A Work in Progress : For the Maltose Falcons, one of the nation’s largest, oldest and most competitive clubs of home brewers, beer is always

Beer is food, a social culture, a miracle of science.

Those lofty de scriptions are the way members of the Valley-based Maltose Falcons Home Brewing Society, one of the largest, oldest and most competitive home-brew beer clubs in the nation, describe the beloved amber beverage that binds them.

A drink that, were observers to take their cue from most TV commercials, could be judged as a low-brow brew guzzled by manly men with undiscriminating palates.

But such popular myth is quickly dispelled by any of the Maltose Falcons’ 300 members, the most active of whom gather monthly at the Home Wine & Beer Making Shop in Woodland Hills for club meetings where brewers listen to sermons on the virtues of proper brewing. The shop also sponsors Saturday “Bru Crus” where as many as 20 members brew batches of experimental beers in the shop’s brew system and have a potluck barbecue.

You could call Falcons the thinking man’s and woman’s beer drinkers, brewers and connoisseurs, who look at beer and beer brewing as the alchemy of art and science, a labor of love and, always, a work in progress.

Arjun Chatterjee, a Reseda resident who is a UCLA chemical engineering student, has been brewing beer for a couple of years and is cheerfully committed to the craft.

As a beer brewer, said Chatterjee, “you are an artist and you express yourself through your beer. Brewing beer is all chemicals. I was really interested in brewing beer because there are a lot of chemical processes that are in college textbooks, but they are abstract. I thought that with beer, it’d be tangible. But most of us get started simply because we want better beer than what is available commercially.”

If club members have a common denominator, then it is the desire to drink good-tasting, fresh brewed beer and to become better brewers. Indeed, it is part of the mission statement of the club, founded by fanatical home brew hobbyist Melvin Elhardt in 1974, to help members fulfill their personal brewing potential with an educational approach to the craft.

Karen Barela, vice president of the Boulder, Colo.-based American Homebrewers Assn., said of the club: “They are one of the largest and most active home brew clubs. They usually participate in our annual conference, compete and are a well-known presence among other clubs. They do quite well in the national competition held annually. They always end up in the top 10 (with winning beers).”

The Maltose Falcons, in fact, just won 10 first places at the Los Angeles County Fair Homebrew Beer Competition out of 22 categories of beer classes, said club president Bruce Brode, who organized the competition along with other Falconers.

Home brewing competitions are big events for club members. And the core group of active members try to achieve that nirvana brew by taking in a glut of information disseminated through the club’s extensive newsletter, technical and practical demonstrations, Falcon Nest computer bulletin board and the critiques of members’ brews by master brewers.

Reseda resident Steve Casselman, who owns a computer development company, set the club up with an electronic mail system that has a bulletin board with information, events and recipes for anyone with a modem and communication software. A Falcon for eight years, Casselman also has one of the largest home brew setups in the country. His 60-gallon kettles, four refrigerators and burners that put out 600,000 British thermal units of heat--more than six times the amount produced by an average American stove top--occupy his back yard and living room.

“I was going to school, and I had about 60 bucks left, so I decided to brew my own beer instead of buying and made a batch a week,” said Casselman, who does a mad scientist act at national home-brewing conventions where he carbonates beer with helium and other antics.

“But I was making all these batches of beer with all this sugar (from beer-brewing kits). Without the club I wouldn’t have gotten the information about how to make good beer. You have to ask questions if you want to make great beer. We get better ingredients than the main brewers. Most brewers use one strain of yeast, and we use an assortment of yeast and hops from Germany, Sierra Nevada, and even Czechoslovakia, so you get different expressions of beer.”

Most home brewers make batches of five to 15 gallons, Brode said. And a 15-gallon batch of beer brewed with malted barley grain instead of pre-prepared malted barley extract can be made for about $1.50 in about five to eight hours, said club member Michael Bowe.

The home-brewing revival began in 1978 when Congress and then-President Jimmy Carter made the practice legal. Although the Falcons formed in ‘74, Barela said that the earlier law did not prohibit home-brew clubs or groups from discussing the craft of home brewing; however, it was illegal to brew at home. But according to Brode, earlier Falcons, a sort of renegade lot, figured federal agents wouldn’t bother with them if they did brew at home.

Under the new law, individuals are permitted to make as much as 100 gallons of beer a year and two-adult households may bottle as much as 200 gallons. Beer-making soon replaced wine-making as the most popular hobby fermentation activity in the nation, according to sellers of wine- and beer-making equipment and supplies.

