When Blake Hass and a group of friends first decided to get into homebrewing they did so following the rules of the popular cooking show Chopped.
They put several slips of paper, each containing the name of a bizarre ingredient, into a hat and picked at random to determine what type of beer they would brew. Hass drew “Fruity Pebbles” and “oysters.” It turned out about as well as anybody would imagine.
“That was not the beer to start with,” he said, laughing. “We kind of jumped into the deep end before we knew the fundamentals.”
Now — six years and a lot of practice later — Hass runs the Alaskan Brewing Company’s tasting room, and he’s looking to help aspiring home brewers avoid some of his early mistakes.
This Saturday, Hass and Steve Sano, a brewer with Alaskan, will be leading a how-to-homebrew workshop at the brewery.
Eighteen years ago, the American Homebrewers Association dubbed the first Saturday of November “Learn to Homebrew Day.” It has been celebrating the homebrew holiday ever since, and this year Alaskan Brewing Company decided to get involved.
“Juneau has a pretty strong homebrewing community, but we always want to encourage more people to get into it,” said Melissa Griffiths, a marketing specialist for the brewery.
During the workshop Saturday, Hass and Sano will cover the basics of homebrewing. They’ll teach participants how to select ingredients and form recipes. Workshop attendees will be able to taste ingredients from Southeast Alaska, such as Sitka Spruce tips, birch syrup and alder-smoked malt — Fruity Pebbles and oysters not included. Participants will also be able to taste beers featuring these ingredients.
Gourmet Alaska — a Juneau kitchenware shop and “the go-to store for homebrewing,” according to Griffiths — will give workshop attendees some basic brewing equipment and ingredients. The brewery will also be giving participants a copy of the American Homebrewers Association’s Introduction to Homebrewing.
In addition to the goodies, participants will leave with a base understanding of homebrewing, which Hass said is important to have, whether you’re tackling an oyster stout or an American Amber.
“Having a knowledge of homebrewing is very important; it gives you a whole new appreciation for beer in general,” Hass said. “Get the basics down. Learn the process, and once you have a good foundation, new things are a lot easier to try.”
This past spring, years after the doomed fruity oyster beer experiment, Hass and his friends tried another oyster stout. It was a success Hass credited to a firmer understanding of the fundamentals of fermentation.
“That’s the beauty of homebrewing,” he said. “If it doesn’t turn out, you might have a bad beer, but you’ve still learned something.”
For those who want to learn a little something before they dive in, Saturday’s workshop will run from 1 to 3 p.m. at the brewery in Lemon Creek. Tickets are on sale for there for $10. Tickets will be available at the brewery’s downtown depot during First Friday if there are any left. The workshop will only be open to 35 people on a first-come-first-served basis.
• Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.
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Alaskan Brewing Co. brewer Steve Sano hold light malt grains next to other ingredients that could be used in the homebrewing process on Wednesday.
