Meet the Homebruer: Keith Pumilia

We certainly have a lot of new faces around The Bruery lately. Our newest cellarmen comes all the way from Louisiana. Keith's energy and enthusiasm for craft beer is infectious (no pun intended), and it's no wonder when you learn about his homebrew background.

How did you become interested in the hobby?
In 2005 I was visiting my future in-laws in Japan and my future father-in-law showed me how he had been homebrewing for years there. I was immediately hooked.

Meet the Homebruer: Josh Reyes

If you've been to our Tasting Room on weekends recently, you may have noticed the occasional option to sign up for tours of our brewhouse. Though we're working on relaunching an improved tour program in the near future, in the meantime Josh is able to parade a few interested folks around. Josh is one of our newer additions to The Bruery family, but he's by no means new to beer and brewing.

When did you start homebrewing?

Much like many of our own Bruers, I started homebrewing in college.

Meet the Homebruer: Brian Cockle

Brian Cockle is one of the silent heroes here at The Bruery. He keeps our tech stuff running smoothly during the day, but is a homebrewer and dad by night. He's a bit notorious for his huge & techy homebrew set up, which you can see even more of over on his blog.

When did you start homebrewing?
Like a lot of people, I started homebrewing back in college.

Meet the Homebruer: Sean Flannery

You may have already tried Sean's pilot batch brew back in February during one our Meet the Brewer nights. Like many of our homebruers we've posted about on this blog, Sean began pursuing the hobby in school before becoming a pro.

When did you start homebrewing?
I started homebrewing in college with a friend that had a malt extract Hefeweizen kit and invited me to assist. The beer came out with a ton of sediment and we packaged it in 3L plastic bottles. It tasted ok, but was just the beginning for more ideas.

Meet the Homebruer: Andrew Bell

You may have recently had a chance to meet Andrew Bell, our experimental brewer who oversees what's happening on our pilot system. Andrew has been a fan of The Bruery for a long time, and we were stoked to hire him on two years ago to brew on our team. Before he brewed professionally, he was an avid homebrewer and a bit of a beer geek, (and we like that).

When did you start homebrewing?
A few years before I was legally allowed to purchase alcohol. I started by making ciders and eventually moved on to brewing early on in my college career. I was curious about the science behind fermentation, as well as seeing if I could actually create something good.

Meet the Homebruer: Jamie Burns

Surely you remember Jamie's friendly face from all those trips to pick up your Reserve Society or Preservation Society beers from the Tasting Room.

Jamie has been with The Bruery for three years, but about a year and a half ago she had the opportunity to get her hands dirty with a homebrew lesson from one of our former brewers.

When did you start homebrewing?

Meet the Homebruer: Tyler King

Sometimes it's hard to believe we just started brewing in 2008. Our first employee those six years ago was Tyler King, who signed on to do just about anything that was needed.

He was still in school and tasked with marketing and advertising our summer seasonal as part of an internship with The Bruery, but he was also going to be brewing with Patrick. Tyler is now our Senior Director of Brewing Operations, overseeing all the beer happenings here.

It wasn't only the timing that was perfect when hiring Tyler -- he also had proved himself with his homebrewing prowess, which was apparent with the success & praise of his Flemish Red recipe, which has over time become the beer you may know as Oude Tart.

When did you start homebrewing?

Harvesting a Brew: Barley Basics, from Brewer Andrew Bell

As we jump into Harvest Month at The Bruery and The Tasting Room, our staff is dissecting what it takes to harvest all the parts that make up beer. With the number of craft breweries skyrocketing, it's a wonder barley and hop suppliers can keep up

It's easy to take the supply & demand of beer ingredients for granted when we're simply focusing on the enjoyment of a fresh brew, so let's get to know our beer better in our series of posts on Harvesting a Brew. This first one comes from Bruery brewer Andrew Bell, homebrewer-extraordinaire-gone-pro.

Barley is by and large the biggest harvest-able component of beer. Hops get all the glory, and beer people sometimes grow hops at home, but very rarely have you heard of people growing barley at home. In fact, very few breweries grow barley in the US -- two of the few that I can think of off the top of my head are Sierra Nevada and Rogue, and only for a small range of beers.

