In 2001, Bob Sylvester received a $50 Mr. Beer homebrew kit from Bed, Bath and Beyond as a gift. It was a basic pack — a few bags of ingredients, a plastic barrel and a short instruction book detailing a simplified process for brewing your very first beer. The first batch turned out pretty well, so he joined a homebrew club — the Tampa Bay BEERS (Beer Enthusiasts Enjoying Real Suds) — and started brewing in earnest.
In 2006, Bob entered a single beer — a difficult Flemish red he was especially proud of — into the Best Florida Beer Competition. In a field of over 300 homebrews from across the state, most of them multiple entries from devoted competition brewers, Bob's beer placed first in its category and took home Best of Show.
Ask any of the BEERS members why they started brewing, and you'll hear the same thing, summed up by 15-year veteran Dave Grymonpre: "You start drinking the cheap stuff, then you move to the better stuff, then you get to the point where you want something better. Then you homebrew." But for him, and for many of the guys at BEERS, there's an unspoken final level that's always one big leap away: Then you go pro.
Five years after brewing his first beer, Bob made the leap and opened Saint Somewhere Brewing. Bob turned pro.
The first Tuesday of every month, the members of BEERS pack into the cramped back room of Mr. Dunderbak's — an ornate palace to suds and German food in University Square Mall. I walk in expecting a quiet conclave of serious beer geeks, but what I find is a cacophony of glassware and greeting. J.B. Ellis — Dunderbak's owner and a serious beer enthusiast himself — immediately pegs me for a newbie and takes me under his wing, handing me a glass half-full of something from a keg, as if the amber liquid will settle the loud chaos of the meeting better than any bromide.
It works.
Within seconds I'm sitting with BEERS' old guard, Jeff Gladish and Mark Stober, brushing up on club history. "I started when we met at the old Tampa Bay Brewing Company," says Stober, "when it was in Carrollwood." The club was created by original TBBC brewer Ben Meisler at the very beginning of the American microbrew and brewpub craze of the early '90s. "He was so far ahead of his time," Stober explains, a little wistfully.
Within a year, that first incarnation of Tampa's eponymous brewpub was closed. The homebrew club lived on.
Instead of the educational get-together I expected, perhaps with seminars and discussions of the finer technical aspects of producing beer, a BEERS meeting feels like a party. Heavy plates of wurst and potatoes stream out of Dunderbak's kitchen, and the beer flows like a flood from the taps. The mood is congenial, loud and tight. Then the bottles come out.
Some are unlabeled, likely from a brewing supply shop like Brewshack, another sponsor of BEERS. Others are clearly recycled, the unadorned silver caps the only indication that the liquid inside might not be the Beck's or Heineken promised on the label. There are women in the crowd, but it's mostly male brewers who make the rounds, pouring an ounce or two of their hard work into upheld cups, usually with a brief mention of the particular style they were aiming for or the special ingredients and techniques used in the brewing. Then, trying not to seem too eager, they wait for the drinkers' reactions.
For some of these people, the camaraderie and the chance to talk beer is the draw. For the serious homebrewers, this is the moment that matters. They're not looking for praise; they can get that from family and friends. But feedback from their brewing peers, good or bad, is like liquid gold.
In short order I've tasted a half-dozen homebrews in quick succession. Every time I'm poured another sample, I can see the brewer watching me intently, gauging the nuances of my expression as I swirl, smell and taste their beer. As soon as I comment, usually with unfeigned admiration — these are some serious and interesting beers — they relax and start talking about the problems they faced with that particular batch. And the process repeats every time they pour a sample.
"There are a lot of clubs where it's more of a beer social," says Gladish as he hands out prizes and ribbons from a recent competition hosted by a homebrew club near Daytona, where BEERS members took home 16 awards. BEERS is also currently at the top of the statewide homebrew club rankings. "Here, almost everybody brews, and we also send our beers into competitions," he says. "We want to take over the world."
As packed and chaotic as it is tonight, the turnout is rather low. In the midst of an announcement about recent and upcoming club activities buzzing from a low-power mic and amplifier, someone calls out "Where's Bob?" Ellis explains that Sylvester is pouring his beer at a Mellow Mushroom beer tasting. "A lot of our guys have turned out there to show their support," he says. Everyone nods.
More than showing support, some of them want to see how it's done, to gauge how Saint Somewhere is doing. They want to turn pro, too.
