support from local tourism boards.

If you’re interested in volunteering or getting involved with SF Beer Week by hosting an event, please contact us via Email. Either way, watch the SF Beer Week website or here for news about the event’s progress. And most importantly, consider showing your support for Bay Area beer by attending as many of the events as your liver and wallet will allow. There should truly be something for everyone, whether you live in northern California or have chosen SF Beer Week as the perfect time to visit us.

The tiny Northern California town of Weed is home to Mt. Shasta Brewing Co., makers of Weed Ales. The town was named for its founder, Abner Weed. Since the other, more notorious kind of weed is illegal, Mt. Shasta had crowns printed up that read “Try Legal Weed.” Sure, it was a bit of cheek, but all in good fun. Of course, the TTB, who approves what goes on beer labels and such at the federal level, didn’t agree and told the brewery they had to remove the offending crowns because it violated a vague policy against referencing illegal drug use. Of course, given a moment’s thought, reason, common sense and a familiarity with grammar should suggest that what they were saying was exactly the opposite: they wanted people to NOT buy illegal weed but instead spend their money on the legal kind, their beer that is. Like most businesses, they’d like to turn a profit and make a living so it’s hard to understand why the TTB would think they were trying to encourage buying a product other than the one they were selling.

At this year’s Boonville Beer Festival, I listened to Vaune Dillmann chronicle his ordeal with the federal agency in great detail, and marveled at how detached from reality our government can be from time to time. I think that’s the way with most, if not all, bureaucracies. They tend to concentrate their own power in ever narrowing ways so that over time they come to have an internal logic that becomes increasingly detached from the rest of society. There are countless examples at both the state and federal level where oversight on labels has been maddeningly ridiculous. But one thing was clear from listening to Dillmann; he was not going to roll over and intended to fight the ruling. You can read his initial account of the story on their website.

Countless mainstream news outlets spread the story, which further showed our federal government in an increasingly bad light. Last month, there was an even a story about it in the Libertarian magazine Reason. Author Greg Beato pointed out that there is a perfume called Opium, soft drinks called Coke, energy drinks called Fixx, Bong Water, Buzzed, Speed Freak, and even Cocaine! And not one of those required any federal approval whatsoever. But add alcohol, and suddenly everyone loses their collective minds. Or as Robert Lehrman, an alcohol attorney sees it. “I don’t think they like making all these immensely subjective decisions on every cotton-picking label that comes down the pike. But that’s how the legislature set it up. The government decided that liquor’s taboo and therefore needs restrictions beyond those for food generally.” You have to ask why that should be so, especially when so many other beverages, foods and other goods openly exploit the very subject that TTB want to protect consumers from when it’s associated with beer. But more curiously, the prohibition against drug references came not from Congress, but is the result of a 1994 internal memo that set “new guidelines for socially acceptable labeling.” But it’s entirely unclear how restricting so-called allusions to drugs protects anyone, especially when every other product sold in America is under no such similar restrictions. Not to mention that alcohol can only be legally sold to adults, and why do we need to protect adults from language that might make some passing reference to drugs? I mean, so what? Does the government believe as an adult that I can’t handle it if I read words about drugs? Do they think I’ll be unable to resist actually trying illegal drugs from simply seeing a reference to them on a bottle of beer? If I haven’t done so from seeing drug references on cologne, soda pop, energy drinks and god knows what else, what makes them think beer will push me over the edge into a drug induced lifestyle? I’m simply baffled at the inanity of it all.

Dallimann was prepared to fight the ruling, but his initial appeal was denied. He was in the process of contacting his legislators and consulting with attorneys, but then, late last week, the TTB dispatched a registered letter to Weed, California, telling the brewery they could once more put “Try Legal Weed” on their bottle caps. They gave the following rationale. “Based on the context of the entire label, we agree that the phrase in question refers to the brand name of the product and does not mislead consumers.” I’d like to believe that the TTB honestly thought about their ruling and based their reversal on reason, but it seems more likely that they didn’t count on all the publicity that sprouted up like … well, weeds. Dallimann shared the letter with the Associated Press, who wrote a story detailing the end of the dispute.