“Most brewing is about as simple or complex as you want to make it,” Brode said. “You can spend up to $1,000 or less than $200. Brewing from scratch (with fresh grain) takes the longest, depending on the style of beer. Most of our members are fond of the British ales that tend to mature faster. And at least three of our members have gone on to become master brewers: Marty Velas at Alpine Village, John Mayer at the Rogue Brewery in Newport, Ore., and John Benson at the Okie Girl Restaurant and Brewery” in Lebec.

Marty Velas, who lives in Northridge, said that the club “was a big part of me deciding to go into brewing professionally.”

Velas began home brewing in 1978.

“The nice thing about the club,” he said, “is it was one of the most advanced in the nation. That is where I learned all about brewing--by comparing notes with other members.”

Like most home brewers, Falcons fastidiously adhere to the German Purity Laws (Reinheitsgebot) written in the 1560s. The rule of thumb is that beer should be made from four ingredients only: malt barley, yeast, hops and water.

The group also prides itself on its self-sufficiency, certainly an additional motive to brew one’s own beer, flouting the “lawn mower” variety put out by commercial breweries. They organize seasonal beer festivals, including an Oktoberfest at a member’s home, club competitions and brewery tours; teach college courses on brewing, and judge national beer competitions. Falcons have even joined political forces with Beer Drinkers of America to urge Congress to repeal last year’s tax increase on beer (federal excise tax increased 33 cents on a 6-pack and $9 on a keg), arguing that “a cold beer or two after a hard day on the job is a simple pleasure, not a luxury or a sin like some people say.”

And they have a band. Members put together the Brews Band after they were named club of the year by Anchor Steam brewery two years ago and took a tour of the brewery, where employees had their own band. When the Anchor Steam group took a break, about eight Falconers picked up the instruments and discovered that their beer enthusiast brethren could also carry a tune. The Brews Band plays mostly rhythm and blues in pseudo-jam sessions featured at almost all Maltose Falcon festivals and parties.

Bass player Dennis Fink said: “We practice before the board meetings at the vice president’s house, so it works out well.”

The band, in fact, entertained about 60 members who trekked to Catalina for a weekend summer beer festival, well equipped with 30 gallons of home brew and three kegs of Anchor Steam.

Chatterjee said: “This is so great because the club facilitates all these things on the weekends and then we can go back to being normal worker drones. This club is a collection of people from the politically conservative to liberal to the rich to the not so rich, and there is never a fight. Beer is the lubricant that is also the common denominator.”

North Hollywood resident Maureen Nye, one of only a few women members who is also national judge, added: “There is always a joke about who will finish off the keg and stay awake the longest, but we make sure that everyone stays overnight and encourage responsible drinking.”

Accolades for good-tasting home brew abound at the monthly meetings, where about 70 people crowd into the Home Wine & Beer Making Shop and sample whatever home-brewed beer has been brought in for tasting by members along with a couple of commercial beers. Most people bring their own mugs, the strangest of which at a recent meeting was a horn-like shape that hung around the neck one thirsty member, never spilling a drop.

When one Falconer brought a brew made from a new variety of hops called Aurora and Liberty, mugs were filled about a quarter of the way. Everyone slowly sipped and cogitated for a moment, and then heads began to nod.

Then Brode announced: “Nice lingering malt finish. The balance is really nice. He did a hell of a job.”

The gatherings end with a trouble-shooting session, where members bring their own brews for a taste test by the club’s Grand Hydrometer, the group’s master trouble-shooter. The phrase is also a technical term for a beer-brewing tool that measures the specific gravity of sugar in beer.

Dennis Fink, a Topanga resident, holds the title and sat at one recent meeting with a couple of other connoisseurs, sampling about 10 beers brewed by members looking for a stamp of approval or advice.

“Most of the trouble-shooting is fine-tuning and an open forum about techniques. It used to be that people would make their first beers and they would have that rubber boot taste or sour milk taste from contamination caused by bacteria. But there is enough information now that people can brew a good batch of beer the first time.”

Michael Bowe, a two-year brewer who makes about 180 gallons of beer a year, is perhaps the most magnanimous with his beers, which he brings without fail to nearly every meeting and all festivals.

“I could never drink all the beer I make anyway,” said Bowe, who won four firsts, two seconds, two thirds, and best-of-show runner-up at this year’s L.A. County Fair with his beers.

“And if you make good fresh beer, you’re never without friends.”

Where and When

What: Maltose Falcons Home Brewing Society.

Location: Home Wine & Beer Making Shop, 22836 Ventura Blvd. No. 2, Woodland Hills.

Hours: 1 p.m. on the first Sunday of each month.

Price: Dues are $20 a year for new members; $15 for continuing members.

Call: (818) 884-8586.