True-Brew Believers in the Old Ways : Trends: Riptide Raspberry isn’t a household name like Bud or Miller, but micro breweries that produce specialty beers are gaining popularity. The key ingredient is called <i> reinheitsgebot.</i>

Michael Zislis was a rowdy 13-year-old growing up in Palos Verdes when he stumbled onto his destiny in the pages of Popular Science magazine.

Zislis’ destiny was beer.

“There was this article on how to brew beer at home,” Zislis says. “I said, ‘Make your own beer! All righhhhhht!’ I told my mom it was a science experiment.”

Now, 13 years later, Zislis, 26, is an established brewing professional. As co-owner and brewmaster of the Manhattan Beach Brewing Co., which opened last July, Zislis cooks up about 1,200 gallons of custom-made beer every week, beer with names like Manhattan Beach Blonde and Riptide Raspberry. And he thinks that he and others like him may be riding the crest of the biggest trend to hit the American beer scene since the invention of the pop-top.

The trend is called “micro brewing”--that is, the brewing of old-fashioned-style beer in relatively small quantities for local distribution or for sale in “brew pubs,” where the beer is brewed, sold and consumed on the premises. There are about 250 micro breweries and brew-pubs in the United States, including two in the South Bay--Zislis’ Manhattan Beach Brewing Co. brew pub, where the beer is brewed in large stainless steel vats behind the bar, and the Alpine Village Hofbrau micro brewery in Torrance.

And what’s so special about micro-brewed beer, as opposed to your everyday Bud or Miller? Well, according to Zislis, it’s because of something called reinheitsgebot.

“Reinheitsgebot is the ancient German purity law of the 16th Century,” Zislis explains. “It said that only malt, hops, water and yeast could be used in beer. Nothing else.”

American brewers used to follow that rule, Zislis says, but around the Great Depression, the large commercial brewers started to use other ingredients, such as rice, in their beers, and later they introduced chemical preservatives to increase shelf life. This is of course a direct violation of reinheitsgebot, not to mention an affront to beer connoisseurs. Over time, Zislis says, American beer drinkers forgot what real beer was like--that is, until the micro brewers revived the ancient art.

“Once somebody starts drinking this style of beer, there’s no going back,” Zislis says, as his brother and partner, David Zislis, offers a visitor a small sample glass of a beer called South Bay Bitter. It was full-bodied and tart almost to the point of impudence, but with a heady bouquet.

“People are discovering fine beers the way they discovered fine wines,” says Martin Velas, 31, brewmaster at the Alpine Village Hofbrau micro brewery, which produces up to 1,500 kegs and 1,000 cases of old-fashioned-style beer a month. Like Zislis, Velas started out as a teen-age home beer brewer, and later studied the art with German brewmasters.

Both Velas and Felix Duhovic, vice president and general manager at Alpine Village Hofbrau, say their target market is not the guy who wants to swill a case of suds during a football game, but rather the person who drinks one or two beers--three, tops--for the taste, not the alcoholic content. (By California law, beers cannot exceed 4% alcohol by weight.)

“We felt there was a niche here for that,” Duhovic says. “We thought we could sell fresh, pure homemade beer in this area. And we’re getting there.”

Jeff Mendel, director of the Boulder, Colo.-based Institute for Brewing Studies, a trade association for micro brewers and home brewers, agrees that micro breweries are coming into their own.

“They (the micro brewers and brew pubs) are having a big impact on consumer tastes,” Mendel says. “Consumers are discovering the truth about beer, that it’s best when fresh. And the micro brewers can offer a more natural product” than the big beer companies.

A more natural product? Is Mendel saying that micro brewed beer is actually a form of health food?

“You could say that,” says Mendel, quickly adding, “We don’t say that, but you could.”

No one in the micro brewing business seems to think that micro brewers are going to drive the big guys out of the American beer market. They probably will never compete with Budweiser for Super Bowl commercial time, or hire the Swedish Bikini Team for a national advertising campaign.

For one thing, the lack of preservatives makes mass distribution difficult; furthermore, the price of micro brews is relatively high for the average beer drinker. (Alpine Village Hofbrau beer averages about $4.99 a six-pack, and the Manhattan Beach Brewing Co. charges $3 for a pint of draft.)

Still, micro brews do offer a change from the usual fare--and without violating the spirit of reinheitsgebot.

Facts About Micro Brewing Micro brewing is the brewing of beer in relatively small quantities for local distribution or for sale in “brew pubs,” where the beer is brewed, sold and consumed on the premises.

* There are about 250 micro breweries and brew-pubs in the United States, including two in the South Bay.

* U.S. taxable production of this type of beer increased by 62% in 1990, while the number of operating units increased by 22% the same year.

* For 1990, the last year for which figures are available, the U.S. taxable production was approximately 350,000 barrels.

Source: Institute for Brewing Studies