The taste of home

Two five-gallon glass tanks rest in a closet under a hanging pair of black business suits and a collection of brightly colored Hawaiian shirts. Six-packs are stacked haphazardly around the closet door, dirty clothes are strewn over the floor and a road bike hangs on the opposite wall. The concealed space tucked away in the third-floor apartment on Watts Street would have been ideal for hiding alcohol during the Roaring 20s-a time when jazz music mingled with much-despised laws against manufacturing or distributing beer. But unless you live on East Campus, prohibition went out of fashion in the 1930s. And beer brew chefs Ben Haynes and Steve Worrell are certainly not running an Al Capone operation out of their two-bedroom apartment.

After four months of brewing and with 10 five-gallon batches of beer down the hatch, the two seniors' apartment is literally littered with reused six-packs, bottle caps and other home-brewing supplies. The two former freshman-year roommates are averaging two batches every two weeks, and brewing has filtered into their everyday lifestyle.

"We have beer lying everywhere-in cupboards, under couches, in our bedrooms," Haynes says. "Sometimes when we clean up the apartment, we find a beer and say, 'Oh yeah, I forgot about that one.'"

Outside of 603 Watts, the Haynes and Worrell are part of a nation-wide home brewing scene that is becoming increasingly popular at Duke among a group of students and faculty.

Within the college atmosphere, home brewing isn't (entirely) about the alcohol. It isn't about supreme inebriation, and it isn't about cheating Anheuser Busch out of 15 bucks. Home brewing is about a process that propagates the culture of beer itself, mixing pleasure and leisure together and stirring up a good time.

"Experience the Biotechnology of Beer"

If you're Matt Wilkerson and Paul Slattery, home brewing is all about experimentation. Before most students moved in this fall, the senior duo's brewing project was already in the works.

Home brewing was just one of the grand schemes they had concocted over the summer--the dog they had planned on getting, for one, never quite materialized. Brewing was a more practical proposal. It combined their affinity for different microbrews and their interest in a hobby practiced by several of their non-Duke friends.

"We said, 'Is this the store? Are we sure we're in the right place?'" Gilbert recalls. "It's just a little odd. But it ended up being great. The guys were great."

Enter Rix Bobbs and Nate Dizo, the owner and newly-hired sales associate of the home-brewing hot spot for students and faculty from both Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill. Durham's resident beer experts set first-timers up with everything they need to make home brewing happen.

Usually, that means Rix recommends a home-brewing kit equipped with all the necessary ingredients and detailed instructions and Nate provides colorful chit-chat and camraderie that brings beer enthusiasts back to the store to just hang out and talk about their favorite brews. Like Haynes, Worrell and Gilbert, Slattery and Wilkerson initially spent around $100 for buckets, bottles, cleaning supplies and ingredients.

The duo set aside a night to brew the batch in their North Gregson Street house. They begin by sanitizing the pots, bottles and other equipment-which most home brewers agree is their least favorite part of the process. After cleaning everything, they boil the grains for about half an hour before adding in malt extracts (barley) to boil for an additional hour. To fight off bacteria, hops are then added in one to three cycles to the wort, the unfermented sugars used to produce the beer.

"You have to make a mess," Wilkerson says. "You have to spill stuff. We usually spill a lot when we're making the wort because we leave it on the stove and don't catch it in time, and it just boils over."

To bring the wort down to a fermentable temperature, the seniors add about three gallons of cold water to the two-gallon boiled batch before adding the yeast. The batch then sits for a week before Wilkerson and Slattery bottle it and wait another few weeks before their own personalized beer - "Slatterson," the five housemates like to call it - is ready to drink.

"We have a book to write down recipes that we've tried to see what works and what doesn't," Wilkerson says. "What we have now is a product of experimentation."

After two and a half weeks working on their first batch, the pair get tired of waiting and uncap the beer for a taste test. Of their five batches they've made in the last four months, both agree that their first-the Nut Brown Ale from the Brewmaster kit-was the best they have cooked up so far.

All in all, Wilkerson and Slattery end up making about 50 beers per batch, which costs around $30-about the same price for two 24-packs of Bud Light.

But the expense is really not their top concern. It's all about the experience of physically crafting something together and creating a perfect beer recipe.

"Our first batch of beer was brewed from the kit's instruction and ingredients," Wilkerson says. "We haven't used one since."

It's Just Science

Setting up in the shade outside the Biological Sciences building, a group of graduate student researchers and professors in the Biology Department put on a beer brewing demonstration in late August before the fall semester begins. Curious passersby walk past the French Science building on a lazy Friday afternoon and stop to ask the brewers questions about the process and the beer-brewing culture at Duke.

