Craft brewing seems to know no bounds in its burgeoning popularity.
Before all those enterprising beer makers became brew masters, they had to start somewhere.
They usually started with a homebrewing kit.
The Glass City Mashers, a Toledo homebrewing club, will host its annual Learn to Homebrew Day event from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at Titgemeiers Feed and Garden store, 701 Western Ave.
Established in 2011, the club will have members on hand to host five different free how-to sessions, aka “beer school.” They will also be available to explain the brewing process, as well as answer general questions about making beer at home.
Tom Strohbeck, who owns Titgemeiers, said beer and wine-making sales make up about 25 percent of the store’s sales. Mr. Strohbeck said he started stocking a corner of the store with beer and wine-making supplies about 20 years ago, and it has grown at a 10 percent to 15 percent rate each year — so much so that the supplies now occupy about 50 percent of his retail floor space.
“[The club] wanted to have the event here because we’re the only beer supplies store in Toledo,” he said. “Homebrewing is really the impetus for the popularity of craft beer today. The product you can make is as good as the product you can buy.”
Club president Scot Yarnell, 47, began homebrewing 20 years ago, long before it was trendy.
“I started like a lot of people start their hobbies, because they think they’re going to save money,” said Mr. Yarnell, a clinical engineer at ProMedica Toledo Hospital.
Some popular beer styles include Indian Pale Ale, wheat ale, abbey ale, pilsner, lager, porter, stout, and saison, aka farmhouse ale.
“I don’t think there’s a single person I’ve ever known who has brewed a Coors Light or Bud Light clone,” Mr. Yarnell said. “People brew a lot of crazy things, but no one brews that kind of beer.”
Mr. Yarnell said he was drinking a lot of imported beer in the early to mid-1990s because craft options weren’t readily available, especially in northwest Ohio.
“I really wanted to brew the beers of the world,” he said while brewing a kolsch-style beer in his South Toledo kitchen. “My first beer was a Czech pilsner, and then after I started experimenting with my stouts, and adding some cherry to it.”
Mr. Yarnell’s favorite style is India Pale Ale, and he said he has perfected a recipe for a 70-minute IPA that he enjoys making.
“It’s very similar to Dogfish Head’s 60 Minute IPA, but I add 10 more minutes to the boil,” he said. “It’s a little hoppier and has more mouth feel and alcohol content.”
Mr. Yarnell said he got serious about his homebrewing hobby about eight years ago when he started entering contests. He won a few ribbons at the Henry County Fair and that got him hooked. Until then, he had just worried whether it tasted good or if it was close enough to style. From there, he started doing more research and tweaking his recipes.
That’s when he got interested in the Beer Judge Certification Program, or BJCP.
Besides promoting the appreciation and knowledge of beer worldwide, the goal of the BJCP, which was founded in 1985, is to “develop standardized tools, methods, and processes for the structured evaluation, ranking, and feedback of beer, mead, and cider,” according to the organizations’ website.
“All these things, the mouth feel, the overall impression, the ingredients have to be close, the vital statistics have to be there, the appearance, the aroma,” Mr. Yarnell said. “Then I started brewing beers more to style and winning some more ribbons.
“It’s really easy to brew good beer, you just have to follow a few simple rules. I’ve really learned a lot in the last few years from the guys in this club. They really challenge me to brew better.”
Mr. Yarnell said the Saturday sessions at Titgemeiers are set up “for people who really want to learn” by walking them through the process from the beginning, which includes beer recipe selection, buying ingredients, and grinding the grains.
Titgemeiers, which has been operating in Toledo since 1888, will hold a raffle drawing for a homebrew kit. The Glass City Mashers will have door prizes during the event, including T-shirts and pint glasses. Free hot dogs will be available, as well as free beer samples for people 21 and over.
The event starts with a 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. session on all-grain brewing on an advanced system. There also is an all-grain session on a typical homebrewing system from 11 to 3. The club also covers sessions about partial mash from 11 to 2 and on extract from 10 to noon and 1 to 3.
For more information, go to glasscitymashers.org or titgemeiers.com.
Contact Bob Cunningham at bcunningham@theblade.com or 419-724-6506 or follow him on Twitter @1012rbc.
First Published October 31, 2014, 4:00 a.m.
