Three new craft breweries opened this year in northwest Ohio, and there are a few more on the horizon

In truth, however, the Toledo region is just now playing catchup to the rest of the state when it comes to craft beer, at least when it comes to the number of breweries in the area.

That’s one reality.

Another is, Toledo has been at the heart of the craft beer revolution since Day 1. And all the credit goes to SABCO Industries, which has made Brew-Magic for the past 20 years.

“We’re not so much known in Toledo,” said Bob Sulier, president and CEO of SABCO, 4511 South Ave. “The vast majority of our sales are international. We’re shipping [Brew-Magic and other brewing equipment] into 40-plus different countries. The Brew-Magic system is in the hands of homebrewers as well as advanced large-scale professionals like Anheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors.”

Brew-Magic is ideal for the advanced amateur brewer or for the pilot brewing system for well-established breweries, Sulier said.

“What happens with the homebrew hobbyist, they invest in finer equipment because they want to improve their skills and techniques and their ability to make better and finer quality products. They do it, not just because they enjoy it, but because they like to compete. They go to beer judgings and try to make the blue ribbon happen.”

Then, Sulier said, the next step for the successful home brewer is to turn professional, and that’s where the Brew-Magic system, which costs about $7,000, comes into play.

“The only way that’s going to happen for them is they need to go through the transition from amateur to professional,” someone who’s “sick and tired of making what we call snowflake beer — meaning every [batch] is different,” he said. “My favorite question to ask these folks is, can you make the same identical, great beer twice in a row? And they backpedal, they smile, and say, ‘Well, not really. It’s close, but it’s really not the same.’

“And that’s when I introduce them to the Brew-Magic system, a pretty scientifically generated piece of equipment.”

According to Sulier, the system was designed by brewing scientists in 1990. They wanted to develop a laboratory-precise system so that brewers could produce small-batch test recipes on an experimental scale without spending a lot of money.

“If they want to tweak a particular recipe and if the only way to do it is to make a batch in their full-blown system, it’s going to cost them a fortune to do that,” said Sulier, a University of Toledo alumnus. “When you can create an appliance that can remove the input variables of the brewer, can remove the mechanical errors or variations of the system itself, and leave you with only the ingredients as a variable, you have a perfect tool to perfect a recipe and hone it until it is exactly what you want.

“Then [Brew-Magic] will remember those recipe parameters and give you the ability to repeat that exact product every single time. When you can pull that off, now you’ve reached into a different world in complexity in brewing. You’re now moving out of the amateur and into the semi-pro who demands consistency.”

Being able to replicate recipe after recipe is even more important for established craft breweries and the makers of macro brews. Brew-Magic is the same system that Sam Calagione used to found Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales, one of the most popular craft breweries.

“The commercial [brewers] are in the big leagues,” Sulier said. “Their life’s reputation is solely dependent on their ability to produce the same product every single time and have the same kind of brew consistency. Brew-Magic is how they can tweak those recipes. For amateurs, it’s a way to introduce and to hone their techniques and methodologies.”

Sulier said there are more than 3,000 Brew-Magic systems in circulation worldwide and SABCO, thanks to the popularity of craft beer, has averaged making one per day for the past few years. The systems mostly end up in the hands of established brewpubs and taprooms or the advanced homebrewers who are about to open a brewery.

SABCO was started by Sulier’s father, Ed, in 1961 as Sav-A-Barrel Corp., an innovator in making stainless steel kegs reusable in the brewing industry. In 1995, SABCO took the final prototype of the Brew-Magic system and “developed it and prettied it up and made it more functional by adding electronics and kept it going ever since,” Sulier said. In 2007, SABCO began to concentrate on craft brewing.

“We can now say with full confidence that the little Brew-Magic system singlehandedly has opened more pubs in the U.S. and across the world than any other system out there combined,” he said.

SABCO hosted the Glass City Mashers during the American Homebrewers Association’s annual Learn How to Brew Day on a recent Saturday.

“Brew-Magic is a small, 15-gallon brew system that can be managed by one person,” said Scot Yarnell, president of the homebrew club. “It is easy to use and yet delivers commercial quality. That is why it is often used by homebrewers when they decide to open their own brewery.”

Four club members had the opportunity to brew on two Brew-Magic systems, under the guidance of SABCO’s Jonathan Daugherty. The two-person teams — Keefe Snyder-Donna Keller and Ben Trout-Keith Baker — created their own recipes for a holiday porter and a hoppy brown. About 40 people turned out to view the demonstration.

“We are fortunate to have SABCO in Toledo,” Yarnell said.

“The wave of enthusiasm is a treat to behold,” Sulier said. “In days gone by, the light lagers were chugged and guzzled and you moved on to the next bottle after you cut the grass and you didn’t pay any attention to what it was that you were guzzling.

“Now, they’re becoming wine drinkers of beer. People are being choosy now. That’s driven the interest in craft brewing to almost an explosion across the country not just in northwest Ohio, but all across the world. We entertain new pubs and new breweries every single day.

“There are over 4,000 [breweries] now across the country and I don’t think it’s going to stop in the near future. I find ourselves in a fortunate position to watch the transition from amateur to professional all the time with our particular offerings and I think northwest Ohio is going to be exploding very quickly.”

For more information, go to brewmagic.com.

Raise a Glass is a craft beer column covering what's brewing in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan.

Contact Bob Cunningham at bcunningham@theblade.com or 419-724-6506.

First Published November 25, 2015, 5:00 a.m.