Today is my friend Rod DeWitt’s 51st birthday. Rod is the Director of Plant Engineering & Process Control at Anderson Valley Brewing Co. in Boonville. Rod also plays drums in the Rolling Boil Blues Band. Join me is wishing him a happy birthday.

Rod and me at last year’s Boonville Beer Festival.

Rod DeWitt, on the roof showing me the view depicted on every bottle of Anderson Valley Brewing during a private tour in May of 2006.

Shortly after I launched the website for International Brewers Day, I got an appropriately curmudgeonly comment disdaining the idea from my friend Brian Hunt, who owns Moonlight Brewing. Here’s what he had to say.

Let’s all just make good beer and drink it. The Brewer’s Association will log acres of forests for special posters and mailings. I can see Hallmark jumping on this one big time, and before long you’ll have to wade through all the K-Mart “holiday” ads looking for that right something for the brewers in your life. I vote no on this

While hardly shy, I think having worked in the moonlight for so many years has made Brian shy away from the limelight. That alone made him the perfect choice for my first IBD profile. He is, to my mind, one of the truly unsung heroes of brewing, quietly making some of the nation’s best beers.

And happily I’m not the only one. In an article entitled Czech Mate, published in Forbes, the author reveals that of all the beers rated on Beer Advocate, Moonlight’s Reality Czech is the only golden lager on their list of the “Top Beers on Planet Earth.” Unfazed, Hunt explains.

“We have almost no concept in this country that we can have a beer that is light but also flavorful and vibrant,” explains Brian Hunt, Moonlight Brewing’s owner (and sole employee). “Making a great lager like that requires more time, more skill and more expense than making an ale.”

Brian Hunt was, of course, born in a log cabin near Sacramento, and walked ten miles to school, uphill — both ways — through blizzards in winter and punishing heat in summer. Alright, everything in that last sentence, except Sacramento, I made up. But Brian’s past just cries out to be remade as mythic fable.

Brian started college at U.C. San Diego as a biochemistry major, but soon realized that most of his fellow students were pre-med, a path he decidedly was not interested in pursuing. So he transferred to U.C. Davis to study fermentation sciences with an eye toward becoming a winemaker. But fate stepped in when he was randomly assigned Michael Lewis as his advisor. Needing income, he found himself working in Lewis’ laboratory and found it was easy to be persuaded to concentrate on beer instead of wine. He found his fellow brewing students much closer to his own temperament, more down to earth and fun. “Beer just seemed more enjoyable.” Hunt remarked. After graduating with a degree in Fermentation Sciences in 1980, Hunt relocated to the heart of early brewing — Milwaukee, Wisconsin — to take a job at the Schlitz Brewery. He loved the history of the place. Everywhere you looked it was there. Hunt spent about eighteen months working for Schlitz. There were no computers in the place. Every step they took was done manually, so you learned the reason why you did certain things, and you could extrapolate those to subsequent steps, too. As a result, he learned a lot in that year and a half, crediting that experience with setting the tone for the rest of his career. He moved back to California in 1981, brewing at the now long gone Berkeley Brewing Co., making ales and lagers on a 40-bbl system. After that venture went belly-up, he consulted on several brewing projects throughout the Bay Area, before ending up at Acme Brewing in Santa Rosa, California in 1985. He was there two years, but the brewery never had much of a chance owing to financial issues that the owners had not anticipated. The majestic 100-bbl brewhouse finally made its first batch of beer on March 2, 1987, but it was too late. Hunt says of his time there that it was a great MBA project and he learned most of what he needed (whether he wanted to or not) about the business side of the brewing industry. When the Santa Rosa brewery finally shuttered its doors, Brian spent some time working for the other team at Grgich Hills Winery before a brief stint formulating two beers (whose recipes have since changed) and helping layout the brewery itself at the early Anderson Valley Brewing Co. in Boonville.

