Beer buds: A group of friends brews excellence by the batch

by Eric Ginsburg

Beer can, and usually does, begin as a solitary endeavor, especially for homebrewers.

They’ll often rise early on a Saturday morning, when it isn’t as tempting to crack open a beer and when it’s easier to carve out several uninterrupted hours. But for members of Greensboro’s Battleground Brewers Guild, the undertaking quickly becomes social.

Several dozen people find community in the club, drawing in their partners and friends — especially when the beer is ready.

“I can’t drink 10 gallons on my own,” said Walt Bilous, a tall guy in his mid-forties sporting a Wicked Weed Brewing trucker hat, “but I can give it away.”

And frequently the process turns social before it’s completed, like when Bilous posted on the guild’s Facebook page to invite people to join him while he brewed on a recent Saturday.

Beyond providing a formal organization to bolster homebrewing or host trainings, trips and competitions — all of which it does — the Battleground Brewers Guild’s bigger accomplishment is the meaningful bonds its members have formed, and the excellent beer they brew.

By 10 a.m., Derick Shular had already loaded 26 pounds of grain into the portable cooler set atop his display table. He’d calculated that he’d need 31 quarts of water at 170 degrees, which he’d let sit in the grain for about an hour to pull sugar out of the malted barley. New brewers can just buy extract and skip this somewhat tedious process, he said, but that’s a little more expensive and more importantly, doing it himself allows Shular greater control over the beer.

A small group of people stood around him, sipping coffee and snacking on a tray of cookies outside of Big Dan’s Brew Shed in northwest Greensboro on Jan. 16. Some of them, including Bilous, are homebrew club members, but a handful of the people who stopped by throughout the morning to watch Shular work were drawn in by the club’s public demo.

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The Battleground Brewers Guild organizes a few big-ticket events in addition to its monthly member meetings, including an annual excursion to the craft beer mecca that is Asheville and a brewers-only Skirmish in the Triad homebrewing competition. Shular’s demo last weekend, where he brewed something called Arnge Ale outside the homebrew supply store, was the club’s first event of its kind.

The club does more than provide resources and a social network for beginning and amateur brewers; it produces champions and nurtures professionals. Mark Gibb and Sam Victory — owners of Gibb’s Hundred Brewing in Greensboro and the forthcoming Wise Man Brewing in Winston-Salem respectively — both emerged from the guild, as did former Natty Greene’s and current Small Batch head brewer Derek Meyn. And before he opened the brew shed a few years ago or hosted the club’s event on Jan. 16, Dan Morgan participated as a member, too.

A circuit of similar clubs in North and South Carolina names a Carolina Brewer of the Year, and Battleground Brewers Guild members won for three years in a row thanks to Meyn, Morgan and another member from 2008 to 2010. And for the last three years, customers who started homebrewing with Morgan’s help took home one of the competition’s two awards, including both winners in 2015.

Another member, Dennis Keaton, has won international homebrew competitions, Morgan said.

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The business takes up so much of Morgan’s time that he isn’t able to actively participate in the club much anymore, and he misses it. He’s still close to the craft, providing recipes to brewers and helping them “clone” beers they like, such as an out-of-production draft from New Belgium called Mighty Arrow. After trying to replicate the recipe and tweaking it to his liking, Morgan and a friend renamed it Drooping Arrow. But since then, the 5.8-percent ABV beer became known as Arnge Ale for its color and flavor.

For the Jan. 16 brewing demonstration, Morgan donated the ingredients so his former club could execute the recipe.

Shular, a former president of the Battleground Brewers Guild, usually makes 10 gallons at a time, figuring that if he’s going to labor through a four- or five-hour process, he might as well double up on the recipe. They encourage new brewers to keep it simple, and start with five gallons at a time, adding volume and complexity with experience.

The two things inexperienced homebrewers are most likely to mess up is sanitation or temperatures, Shular said. It’s like baking, where measurements need to be exact and heat and timing are crucial, but regardless the end product is usually drinkable beer, even if it doesn’t taste all that great.

