Home-brewing for fun ... and custom beer

Basement hobbyists keg and bottle it just the way they want it

Chris Bowen surveys the crowd at the monthly meeting of the Lehigh Valley Homebrewers on a chilly Bethlehem Tuesday and laughs quietly.

''You can always spot a home-brewer,'' Bowen says with a smile. ''We tend to be males, in our 30s or early 40s, a little overweight'' -- here he pauses to rub his modest beer belly, underscoring the fact that he is talking about himself, too -- ''and we have beards,'' he adds, stroking his own facial hair. ''We talk about whether the beer has Centennial hops or two-row malts. We're geeks.''

Bowen, 40, laughs again, but, truth be told, there are few places he would rather be on this early December evening except, perhaps, in the basement of his west Bethlehem home, where's he has fashioned a small-scale, well-organized home brewery, complete with enough custom gadgets and gizmos to satisfy the most fervent technology buff. In an adjacent room, he keeps a stash of mostly home-brewed beers and ales substantial enough to stock a neighborhood bar, some fermenting, some ready to enjoy.

But for now, Bowen is rubbing shoulders with about 45 other kindred spirits, yes, mostly males, bearded and a few slightly overweight, who stand informally around a table containing two open plastic trays filled with ice and unlabeled dark brown 12-ounce bottles of home-brewed beer. Club members pop the gold bottle caps off with an opener and sip samples from small plastic cups, sharing a single bottle among several club members.

The tubs of bottled beer and convivial chatter circling the room suggest it's a fine time to be a home-brewer, and in many ways it is.

The costs involved with starting the hobby are relatively small. For about $100, beginners can buy a kit that includes all the basic tools and ingredients needed to brew beer at home. The kits offer beginners a choice of beer styles and include hardware a home-brewer can reuse to make subsequent beer batches.

The additional costs for each batch vary by recipe, but most batches cost between $30 and $50. At the lower end, the ingredients match the current price for a case of premium, commercially produced beer.

''The best thing about home-brewing is that you can make the beer exactly the way you want it,'' says Homebrewers President Mike Lessa, whose favorite home-brew is a Black Pepper Porter, made with chocolate malts, East Kent Golding hops and an ounce of freshly ground black pepper. But, Lessa avoids disparaging what home-brewers call the commercial brewers. ''I know how hard it is to produce a consistent beer. It's very difficult. My problem is that I just don't like the [commercial] beer.''

The rising price of beer and craft brews in particular may further spur interest in home-brewing. Simply put, the costs of home-brewing a good case of beer have approached the cost of a case of quality, craft-brewed beer. But exact cost comparisons are difficult. Cost comparisons don't include the hours spent over a brewing kettle, time home-brewers consider a labor of love. Most home-brewers keg their brews, rather than taking the additional steps necessary to bottle. But your typical batch of home-brew -- roughly five gallons of beer -- represents about a case and a half of commercially produced beer.

Like most serious home-brewers, Bowen makes his brew using a three-pot, all-grain method. The all-grain process is more expensive and involves more steps. Most beginners use a method referred to as extract, a sort of instant coffee method of making beer. The $100 beginner kits use the extract method.

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