Home Brewing

You probably won’t see Yuengling, Blue Moon or Guinness labels at a party hosted by Jamie Magagna ’11, Joe Jung ’11 and their friends. In fact, you probably won’t see any labels at all. Ever since they started making their own beer, Magagna and Jung have entertained friends with their own special brew, which is served in label-less recycled bottles but boasts a flavor right up there with the big names.

According to the American Homebrewers Association, they are not alone: More than 750,000 people are home brewing nationwide. College campuses have seen a particular surge in brewing popularity as students take a creative approach to imbibing.

“I think it’s part of the do-it-yourself trend, like how people are butchering their own meat or making their own cheese,” Jung said.

Though it’s hard to gauge how many students home brew at Princeton, Jung said the number is definitely on the rise.

“People are getting kind of anti-mass-produced ... everything,” Magagna noted.

Ashley Routson, a prominent beer blogger also known as the Beer Wench, says that many professional brewers began their craft in college. As a self-described “beer evangelist,” Routson said it is important for young drinkers to appreciate and respect home-brewed (or “craft”) beer.

She noted that most college students, unfortunately, are “mindlessly drinking whatever yellow fizzy beer they can find at the cheapest price,” rather than considering a beer’s ingredients, origins and quality.

Making one’s own beer has its benefits. It can save money for those who typically purchase high-quality bottled beer, and it also cuts down on the transport and packaging of commercially produced beer. Home brewers often begin with basic $100–$200 kits that can produce pale ales, wheat beers and stout. Brewing also gives people a chance to express themselves. Adventurous brewers can add ingredients such as fruit or spices.

“Brewing beer is like making food — there is a baking-scientific component to it as well as a cooking-creative aspect,” Routson said.

For Sam Borchard ’11, who has brewed everything from India pale ale to pumpkin beer, home brewing is just more interesting than going to the liquor store.

“You end up with really delicious beer, and it has a story behind it that you participated in,” he said.

Borchard’s aunt, who is an artist, designed and printed labels for his beer as a Christmas present, naming it “Sam’s Sauce.”

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According to Roger Mittag — a beer appreciation professor at Humber College in Toronto and the founder of Canada’s leading beer education company, Thirst For Knowledge — this willingness to take a risk is crucial. “Beer has grown in interest in the past few decades mainly because of the newer generations’ more refined palates,” he said. “There’s also less loyalty to bigger brands and therefore more experimentation.”

Like many budding brewers, Jung and Magagna experimented after they purchased a kit from a home brew supply store. “It started just as a fun thing to do. When you’re done, you can share the beers, give them as gifts or throw a party,” Jung said.

Along with a few other friends, Jung and Magagna brew five gallons of beer, or about 50 beers, in each batch. So far, the group has made oatmeal stout and Sierra Nevada-style pale ale.

While the two seniors are always looking out for opportunities to get more serious about home brewing, Magagna and Jung said that for now, it’s just a fun hobby to share with others.

“We really should have a brewing competition where everyone can come up with their own recipe,” Magagna said.

Indeed, the basic method is a lot easier than many people think. The brewing process usually takes only two to three hours, while bottling the beers takes about an hour.

The most basic home brew kits employ a technique called extract brewing. This method involves using a malt extract (usually a concentrate or powder) instead of starting with whole grains and mashing them up. Brewers start the process by sanitizing their equipment to avoid stagnant beer and bacterial infections. After boiling a large pot of water, they add malt extract and hops. This mixture is called the wort, and they proceed to boil it, cool it and pour it into a fermentation bucket. After adding water to the wort and aerating it, brewers add yeast to the mixture and store the covered fermentation bucket. If they keep an eye on the fermentation process, the home-brewed beer should be ready to drink in a couple weeks.

A more advanced, yet somewhat tedious, home brewing technique is all-grain brewing, which replaces the extract with grain equivalents. Justin Knutson ’11 said he prefers using this method when he brews his own beer at Charter Club.

“The grain brewing leads to a more distinct product, and me being the old-fashioned guy I am, I like doing it. It’s much more involved — a seven- or eight-hour process,” he said. Health codes make it difficult to serve home-brewed beer on a typical night out at Charter, but Knutson said he has had home brew on tap once for a private gathering.

When it comes to home brewing on the Street, Knutson said, “I’m told it goes back quite a ways to when some of the clubs would do their own brewing.” In addition to Charter, Terrace Club has also experimented by brewing an entire keg of beer.

One Princetonian has taken home brewing to the next level. Grace ’12, who wanted to remain anonymous because she is underage, said she is interning at a budding New York brewery called Gorf and Dorf during her year off from school. When she saw the brewery’s ad on craigslist.com seeking “an attractive brew wench to grind our grain,” Grace said she was excited to help out.

“Now, I’m a beer freak,” Grace said. “I love beer.”

Grace helps the two founders, Mark Gorfinkle and Andy Dorf, brew small all-grain batches in the courtyard of Gorfinkle’s Manhattan apartment about once a month. The founders brew beer solely for themselves and their friends, rather than for commercial sale. They have experimented with ingredients ranging from orange peel to Tahitian vanilla bean.

As an Asian woman under 21, Grace said her race, gender and age make her stand out among other beer junkies. “When a girl is interested in beer, it’s kind of like, ‘Whoa, you’re different,’ ” she said.

Grace added that others find it fascinating that she loves a beverage so commonly viewed as part of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. “The beer world is definitely getting more racially diverse, but if I go to a pub or ale house and meet a fellow Asian, there’s kind of a nod of acknowledgement,” she says.

Princeton’s home brewers are into the right beverage at the right time, Grace said: “Wines are done in America; beers are definitely the new thing to be a snob about.”

Mittag confirms that beer can be just as complex as wine: “If we encourage brewers to create from their heart, there are thousands of interpretations.”