This is probably due to the fact that raw barley is not particularly useful for beer making. To make it useful in most circumstances, it has to be malted. The malting process is both an art and a science, and is relatively complicated and resource-heavy to do at home, or at an actual brewery, in any large quantity.

Meet the Homebruer: Benjamin Weiss

Our third employee ever, Benjamin has worked in just about every role at The Bruery. From brewing, to packaging, to marketing, to arts & crafts, he's worked his way finally to Director of Marketing here. But he wasn't always working such a dreamy job. Ben came from the music industry and followed his passion for homebrew, which lead him to this very blog, before becoming a Bruer.

On a foggy Venice Beach day in late 2006, young Ben decided it was the perfect day to crack open his roommate's homebrew kit and boil some wort. Roughly a year later, he got to know a certain Patrick and Tyler.

What happened that made you start homebrewing? 

Meet the Homebruer: Cesar Alfaro

On the cusp of releasing Batch 1000 BRYEIAN, we are profiling some of our homebruers on our staff! Many of our team members developed their love for The Bruery via homebrew clubs, and today those clubs and their members are still very important to us. That's a big reason why we host our Batch series competition for milestone brews.

One of our homebruers made his first batch in 2008, and today he works in our packaging department, carefully bottling and lovingly boxing bottles of beer to be sent out for your enjoyment. His name is Cesar, and he has excellent hair.

What sparked your interest in homebrewing?

Meet the Hombruer: Matt Olesh

Homebrewing is where Patrick and the OG Bruery crew first got their adorable little beer making sea-legs. The homebrew community is certainly still a priority to us, and so for our milestone batches we host a competition where the winning recipe comes from ... you guessed it: homebrewers! So far we've made Batch 1, 50, 300 and are now on to our 1000th batch featuring a recipe from Brian and Bryan (AKA Briyan) from Colorado. They'll be coming out to visit us in mid-July to help brew Batch 1000, a Cascadian dark rye.

Though we are a larger company now than when we started only five years ago, our passion for brewing (and goofing off) has only grown stronger. Whether we work in the office, tasting room, or brewery itself, lots of us homebrew when we're off the clock, even though we're around it all day!

We're highlighting our "homebruers" in a series of blogposts in support of our upcoming Batch 1000 beer. This time we're featuring a man who is no stranger to many of you who hang at The Bruery Tasting Room. Matt Olesh is our Director of Retail Operations and he's been a homebrewing for about 5 years now.

Meet the Homebruer: Rich Ruelle

We're pretty excited about brewing our 1000th batch of beer this year. You can read more about the homebrew competition and winning recipe for Batch 1000 in our blogpost Homebrued from Batch 1 to 1000, and Beyond.

As the magical time to brew Batch 1000 approaches, we're profiling some of our very own hombrewers homebruers on our staff.

First up is one of our longtime employees turned brewers, Rich Ruelle. He's been with us since 2009 and held basically every role you can imagine at The Bruery (well, almost every role. Calm your imagination down). Now a homebrewer for a decade, Rich's recent concoctions include the damned delicious, summer-friendly Humulus Palm, which you may have had the pleasure of enjoying in our Tasting Room during May.



When did you start homebrewing?

HomebRued from Batch 1 to 1000, and Beyond!

For milestone batches like our first, 50th, 300th, and now our 1000TH BREW!!!, we've asked you guys to enter beers in our homebrew competitions. After the best recipe was selected, we brewed a limited quantity at our place with the winning homebrewers.

We're pretty excited about brewing our 1000th batch of beer this year. The recipe for our upcoming Batch 1000 comes from Brian Pramov & Bryan Keas of Denver, CO. Their hoppy dark rye, Night Ryder, won this round's competition beating out 199 other entries. In the spirit of Batch 1000, we'll be profiling some of our very own hombrewers homebruers on our staff in the coming weeks here on our Bruery Blog.