Making a basic hard cider is simpler than a beer, which in turn is easier to manipulate and perfect than wine, Morgan said.

“God makes wine, brewers make beer,” he quipped as Shular chatted with prospective members outside.

Some people join the club with little practice making their own beer. Charlie Harris, a new brewers assistant at Natty Greene’s, showed up with his girlfriend Julia to check out the club. She’d bought him some brewing gear for the holidays, and former Natty’s brewer Mike Rollinson — who will be the head brewer at Joymongers brewery in Greensboro when it opens — recommended that Harris link up with the guild for experience.

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Harris, a High Point native who moved back to Greensboro from Colorado a few months ago, chatted with club president Chris Bristol as they watched Shular work. One mustachioed member who hung around for a couple hours on Jan. 16 explained his reason for joining and remaining in the club to Harris, saying that it opened his horizons. He reached out to Bilous when he wanted to make a saison beer, who in turn joined the guild as a novice and learned to brew from Shular.

Plus, members receive a nice leather koozie with the Battleground Brewers Guild name and emblem on it when they join.

But the real motivation to join may be all the beer they’re able to try that will never reach the marketplace.

The members of Greensboro’s homebrew club agree that they were the belles of the ball at the annual Summertime Brews Festival held in the Gate City. But that ended after the 2013 bash, when new state administrators interpreted North Carolina law more strictly and shut homebrewers out of such public events where they’d exhibit an assortment of kooky beers to the paying public.

The guild joined the festival from its inception, and always garnered the longest lines, members said. But there’s good news for 2016 — the festival’s hosts plan to incorporate a competition run by the Greensboro club similar to the Great American Beer Festival. Commercial brewers from all over would be encouraged to enter their best beers for the showdown that would immediately precede the Summertime Brews fest, and as the judges, the contest would restore the guild to prominence with the beer bash.

The Battleground Brewers Guild orchestrates a similar version of the competition — albeit not a public, ticketed event — for homebrewers every fall. They receive about 300 homebrewed entrants in the Skirmish in the Triad.

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Some members suggested the skirmish is more tedious than enjoyable. Any homebrew competition is highly variable and unpredictable, a few said, with newcomers frequently winning on their first entry. But that doesn’t mean the competition isn’t stiff or that nobody’s having fun; Bilous, whose role in the organization involves convincing people to enter such events in the Southeast, described being an entrant as exciting. There’s a convivial, social atmosphere, Bilous said, and the unexpected element adds some thrill.

One of his acolytes won a first place distinction his first time entering one of the region’s 11 homebrew competitions held each year, Bilous added.

A homebrew party is not the sort of thing that ends at a reasonable hour.

The night of the demo at Big Dan’s Brew Shed last week, the club held its annual holiday party, scheduled in January to avoid travel conflicts. A couple of new people who’d come out that day came and left in the events first few hours, but with eight homebrew taps flowing at club president Chris Bristol’s suburban home in Adams Farm, the party would show minimal signs of slowing at midnight despite beginning at 7 p.m.

Dozens of members and their spouses circulated through the house, snacking on catered goods and sampling homemade beer and cider. A fire on the back porch almost got out of hand early, but with everyone still sober, the situation stayed under control. A foldable bar with eight built-in taps occupied much of the other side of the porch, courtesy of a member who lent it to Bristol and his wife Beth for the event.

Eric Henriksen,  a member who purchased Triad Homebrew Supply in west Greensboro, stood near the taps and countertop covered in bottles of homebrew with Shular, who shivered a little in the winter air despite a scarf and a coat of booze as he chatted with the Bristols and Sara Farnsworth, one of the club’s lone female members. The banter, playful jokes and laid-back mood at the party in general, but particularly this corner, displayed the deep connections the club has forged, and other members like Bilous rotated in and out of the conversation with ease.