In 1988, Brian finally opened his own place in Napa with a descendant of the Hamms brewing family. He had a 1/3-share of Willett’s Brewing Co. (now Downtown Joe’s) from sweat equity and $1,100 of his own money. But by 1992, a get-rich-quick lawsuit brought by one of the brewpub’s employees forced Willett’s into bankruptcy. Brian Hunt saw the writing on the wall, and when someone phoned him to offer 100 Hoff-Stevens kegs, he bought them for himself and began … well, moonlighting.

The original Moonlight brewery was built in a barn behind the house he was renting. He built the entire system himself using equipment cobbled together from a variety of sources. Brian bought old kettles from a winery that couldn’t boil water, and so had to be adapted. Quite a number of items from Sierra-Nevada’s yard sale (when they opened their own larger brewery in Chico) found their way into Moonlight’s brewery barn, including fermenters and a keg washer. The whole enterprise was financed with credit cards and a $20,000 personal loan. The initial brewhouse included a 7-bbl system.

The original name was going to be Old Barn Brewery, but it never sounded quite right. New Moon Brewing was also an early contender of the hundreds of names that were brainstormed. But once the name Moonlight was floated, there was no turning back. It just worked on so many levels and it seemed to mean different thing to different people, a quality Hunt relished.

For the first two-and-a-half years, beginning in 1992, Brian literally slept 5-1/2 nights out of every seven. He was working two jobs, one at the newly opened Downtown Joe’s (where the bankrupt Willett’s brewpub had been) and at his own place in the barn. This continued until he could afford to concentrate just on Moonlight Brewing. But just a few years into the new venture, another monkey wrench was thrown Hunt’s way. His landlord decided he wanted the house Hunt and his family lived in for his own son and told Brian they had to go. Luckily, they let him keep the brewery in the barn until it could be moved. In 1999, Hunt and his family moved to their present location. It would take another four years until all he permits were in place and the new brewery was built. The new system was 21-bbl and was the original Hart Brewing system, which Brian bought from the Thomas Kemper brewery on Bainbridge Island in Washington. The present set-up has pieces from at least fifty different breweries, either ones that went out of business or upgraded.

 
Neither the original brewery now the new one has a computer of any kind in it, and that’s by design. It’s because of one of Hunt’s favorite quotes, this one by Albert Einstein. “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Hunt sees one of the most important aspects of brewing as creativity and thinks of himself more as a tinkerer or toymaker of sorts. And, as he puts it, “you can’t see what’s happening if you’re just pushing buttons.” He believes that many young brewers don’t understand how to make “delicious” because of what he terms “a failure of imagination.” This is because, he says, “many are not taught how to think for themselves.

The first three beers Moonlight brewed are all still being made: Lunatic Lager, Death & Taxes, and Twist of Fate. Lunatic Lager’s original name, though, was Moonlight Pale Lager, so named because Hunt thought it would translate better to consumers already aware of the newly popular pale ales. The fourth beer Hunt made was Bombay by Boat IPA, also in 1992, and it was one of the first IPAs made in America. At that time, nobody really made one and certainly those few who did, did not call it an IPA.

Hunt believes that being small also allows him a flexibility that bigger breweries can only dream about. He can follow market trends and turn on a dime. Because he not only brews the beer, but also delivers it (he’s a one man operation, most of the time) he’s not removed from his customer but mingles and converses with them almost every day of the week.

His original plan was to hope that he could make a living in Sonoma selling whatever he brewed. Though his net is spread slightly wider than he originally thought, it’s not by much, and he’s remained true to initial vision. “I don’t find success by selling a lot, I find it by selling to people who respect it or appreciate it.” So long as that’s the case, we won’t be seeing Moonlight beer in grocery stores nationwide or even bottle locally. Brian’s just not looking for that kind of success. He’s content doing what he wants in his own way, an iconoclast to the end. As you’d expect, Hunt also doesn’t think much of competitions either. “Fame is empty.” He says. “Good beer should not be.” So while that may be a loss for the people who can’t find Moonlight beer in their neighborhood, it does make the Bay Area just that much more of special place for beer and provides yet another reason for beer fans around the world to make the pilgrimage to taste California beer.

Or put another way — as his pint glasses used to read — “good beer is as good beer does.”