A Little Homebrew Video

Our good friend Claire, who writes an amazing food and drink blog called The Kitchy Kitchen, stopped by a few weeks back to learn a bit from Patrick and pick up some homebrewing equipment along with a recipe for our Humulus Blonde. The beer she ended up making won a silver medal at the LA Queen of the Brew competition! Congrats Claire!

Here is a video of the entire process from purchase to tasting and also check out Claire's blog for other food and mixed drink recipes at www.thekitchykitchen.com

Home Brewing from Claire Thomas on Vimeo.

Monday Update on The Bruery (5/7)

I bet you're as tired as I am about me not being able to find a location. I plan to change that this week, as I'll be expanding my reach outside of Orange County to Corona, Chino, Chino Hills, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Long Beach, among a few other areas. My first choice is to stay in Orange County, but I gotta do what I gotta do.

This weekend was the Southern California Homebrewers Festival. About 1500 people attended this mecca of beer festivals, drinking great beers from the 30-odd homebrew clubs serving their goods up. BrewCommune served around 15 beers and ran out of most of what was brought. We also won the first IPA competition with my India Pale Lager. I brought two kegs that were drained in a little over 2 hours. I thought I'd be specializing in Belgian-style beers, but I might have to add this beer to my lineup. Thanks to Lyn for the photos (more are on this BrewCommune thread). As usual, I didn't bring my camera!

This week I'll be focusing on finding a place, then I'll worry about ordering equipment and finalizing my recipes.

AHA Governing Committee Election Update

The election is over, and I've been informed I wasn't elected to the Governing Committee. Most of the incumbents were re-elected, with the exception of one. I won't say who was elected (it should be announced soon), but I think the AHA members made a good choice.

Perhaps not being elected is a good thing, as I can focus more of my attention on starting up the brewery. I'll admit, it does suck to lose.

4/16/07 Edit: Congrats to Drew Beechum, Chris Frey, Dave Houseman, and Susan Ruud.

Vote for me!

Not entirely related to starting up a brewery, I'm a candidate for the American Homebrewers Association Governing Committee. The Governing Committee acts like a board of directors for the AHA, and it would be a huge honor to be a member of it. I'm up against a group of great homebrewers and leaders, but there's four spots open and ten candidates, so my chances could be worse. If you're an AHA member, and think I'd be a good fit, please vote for me!

Vote by April 2nd: http://www.beertown.org/apps/aha_election/aha_election.aspx

My personal statement (also on http://www.beertown.org/homebrewing/election.html):

Like most AHA members and unlike most of the other candidates, I am not a celebrity brewer. I'm not a Brewcaster™, I haven't written any books, and I don't have a single brewing-related invention to my name. If you recognize my name, you're probably mistaken. Despite my lack of notoriety, I would be an excellent addition to the AHA Governing Committee. Beer is an important part of my life. I homebrew four batches per month, and I am currently pursuing my dream of opening a craft brewery in Southern California. I am an experienced leader as Vice President of my homebrew club BrewCommune, and I am also a BJCP Certified Judge. As for general qualities, I am an extremely organized, analytical, motivated person. I've been told I am an excellent communicator. Also somewhat related to beer, I am a recent law school graduate. As you might imagine, I drank a lot beer to get through it! During this experience, homebrewing was a source of joy, comfort and most importantly a diversion from the drudgery of law school. Once I graduated, it was all too apparent that my calling in life is as a brewer.
Regardless, I believe my legal experience would be helpful in achieving several goals I'd like to pursue as a member of the AHA Governing Committee. If elected, I would use my position to advocate the change of arbitrary laws at the state level that hinder homebrewing and the appreciation of craft beer. As an organization that represents a significant population of craft beer enthusiasts, the AHA is in the perfect position to be a catalyst for such important changes. I am also very interested in assisting with expanding the AHA Pub Discount Program, the National Homebrew Competition, or anything that supports the AHA.

I believe homebrewing to be the main source of innovation in craft beer, and I plan to devote my life to furthering it, whether I am elected to the AHA Governing Committee or not. It would be my sincere honor and pleasure to serve you.