As the afternoon drifts on, about 60 to 70 people show up, and the demonstration turns into a celebration as several guitarists and even an accordion player add a folk soundtrack to the scene. The brewing wraps up as the sun sets on the six-hour event.

The yearly beer-brewing demonstrations started about three years ago when Bernie Ball, an associate researcher in the biology department, and biology graduate student Greg Bonito saw that there was an active interest within the department for this kind of event.

"You get this really dynamic unit going," Ball says. "People come and go. Even though school hasn't started, grad students are there prepping for class and stuff."

But the semi-annual event is only a microcosm of the beer-brewing culture in the Biology Department, in which a group of professors and researchers occasionally get together to discuss new techniques and try each other's home brews. The bio brewers have taken the skills they have learned in the lab and translated it to beer brewing.

"The entire process is just science," Ball said. "It's chemistry and science. A lot of people can brew with absolutely no understanding of the science behind it.. Knowing the science behind it is advantageous because maybe if something's wrong, you kind of know how to look and troubleshoot better."

Although fifth-year biology graduate student Erin Tripp says she doesn't brew as often as she used to, she still finds time to make a batch here and there. As a scientist, Tripp says she enjoys the experimental part of the process.

"It's mostly just a fun thing, but there's certainly an experimental aspect to it," Tripp says. "Very small changes in the recipe can have very different results. Certainly anyone who likes to play and experiment would find it interesting-not just a scientist. It might not be too far of a stretch that people who sort of like to experiment as a part of their profession like to do it at home, too. Not just with beer, but with whatever."

Ball got into beer brewing when he took a job working at a lab technology firm in Research Triangle Park after spending 20 years in the Marine Corps and graduating from Radford University. Six of his coworkers at the lab were a combination of home brewers and certified beer judges, and gradually converted Ball into a devoted home brewer.

"They were beyond avid brewers," Ball said. "They were rabid brewers. They brewed 26 gallons every Wednesday night. Now, we're all married and a have a home life.. After a while my wife used to call herself a home brew widow."

Ball is more precise with his formula than Wilkerson and Slattery, but he's also been around the block. He brews his beer entirely from scratch, starting with whole grain and sometimes even producing his own yeast cultures in the lab. Practiced efficiency allows Ball to complete the entire process in about five hours-usually early on a weekend morning, starting before the sun comes up.

Science aside, Ball says that the bottom line, and source of motivation, is a love of the process and the product. At age 47, Ball brews regularly for his neighbors and friends, on holidays-Darwin Day is Feb. 12-or for no reason at all.

For Tripp, too, brewing is all about having fun.

Like many home brewers, Tripp didn't have any great reason for why she got into beer brewing other than that she really liked beer and thought it would be a fun thing to do. After learning to brew mead from a friend as an undergraduate student at UNC-Asheville, Tripp switched to beer--in her opinion, a tastier alternative.

"It's just a fun sort of hobby," Tripp says. "It's like anything else, it's like baking a loaf of bread, it just takes a lot longer. Do you get together with friends and cook? Sure. It's the same kind of thing. It's just a lot more fun if it's with friends."

Several years ago, Tripp and three other female Biology graduate students used to get together to compare home brew notes, and even toured breweries around the Triangle and Philadelphia areas as a social outing.

And the trips were fun-fun enough for Tripp and her girlfriends to toy with the idea of setting up shop for an all-female brewery. The others have since moved on, but Tripp still sees that glass as somewhat half-full.

"If I failed as a grad student and at the research, I'd do it," she says with a laugh.

At the tipping point

Home brewing is not only a recent phenomenon at Duke-until 1979, it was not permitted anywhere in the United States. Prohibition effectively ended when the 21st Amendment was signed into law in 1933, but restrictions on manufacturing alcohol remained in place. Since President Jimmy Carter signed a law repealing many of the prohibitions on home brewing, beer brewing cultures have sprouted across the United States, with the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado, Oktoberfests in Cincinnati, Ohio and Lavenworth, Washington, and even the World Beer Festival in Durham.

But Americans are brewing neophytes when compared to cultures all over the world who have been brewing beer for thousands of years. The earliest records date back to the 6th millennium B.C. in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Knowledge of how to ferment grain into beer was passed down through the times to the Greeks and then to the Romans, who drank beer in moments of triumph, celebration and fellowship.

Plato once wrote, "He was a wise man who invented beer."