But opening a brewery is a risky business. "The itch is there," says Grymonpre. "It's more in the middle than the back of my mind. But there's a lot of uncertainty. A lot of people have tried it and failed." His friend Robert Mee's got the same itch, as does Tyler Pidgeon, who just started brewing three months ago with girlfriend Melissa Robertson.
In fact, everyone I talk to at BEERS admits to daydreaming about it. Or more. Gladish, who is also one of only three master-level beer judges in the state of Florida, has even been researching it. "But I'm not brave enough. It's got to be a sure thing."
No guarantees, certainly, but there are reasons for these guys to be optimistic. According to the Brewers Association, craft-beer sales grew by almost 30 percent in the past three years, even as industrial domestic and import beer sales have dropped. Ellis credits that rise to homebrewers like those at BEERS. "These guys started the craft-brew movement in the U.S.," he explains. "It's really just a function of homebrewers getting bigger and starting to sell their beer."
Saint Somewhere opened for business last year, although it took a lot longer than Bob planned to start selling beer.
"Pinellas didn't quite know what to do with me — just to get a propane hookup required an act of Congress."
He needed to run a line from a propane tank through a wall and into the building; the county told him he needed an architect, general contractor and engineer. Six extra months, 5,000 extra dollars and Saint Somewhere opened for business.
Surrounded by drywallers and cabinet-makers in a strip of small warehouse spaces in Tarpon Springs, Saint Somewhere doesn't quite meet my romantic notion of what a brewery should look like. Four large, insulated metal containers sporting various valves and openings line the back wall, a small refrigerator sits on the right, and a pallet of boxes are stacked near the truck-sized opening to the parking lot. Bob's dad — Bob Senior — putters about, sweeping up and polishing the metal, often followed by Bob's dog Molly.
Romantic notions or no, beer is brewing in those containers. Bob runs me through the process: Malt goes into the "mash tun" to extract the sugars, the resulting "wort" is moved to the brew kettle where it is hopped and boiled, and then the liquid is rapidly cooled and moved to a fermentation tank, where yeast and time do the work of converting sugar to alcohol. One batch — seven barrels, 90 cases, 231 gallons — takes all day to brew and ferments for approximately two weeks.
Then comes bottling, the single most hated job in the homebrew community and the most labor-intensive job at Saint Somewhere. It takes 10 people a solid day to clean, label, fill, cork, seal and box a batch of beer. "We've about used up our store of volunteer labor for bottling," says Bob, who offered free beer the first few times and enlisted the assistance of his two teenage daughters. "Next time we'll be contracting with a temporary labor company for help."
The technical jump from kitchen brewing to craft brewing isn't as extreme as I would have thought. "The setup here is just a giant homebrew system," explains Bob as he constantly checks the fluid levels, makes sure his new homemade irrigation system constructed from a ring of PVC is working properly and maneuvers the small pump that moves the proto-beer from one tun to the other. The pump is heavy, so he bolted it to a Spongebob skateboard along with a post for easy pushing. "Nothing high-tech. I have a lot of control over every step of the process."
It turns out that Bob's move from amateur to professional brewer wasn't much of a leap.
After working in retail all his life, he needed to either relocate to advance his career or try something new. "I was ready for a career change," he says. "Actually, I was ready for a real career." Brewing just happened to come along at the right time.
"I think I'm the one who pushed and said, 'Let's do this, we can make a go of this,'" says Bob's wife Anne. Start-up costs, despite obstructions from the county, are fairly low for an operation as simple as that at Saint Somewhere. And Bob still has his day job at Brooks Brothers.
It's not all fun and games. I prepare to slip out as the mash tun empties, right before Bob grabs a shovel to start mucking the piles of grain out of the tank: "99 percent of brewing is janitorial." Before I go, Bob pours a glass each of Saint Somewhere's beers: an incredibly complex and floral Belgian Saison and a classic Belgian Ale. They're excellent.
Both of the beers hit the shelves for the first time in August, and Bob's selling out just as fast as he can make it. He thinks he'll be able to leave his other job by the end of the year.
I ask him if he's living a dream, both of us with glasses of Saint Somewhere Saison in hand. Bob is dressed in an old T-shirt and flip-flops. It's 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday. Suddenly, it's very easy to understand the wistful looks on the faces of those daydreaming homebrewers at the BEERS meeting.
I'm tempted to pick up a Mr. Beer kit myself.
This article appears in Oct 17-23, 2007.