If you are interested in great beer, you can go to any fine retailer and peruse the shelves, looking for fine imported – and, increasingly, indigenous – beers. If you’re a huge aficionado, and if you’re really ambitious, you might be tempted to take a bold step and brew it yourself.

Home brewing has become something of an American phenomenon – and consuming the results is a great pleasure – but it isn’t easy.

“Home brewing is really exciting,” explains Robert Rigg, a long-standing member of HOPS and editor of its newsletter. “It’s first and foremost a craft – half science, half art. It’s something that you can’t simply learn from a book.

“There are so many factors at work,” he explains. “There’s your ingredients, starting with the grain and hops. You have to be really careful with temperature and fermentation. It’s like an experiment, but an experiment with all sorts of variables that are hard to duplicate.

For these reasons, home brewing takes a lot of time and experience. “Sometimes people need some help getting started. You need to know about the equipment, and you need to know about getting the right ingredients. Hence the need for a community of brewers.”

Enter HOPS. The group was founded around 1988. This was the time when America threw off the last vestiges of Prohibition and finally legalized home brewing. Beer connoisseurs had also read Charlie Paparzian’s classic book, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing – first published in 1984 – and they wanted to give it a try.

HOPS’s backbone comes from a core group of dedicated home brewers, and it boasts about 15–20 members at present. On of the pioneer members is Jon Wolff, who has over three decades of home brewing experience behind him.

Each month, HOPS meets at a member’s home. Everyone brings their home brews. They swap recipes and experiences, and they sample each other’s work. The group also pools resources to buy malted barley from all over the world.

Every year, they throw full-blown dinner party. Not only are the best home brews put on the table, everything served at the meal has been cooked with beer. In addition, every year, HOPS holds an all-day “brew-a-thon” in which the group works together on recipes.

The key part of the meetings, however, is the tasting and commentary. The members sample each other’s brews and analyze it. Beginners often start with homebrew extracts (which you can buy at retailers like Tri-State), but then move into the more difficult task of making their own mash. The experienced brewers can distill the core essentials of the taste and isolate that key steps in the process – from ingredients to temperature – that may have compromised the final results. For many members, this feedback is essential for helping them improve their home brews.

This is why Robert originally joined the group. He loved great taste and diversity in his beer. He then read Papazian’s book and wanted to brew his own beer. He’s now in his eighth year with HOPS and he has found the friendships and experiences truly wonderful.

“Some people have the impression that people brew their own beer because they need a lot of beer to drink,” he laughs. “But that’s what you have the big-name brands for. It takes a lot of effort to brew a 5-gallon batch. Myself, I do about four or five brews per year. It’s really about the process and taste.”
“We’re a very informal, casual group,” Robert stresses. “There are no rules, no minutes. Essentially, we’re run by anarchy. HOPS is there simply to share and learn from each other.

“If you’re just thinking about home brewing, or want to learn more about it, we’re happy to have you over,” Robert says “There’s no restriction to coming by. The membership is a small amount – $10.00, and that’s pretty much to cover our yearly dinner and the cost of printing up our newsletter.”

If you want to know about HOPS, please contact Layne Davis This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it , Jon Wolff This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it , or Robert Rigg This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it