Most of the club’s members are men, though a few of their wives do brew and participate in its events. Craft beer is male-dominated in general, Farnsworth noted as she described the lack of other female beer judges at events she attends. When the subject arose, the group started discussing the historical factors that contributed to the imbalance, including state and religious influences.

The majority of the guild’s regulars are middle-aged guys — though some are older — who brew in their basements, kitchens or back patios. At least a few have backgrounds in chemistry. Morgan said some homebrewers are loners, suggesting that homebrewers are “wired a little differently.” While some might not find the camaraderie of a club like the guild or HOPS in High Point and Wort Hogs in Winston-Salem appealing, Morgan said they’ll come into his store and hang out for hours. Henriksen said he doesn’t directly compete with Morgan; instead, the battle is against other hobbies and ways that settled people with a little money spend their free time, he said.

As a party at a private residence where nothing was sold, the club’s event is clear of state law, and members and friends took full advantage of the chance to swap brews.

Shular’s impressive Perry pear cider and two others including a tart, 7.6-percent cherry cider held down one end of the spectrum. Several bottles of a marvelous smoked marzen anchored the heavier side of things, but most brews landed somewhere in the middle, including a spiced winter beer, He-Man Helles, a Jaded APA with Jade hops and a bottle of blueberry flavored beer. In an ice-filled tub near the door leading inside, a pack of Yuengling took up more real estate than some extra smoked marzen.

[pullquote]The Battleground Brewers Guild holds its next meeting on Feb. 17 at Craft City Sip-In in Greensboro at 7 p.m. The club is also organizing another homebrew demo at Triad Homebrew Supply in February. Check the group’s Facebook page for details.[/pullquote]

The selection underscored the diversity of the guild members’ interest and exhibited their talents — in a blind taste test, it would be near impossible to distinguish any of them from a commercially-brewed beer. And while some were collective endeavors by more than one member, most were solo efforts.

Even in the Bristol household.

Beth and Chris used to brew together more frequently, but Beth said that their approaches vary enough that she decided to strike out on her own. Chris, the club’s current president, isn’t inclined to use extract, and Beth isn’t interested in the longer process to make her own considering how long brewing already takes.

Brewers like Shular are quick to note there’s no “right way” to do it, and Beth has a blue ribbon from her first homebrew contest entry — a chocolate hazelnut stout inspired by her love of Nutella — a few years ago in Chapel Hill to prove it. She enjoys crafting beers with unique flavor profiles, and though a blood-orange wheat she tried didn’t come out well, a raspberry jalapeño wheat she made with a friend last summer fared better.

Though the back-porch setup was a temporary arrangement, the Bristols recently remodeled a room off the kitchen to be a bar, complete with a fridge with tap handles on the side, a bar built by another club member, stools and two televisions. Guests crowded into the room to watch an overtime battle in an NFL playoff game and took turns sampling the liquid mistletoe on draft.

Sometime after 11, Farnsworth broke out a few bottles to share, including a few highly sought after beers — known as “whales” — that she’d been saving. The Bristols grabbed some sample glasses so people could try the Black Damnation from De Struise Brouwers, a reserve series whiskey-barrel aged Fathead from Nebraska Brewing Co. and the Bestway Corner Porter from Natty Greene’s that several partygoers had never seen.

A small cluster formed in the kitchen by the brews, next to the equally delicious meatballs, cheesy bacon and potato nuggets and brown-ale toffee bars.

Shular just about lost it when the 120 Minute IPA from Dogfish Head came out. He insisted Henriksen and anyone else within reach try the hoppy beer, which Chris Bristol had stored long enough that it had begun to taste more like a barleywine when he broke it out. The party arrived at the peak moment to break this beer out, Shular insisted — any longer and this beer would’ve descended from the knife’s edge, deteriorating with time.

The Battleground Brewers Guild may be best known publicly for its Oktoberfest, Mai Fest in the spring and particularly its former Summertime Brews table. But it’s moments like this, with members joyfully sharing each other’s company and brewing artistry, that are the club’s biggest asset.