I was 4 years old and living in Cranford, NJ when my Uncle Paul offered me my first taste of beer.  It was Ballantine Ale.  I went through the next 13 years growing up without a drop of beer.  But boy oh boy, I remembered how good it tasted.

            In 1969 I and four other 20 year olds were arrested with a case of beer in the car.  We were all underage.  After a $240 fine and the bad taste of beer still lingering I continued to modestly indulge in cheap beer during my first few years of nuclear engineering studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

            The truth of the matter was that throughout my early college years I had not enjoyed the taste of beer.

            Then George Conner came to play marbles at our student produced Whoop Moffitt Memorial Marbles Tournament.  George was a beer drinker and it wasn't too long before he suggested I visit his beer making neighbor.  With little hesitation I found myself trying a neighborly brew.  The novelty of making one's own beer intrigued me much more than the taste of what I recall as fizzy, cidery and alcoholic tasting prohibition-style homebrew.

I walked away buzzed, inspired and with the following cryptic recipe:

5 gallons warm water,  1 can Premier Blue Ribbon malt (light or dark), 1 1/2 cans full sugar, white or black, more or less. Mix.  Add 1 cake bread yeast when cool,Ferment until bubbling stops (7 days to 5 weeks depending on your sugar content and temperature).  Best at 45 degrees F., Tip (sic) bottle.

             My first three 10-gallon batches of dump-and-stir homebrew were undrinkable.   Being somewhat persistent I managed to discover beer friendly ingredients and procedures.  Consequently, up from the 8 by 8 foot dirt floored basement of George's preschool emerged many an infamous palatable homebrew.

            My roommates and I homebrewed regularly and I eventually graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Nuclear Engineering in 1972.  But I think the beer made me dyslexic because “nuclear” became “unclear” and I pursued other paths.

            Pure whimsy brought me to Boulder, Colorado, that same year and I found myself a preschool teacher and a born again homebrewer.  I taught 4 to 12 year old children through 1981, taking off each summer to hitchhike and backpack across the United States and British Columbia, as well as extended backpacking ventures in the Hawaiian Islands, Fiji, Bali and Central America.  And yes, I sampled beer – homebrewed, village brewed and commercial – whenever I could afford it.

            It was in 1973 that I thought I knew enough about making beer (which was hardly anything at all) to teach a beer brewing class through Boulder's Community Free School.  It was in these first class sessions that I actually boiled my first wort.  I soon discovered many ways to improve on beer and developed a taste for what I'd call quality beer, an experience I had never known before.  Yes, I've had my failures and memorable brews; I’ll never forget the original "Goat Scrotum Ale" or "Barkshack Ginger Mead."

From 1973 to 1983 I taught over 1,000 people in the Boulder-Denver, Colorado area how to make and enjoy great beer.  My mimeographed 6-page class curriculum evolved to a funky but inspirational self-published, self-typed 40-page book titled The Joy of Brewing (1976).  Four years later I again self published a 90-page The New, Revised and More Joy of Brewing (1980).  Three years later I signed a contract with Avon Books to write The Complete Joy of Home Brewing (1984) and later revised that book to The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing in 1991 and The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, 3^rd Edition, (2005).

            Meanwhile most graduates of my class became avid homebrewers and beer enthusiasts, inspiring the formation of The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) and its magazine zymurgy.  One of my first students, Charlie Matzen, along with a bottle of April Morning Honey Spruce Lager, were the catalysts for inspiring the idea of a magazine for homebrewers.  I recall the moment quite vividly.  It was Easter Sunday and we had just finished a few bottles of homebrew in the Utah desert.  A thunderstorm approached from a distance.  Lightning zig zaged across the sky.  Curiously the brightest flash streaked from one cloud to another as the letter "Z."  The rain never came, but we knew Z stood for zymurgy, the last word in the dictionary, meaning the science and art of yeast fermentation.  Later that evening, we also saw a vision of the Easter Bunny walk across Lake Powell – but that's another story.  Homebrew has been responsible for many visions in my life.  Zymurgy magazine and the American Homebrewers Association were two of them. 

            Charlie M and I founded the non profit educational association in 1978 with the contribution of three years of volunteer help from dozens of local Boulder homebrewers.  Our $4,000 in personal seed money eventually got repaid five years later.  In 1981 I left teaching to take on the one full-time position at the AHA drawing and living off of a salary of $300 per month.  By 1987 the AHA and zymurgy evolved to serving as one division of the Association of Brewers.  Still based in Boulder, Colorado the original organization has merged with another to form the Brewers Association under which the American Homebrewers Association still thrives with over 16,000 members. 

In 1981 it was not homebrew but perfect pints of real ale at the Great British Beer Festival that inspired the first Great American Beer Festival (GABF) in 1982.  The first GABF was a small event with 3 microbrewers, 17 large and regional brewers with about 700 Boulder beer enthusiasts in attendance.  Remarkable numbers in those days.  26 years later it featurs over 400 breweries and 1,884 beers on tap for 46,000 attendees.   All originally inspired by bottles of great homebrew. 

            I enjoy traveling incognito to developing and third world countries to learn more about people, myself and the way we are and have been.   I seek local beer and sometimes enjoy just drinking it and not having to talk about it.

              Through the years I've brewed thousands of gallons of mostly good beer.  Thousands of times I've heard first-time homebrew drinkers say, "Hey, this stuff is good."  I've heard as many times, "I like this, and I don't usually like beer."  I get these responses from men and women, young and old.  It almost seems as though no one dislikes well-brewed homebrew and the company of good people.  There is something inherently likeable about good beer.  It's appreciated and the taste for it naturally develops.

You'll have to excuse me now ... I’ve got to go ... Beer is my business and I'm late for work.

What’s in my glass?

Aloha and a tip of my glass to Maui Brewing Company who have managed to get their beer on Aloha Airlines (see comments on Designing Beer at 36,000 feet).  Brewed in the Lahaina, Maui area I visited the brewery in March and can attest to the terrific beers they have.  While there my wife and I sampled Barracuda Bitter, Big Swell IPA and a Double Overhead  IPA, Penguin Imperial Stout, Red Cock Doppelbock, Coconut Porter, Black Pearl (local) Rum Barrel Aged Coconut Porter, Belgian Abbey Ale, Pauhana (Czech style) Pilsner and  Maui Pale Ale.   I particularly liked their Coconut Porter; rich, roast malt cocoa character, medium bodied, coconut and floral hops, a burst of moderate alcohol.  Wonderful balance it goes extremely well with Thai red curries.  Wow.