For the love of beer: Experimentation the name of the game for home brewers

When it comes to brewing beer at home, there are as many stories as there are varieties of stouts, ales and porters.

It’s all about experimentation, home brewers stress. Sometimes the results are oh, so good. But not every batch is a keeper.

Scott Hadwin remembers the time he tried making a smoke-flavored beer in the mid-1990s. It tasted like an ash tray. Spruce extract was another ingredient that bombed.

But Hadwin’s signature Holiday Fest beer, an annual brew with hints of honey, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg, is a family favorite.

“You can toss in a chocolate bar if you want,” he said about the unending supply of ingredients. “You name it. It’s an adult science experiment. What’s fun for me is doing my own tweaks.”

Ken Bales, another avid home brewer, said once a brewer gets the basic process down, the hobby “really opens up and becomes fun.

“When you are confident in your ability to craft a batch without technical concerns, you can begin to experiment with unusual ingredients,” Bales said. “I have made a porter from hibiscus, which turned out quite good. When I had my medical marijuana card, I made some cannabis-infused stout.”

Next up for Bales is making beer with morel mushrooms.

“Pushing the beer envelope, shall we say, makes this hobby so very interesting,” he added.

Greg Vanichkachorn said he got into home brewing four years ago when he moved from Virginia to the Flathead Valley, and it was the stories that drew him into the craft.

“You get to create your own stories,” he said. “The same recipe can turn out different each time.”

Vanichkachorn, too, has dabbled with some unusual ingredients. He uses coffee for a pleasing porter, but the time he added too much ginger to a batch, it wasn’t that pleasing to the palate.

“I’m still trying to figure out how to get bacon in there,” he said with a laugh.

Home brewers are now sharing their brewing tips and stories with fellow beer makers through the Flathead Valley Homebrewers Association that organized last June. It’s a loose-knit group aimed at letting home brewers talk, share, learn and enjoy, said Karen Witt, who along with her husband Junior Szklarz organized the association.

“There are no dues, no officers and it’s not political,” Witt said.

Association meetings are also taste fests, with each person bringing his or her latest home-brewed beer.

“We’re all there for the beer,” said Witt, who noted she’s still tweaking her favorite vanilla cognac stout. “We’ll connect you with people.”

Prior to having an organized group, it was difficult to network with other home brewers.

“A lot of people brew, but they didn’t know each other,” she said.

Rod Douglas, who learned how to brew about a year ago from his mentor, J.R. Foster, said the association has been valuable as a networking tool. Plus, it’s just fun to taste what other beer aficionados are making.

“It’s fun to custom-make a beer,” Douglas said. “I can’t drink store-bought beer anymore.

“We’re really not a threat to the local breweries,” he added. “It’s purely a hobby.”

Withy’s Health Foods in Kalispell has been selling beer-making equipment for many years, and Bizzy Beez Brew 7 Grow south of Whitefish also has a selection of equipment for home brewers.

Witt and Szklarz, who own Brass and Bullets in Kalispell, have the largest selection of home-brewing equipment and kits for sale alongside their ammunition and firearms business. They also carry a variety of grains, yeasts and 56 varieties of hops.

“The big thing now is hops — how hoppy can we get it?” Witt said.

Both home brewers and breweries are experimenting these days with new hop strains and new combinations.

While experimentation is the name of the game, there are some tried and true rules to follow in home brewing. Sanitation is paramount, noted Hadwin.

“You can go to all the work” but if you take shortcuts in sanitizing the equipment, it can all be for naught, he said.

Douglas readily agreed. “My house isn’t that clean, but my beer equipment is immaculate,” he said.

Bales noted it was only after careful sterilization practices became the norm that he “truly became successful in the art.”

Hadwin, who learned the art of brewing from his father, Jim Hadwin, has his own tradition that would seem to fly in the face of sanitation: He never washes his wooden spoon used to stir each batch. As he explains, though, the boiling liquid instantly sanitizes the spoon.

Another helpful element in home brewing is keeping meticulous notes about each recipe. That way, the best-tasting beers can more easily be duplicated.

Hadwin has recipes from close to 20 years ago when he first started making beer and still draws from those. He took a decade off from home brewing when his children were young, and just recently got back into the hobby.

He has fond memories of his father making beer and keeping it in a crock in the basement. Hadwin didn’t really like the taste of homemade beer as a child, but that changed during college at the University of Montana, when his senior project was writing a business plan for the microbrewery that created the popular Moose Drool.

These days Hadwin’s father-in-law, Monty Clemenhagen, joins in the home-brewing adventures.

“He and I needed something to do,” Hadwin said.

Added Clemenhagen: “And we needed something to drink.”

Bales said he developed a taste for beer at an early age — 4 to be exact — when his father let him take a swig of a can of Coors. He started experimenting with wine making when he was 13, tucking a gallon of grape juice into the side of his heated water bed. He graduated to beer kits after high school.

Douglas’ Scottish heritage has led him to some interesting beer varieties. He’s successfully brewed an ancient Scottish beer that features heather flowers. Turns out there’s a reason it was so sought-after during the Middle Ages — the undersides of the heather leaves can contain a fungus that’s a hallucinogenic intoxicant. Douglas said he’s never experienced that hallucinogenic quality with his home brew.

Like most home brewers, Douglas is in for the quality, not the quantity.

“Now I taste beer, I really taste it,” he said.