Brewing Up Fun With Do-It-Yourself Beer

Nigel Witham and Heather Joseph are measuring out grains, divvying up hops and leveling the brewers concentrate.

While pouring the ingredients into kettle No. 5, they stir this batch of beer with a wood oar and patiently wait for their Costa Rican Love Brew to boil.

As their self-named ale simmers, the Santa Monica couple quibbles over the custom-made labels they’ve decided to order. They want this beer to be perfect.

It’s not a bar, a microbrewery or a brewery pub.

The Hamilton Gregg Brewworks in Hermosa Beach is a do-it-yourself brewery where young hipsters and baby boomers work side by side brewing their favorite malted concoction.

They bring their own CDs, sample ales and lagers left behind by their predecessors and at the end of the night they bid their brew adieu to let it age.

Located 50 feet off the Strand in the old Southern California Gas and Light building, the Brewworks is America’s first do-it-yourself brewery. Open two years, it is modeled after the Canadian U-Brews that opened in the early ‘80s to beat high taxes. The Brewworks, however, offers instructed brewing for beer drinkers who want to see life from the other end of the bottle.

“This place is more than just an opportunity to make beer,” said John Hamilton Scudder, co-owner and grandson of potato chip entrepreneur, Laura Scudder. “People come in here and learn about what makes beer, they socialize and most end up having a really good time.”

As the malted smell of barley and hops hangs pungently in this warm establishment, amateur brewers select a style of beer from a list of 45 brews, including Raspberry Wheat, Liberty Lager and Hermosa Pier Porter.

Each brewer is given an instruction sheet. They measure out their grains and do the mixing under the supervision of an experienced staff brewer. The beer-making process takes about two hours.

Brewers leave the 8.5-gallon batch to ferment for two weeks and then return to label and bottle their brew. On a recent evening, Bonnie Schwab and her husband Mike returned to the Brewworks with pal Rick Espinoza to bottle their batch of Majestic British Ale.

Bonnie had labels custom-made with a picture of the brewing gang, instead of the black and white label the brewery provides, but they were too big for the 48 22-ounce bottles they took home.

At the bottling station, where a colorful collage of labels covers the walls, brewer John Trozak poured the beer into sampling glasses. The group remarked on the brew’s rich flavor.

“This place is great fun,” said Schwab, 38, of Hermosa Beach. “We got a chance to hang out and visit while making some really good beer.”

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Where: The Hamilton Gregg Brewworks, 58 11th Street. Reservations. (310) 376-0406.

When: Thursday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sunday 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; Tuesday and Wednesday 5 p.m.-10 p.m.

Cost: $80 to $130. Light lagers start out around $80; darker beers such as the Kidderminster Bitter and the Oatmeal Stout cost $115.