Beer is even at the heart of America's founding, supposedly. One old beer brewer's myth says while the Pilgrims were sailing to America, they ran out of beer as they approached what is now Massachusetts. So that they could acquire new grains to grow more beer, the pilgrims stopped at Plymouth Rock, and the rest was history, literally.

Like the Pilgrims, the growth of the home brewing culture in North Carolina also started out of a need for beer. North Carolina residents in the 1980s were thirsting for foreign beers that they couldn't purchase because of a state law that prohibited the sale beer with an alcohol content above 6 percent. The law, though, said nothing about home-brewed beer, so a few ambitious brewers took it upon themselves to craft Wheats, ales, and pilsners similar to those found in England and Germany, effectively starting the home brewing craze the Tar Heel state.

The 6 percent cap also put a strain on brewers in North Carolina who wanted to turn their home enterprises into microbrewing businesses. In 1993, only two microbreweries operated in the state. Seeing North Carolina as a land of opportunity, three brothers-Joe, Greg and John Shuck-came to North Carolina 12 years ago to start Carolina Breweries, which today is served in over 200 restaurants across the state on tap or out of bottles. The three began brewing beer in their basement while living in Seattle. After poking around at various odd-jobs, they got serious about their project and opened up a m icrobrewery on Thomas Mill Road in Holly Springs, N.C., just south of Apex.

Nowadays, there are dozens of microbreweries across the state and are oftentimes a beer brewer's best source for advice for tips about their own pale ales, wheats or pilsners. On Saturday afternoons, the three brothers open up their microbrewery and give tours to beer enthusiasts from around the Triangle area.

"I get a lot of guys who come by and bring me their beer," Greg says. "They mostly want to understand why their beer tastes the way it does, like why it's so bitter, and I try to give them a few tips."

Home brewers don't just rely on the pros for advice. Across North Carolina, there are seven brewing clubs, with one in Durham and another in Raleigh, composed of home brewers who get together, share their beer and talk about their craft.

The Raleigh club, CARBOY (Cary-Apex-Raleigh Brewers of Yore) is frequented by the more serious beer-goers who hold formal meetings in which they discuss the details of their brews and frequently hold brewing competitions. The TRUB Club ("the Triangle's Unabashed homeBrewers"), which meets at Satisfactions Restaurant and Grill every Wednesday night, is more laid back than its Raleigh counterpart.

"Probably a lot of the Carboy members wouldn't appreciate our meetings because we're almost like a frat house type of thing," Ball says. "You've got a bunch of guys my age, almost 50 years old, you've got guys in their 20s and there's a bunch of hollering and, you know, making a lot of off color comments about beer and people. But it's still very educational."

Although most of the women at Wednesday-night meetings are hanging onto their beer-brewing boyfriends and have very little interest in talking about the beer they are drinking, females are not excluded from the seemingly all-boys' club. On a few occasions, Tripp has brought her own beer and shared it with the guys.

"There's usually other females there," Tripp says. "But they're just like there with their boyfriend or something. There's a lot of male-oriented jokes and a rowdy crowd. It sort of seems to be this [all-guy thing]. I don't know why-it's not like it takes a man to brew beer."

Tapping into the community

Beer is a college thing, but gets better with age.

Wilkerson says home brewing takes a matured palette for beer, which freshmen at Duke, who are new to drinking, lack. And access to good beer is usually limited to students who are over 21-or have a convincing fake ID.

"Freshmen think Busch Light is the greatest thing ever. It's not until you start to have options that you start to appreciate better beer. As you get a little older, you get tired of the drinking college experience. I've been to Shooters. I'm over it," he says.

Although beer brewers of all backgrounds shop at the Brewmaster Store, Rix says it takes a certain mindset to want to brew your own beer.

"The kind of people who usually brew beer are real crafty people, like mother of earth mindsets," Rix explains. "People who would make their own biodiesel, people who would make their own yogurt or dill pickles-grow a garden, that kind of thing."

Or even people who would make their own yeast cultures, like Ball.

"A lot of home brewers start out in college," Ball says. "It seems like the thing to do. You're sort of off in kind of a beer culture and a lot of aspects make it a cheap alternative to start making beer. You'll have people tell you, 'Oh I've had some home brewed beer when I was in college and oh my gosh you could clean a care engine with it.'"

Slattery and Wilkerson, though, don't think of themselves as beer-guzzling drink-til-you-drop frat boys but as old men trapped in 22-year-old bodies.

"If you retire and don't know what to do, it's a great hobby," Wilkerson says, leaning back to yawn and stretch. "I feel retired. Come on, I have a front porch and a rocking chair."