Home-Brew: A Crime No Longer : Popularity of Household Beer-Making Is Now Bubbling Over

They can admit them now, these crimes of heart and palate:

One purveyor of beer-making supplies tried importing malt extract from England, but was foiled when customs officials confiscated the contraband. Another gladly sold hops and yeast, but couldn’t tell customers what to do with them.

They were fermentation fugitives at a time when home-brewing was a crime. But a decade ago, President Jimmy Carter gave these suppliers a sort of presidential pardon by signing the bill that changed their lives and increased their sales all at once.

“If you walked up to the counter and asked how to make beer, we couldn’t tell you,” said Don Siechert, owner of Fun Fermentations in Orange. “We could sell some of the products, but that was all.”

In the 10 years that have passed since home-brewing of beer was legalized in February, 1979, the number of stores selling brewing supplies has doubled from about 1,000 to 2,000, with California in the forefront of many of these bubbling businesses.

The biggest jump in home-brewing’s popularity came right after legislation was enacted that allowed adults to ferment up to 200 gallons of beer annually per household. But the recent growth of microbreweries and brew pubs has given the home-brewing industry yet another push.

In fact, Siechert says, his shop is doing so well this year that “it’s frightening,” thanks to a solid core of 800 local customers and an additional 3,200 mail-order clients.

For what was a shadowy group of illegal practitioners 10 years ago has grown into a population of 1.7 million brewers legally making beer at home--and spending a stout $400 million each year in the process, according to the Boulder-based American Homebrewers Assn.

Daniel Bradford, association spokesman, said the number of home-brewers doubled annually from 1979 until 1985 before cooling off. It took the rush of boutique breweries and brew pubs that began to dot the nation in the mid-1980s to rekindle public interest in home-brewing. The brewing ranks began to rise again in 1987, with a 25% increase; 1988 showed similar growth.

With more than 200,000 active fermenters, California is home to more brewers and home-brew clubs than any other state and boasts 45 of the 90 brew pubs in the nation.

But that wasn’t always the case. Modern home-brewing had its start during Prohibition--those dark, dry days from 1920 to 1933. It was a time when commercial breweries either shut their doors or manufactured root beer and near beer--products that provided profits but no punch.

Some, say home-brew experts, circumvented the law by selling five-gallon cans of beer wort, the liquid that ferments into beer, with labels that warned: “Do not take the lid off. Do not add yeast. If you do, this will produce beer. This is illegal.”

When Prohibition was repealed by the 21st Amendment, commercial brewing of beer, wine and spirits was again legal. Homemade wine was legalized too, according to Charlie Papazian, author of “The Complete Joy of Home Brewing” (1984).

But a sloppy stenographer omitted three key words from the proposed amendment as it appeared in the Federal Register, according to Papazian’s tome. In the line that legalized home-brewing of wine, the typist left out the word: “and/or beer.” With that, a nation of home-brewers was doomed to decades of stealth.

Stealth, because home-brewers and their suppliers weren’t about to give up their labors just because you could buy a six-pack of Bud at the corner grocery store without fear of arrest. For, as Fred Eckhardt, considered the father of home-brewing, says: “Beer-making has been legal in the minds of home-brewers for years.”

The 1970s saw the beginnings of a strong home-brew movement, fostered in part by a rebellion against the major American breweries.

“What really started happening in the 1970s was a qualitative rebellion against the major brewers,” said Byron Burch, author of “Brewing Quality Beers” (1986) and owner of Great Fermentations in Santa Rosa. “When it’s not 110 degrees, you want something different than a pitcher of Coors or Budweiser. . . . We’re after beer that has a little more flavor and body.”

The problem, though, was that supplies were hard to come by.

Boiling kettles and kitchen thermometers could be picked up at any housewares store. But fermenters, bottle cappers, barley, hops, yeast and malt extract were much harder to come by.

The slender selection of supplies that existed had to be imported, for no American companies would sell to small retailers of brew supplies, said Burch.

At the time, Burch said, only two varieties of hops were available. Now there are 15. Brewers could find only three kinds of grain; now there are more than a dozen available.

Larry Carlson opened Wine Inc. in Akron, Ohio, in 1969 and spent the next 10 years selling mostly wine-making supplies.

“There was virtually no beer brewing at all,” said Carlson, who operates one of the largest brew-supply distributorships in the nation. “It was illegal, though we did attempt to promote (it). We would bring in selected malt extracts from England. But we had a very difficult time with U.S. Customs, which would destroy shipments because they were brought in for something illegal. Those were not easy years.”

They’re easier now, for the nation’s home-brewers annually spend $250 each supporting their hobby. These brewers tend to make five gallons of home-brew each month and buy an additional 1 1/2 gallons of commercial beer in that time.

They’re usually in their mid-30s, married, own homes and have more than a college education. What they don’t have in common is occupation. As one beer-watcher said, home-brewers “are your next-door neighbor.”

But they were a bit slow coming into the fold, even after home-brewing was legalized. Fun Fermentations, for one, found that it took a while for home-brewing to catch on and its customer list to grow.

“People like us were a little bit afraid,” Siechert said. “We continued as though the law had never been signed. We were afraid to get rambunctious. . . . And we had no good supplies.”

Fun Fermentations started out as a mail-order wine-supply business in the early 1970s, operated by Brant and Kathi Horton out of an extra bedroom. By late 1972, the business had outgrown the Horton’s home, so the couple opened the store in Orange, which they sold to Siechert in January. Before buying Fun Fermentations, Siechert repaired computers, brewed beer and worked on and off at the store.

As recently as 1985, Fun Fermentations’ business was nearly all in wine-making supplies. But in the mid-1980s, brew pubs--those small saloons that sell beer made on the premises--began to crop up in Southern California. Such operations were legalized in 1982.

Brew pubs, like City of Angels in Santa Monica, piqued Californians’ interest in home-brewing, industry watchers said, and the brew supply industry took off for the second time since 1979. In fact, brew-pub owners and master brewers often got their start at home.

“Four years ago, 90% of the business was wine,” Siechert said. “Now it’s easily half and half. . . . We’ve never been busier than this year, and up until now, it’s all been beer. Wine season doesn’t start until September.”