I
AM AT HEART
a brewer. The romance of beer has been a significant part of my life since the early 1970s. My first homebrew was an amber beer brewed in the basement of a Charlottesville, Virginia, preschool and day care center. I never looked back. Our five senses help me turn the basic ingredientsâhops, yeast, malt and waterâinto beer, but it is my imagination that permits me to experiment and create an endless variety of new and inspired beers.

IMAGINATION IS A
powerful factor that influences our view of the worldâindeed, it is at the heart of how we interpret our senses of taste, smell, hearing, sight and touch. At recent judgings of beer I have begun cautioning myself about the extent to which we become separated from our imagination as we evaluate beer. As beer drinkers and brewers, we sometimes try to mimic machines too much.

Refreshingly, among the most experienced and passionate of brewers, objective evaluation is mixed with stories of great beers and great brewers. These side trips lend proper perspective to most discussions. A brewer may say, “The character in this beer, though some may consider it a technical flaw, is a real, honest-to-God, traditional character that has beer enjoyment value and is found in some small, genuinely wonderful countryside breweriesâand I like it. In fact, I am passionate about the beer's character.” You can see the smile on that brewer's face and his daydream expression as he imagines some
day recreating the experience. The beer with its eccentricânot technically brewers'-perfectâcharacter has warmth of heart, which is perhaps the real reason we all pay for beer. Simply by inhaling certain aromas, I can recall wonderful memories and moments of pleasure.

I often enjoyed one of my favorite American-made British-style bitters on the rooftop of a popular neighborhood tavern. The view of the Front Range Rocky Mountains, and the warmth of the sun on early spring and late autumn days, brought cheer. The all-malt, full-flavored draft bitter is easily affected by sunlight, yet I loved the beer and being there, at that spot.

Now, whenever I experience the aroma of an all-malt beer that is faintly and freshly sunstruck, I smile. I enjoy these technically destabilized beers, and often prefer them, because of the sunshine and warmth of heart they evoke. And I like the flavor! The memory is all mine, and there is no denying the power of where it can take me.

To “capture the imagination” is to capture our five senses. This is why we buy beer, isn't it? It's not just that India pale ale has pleasurable hop-infested, lupulin-drenched bitterness. Not just that stout is black velvet with a full-bodied, creamy texture. Not only that pale ale is graced with the floral lupulin bouquet of Cascade, Goldings or Fuggles hops. Not just that barley wine ale or Doppelbock has a tantalizing 9.14 percent alcohol, nor that a Hefeweizen is accented with spice and fruity themes. Nor do the finest hops, malt, water and yeast really make a huge difference. No, I don't really believe this is ultimately what we beer drinkers seek. We see a label, we hear the name, we see a designer glass full of beer and tantalizing foam, we smell, we taste, we observeâ¦our mind takes us on a journey with first contact.

The moment lasts less than a second, but we connect with our lifelong experiences. Will it be a good experience? Yes? I'll have one. I'll have another. I will remember the moment, perhaps more than the beer, but I
will
remember the beer.

The beer drinker walks out of a store, package of beer playfully swinging at arm's length. The door closes behind and you know for sure that if that beer has been well made, it will transform all those beery characteristics into an experience fully influenced by imagination.

If you still can't quite picture what it is I'm talking about, then sit down quietly with a beer and see where it
really
takes you.

MICROBREWED ADVENTURES
is essentially a book about imagination. I have been fortunate in being able to meet many of the world's great brewers and to travel across the United States and the world tasting thou
sands of amazing beers. My jobs as the founding president of the American Homebrewers Association (1978) and the Brewers Association, founder of the Great American Beer Festival and author of the paradigmatic
Complete Joy of Home Brewing
(1984) have brought me beer opportunities of which I could never have dreamed. Sometimes I realize I am living the ultimate beer fairy tale, with every new beer a happy ending.

I have collected many of these adventures and tastings to share with you. Each story inspired a homebrew recipe that can be found in the back of the book. In many cases it's a recipe from a brewery that I have visited; in others, the recipe captures the flavor of the experience.

My microbrewed adventure begins in 1980 with the pioneers of microbrewing. These were a small collection of homebrewers who were making beer with the flavor and character of a time past. As their friends cheered them on to their next batch, their beer improved. They were tiring of their jobs and began to dream of life as a brewer. Their enthusiasm and confidence grew. At the time, ours was a world of mass-produced light lager, with virtually no options. Velveeta ruled the world of cheese. Wonder bread sandwiched our lunch.

The world of beer was about to embark on a new path. New Albion (Sonoma, CA), Sierra Nevada (Chico, CA), Boulder Beer (Boulder, CO), River City (Sacramento, CA), DeBakker (Novato, CA), Cartwright (Portland, OR) and Wm. S. Newman (Albany, NY) were among the handful of small breweries that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We called them “small breweries” until one day
Zymurgy
magazine small-brewery news editor Stuart Harris suggested that these tiny breweries were like “these new small computers called âmicro-computers'” he used in his day job. The term “microbrewery” was born.

The half-dozen microbrewers in 1981 were afloat in a sea of light lager when the American Homebrewers Association, founded in 1978, began to gain some momentum. A champion of beer styles, beer flavor and diversity, the AHA was the only beacon microbrewers, homebrewers and beer lovers had to turn to. I don't recall whether we discovered them or they discovered us, but the relationship became one of mutual support.

All-malt beer with distinctive varieties of hops and caramelized and roasted specialty malts provided the distinctive and traditional appeal of those original pale ales, porters and stouts. The microbrewed adventure was entirely distinct and different from what the forty-two existing American large and regional breweries were offering.

Now there are more than 1,300 microbreweries in the United States and
the numbers are growing worldwide. While many microbreweries have grown in size and are sometimes called craft breweries, they maintain their passion for flavor, diversity and adventure.

The microbreweries of today, such as Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Dogfish Head Brewing Company, Deschutes Brewery, Left Coast Brewing Company, Stone Brewing Company, Brooklyn Brewery, Boston Beer Company, Rockies Brewing Company and Boulevard Brewing Company, are among the thousand-plus micro and craft brewers producing an amazing array of choice. It's hard to believe that just twenty-five years ago the American beer market was dominated by Big Beer and offered virtually no other options.

Beyond America I have discovered tradition and an equal passion for flavor, diversity and creativity. The second half of
Microbrewed Adventures
reveals many of my most memorable travel adventures outside the United States, tasting exotic, classically traditional and pioneering beersâAndech's German Monastic Bock, Leipziger Gose, Brakspear's Henley-on-Thames Ordinary Bitter, Goose and Firkin Dogbolter, Zimbabwe Zephyr Sorghum Beer, fifty-year-old Cornish mead, spicy Dutch Zeezuiper and legendary Belgian ales and lambics, to name a few. All my microbrewed adventures were invaluable lessons, serving as inspiration for a beer drinker and homebrewer gone “over-the-top.” I hope you enjoyâ¦

Ya Sure Ya Betcha
The Independent Ale Brewery/Red Hook Brewery

I
ALWAYS SHY AWAY
from the inevitable question that everyone loves to ask me: “Charlie, what's your favorite beer?” I will always deflect the question with “It's the beer that I'm holding in my hand” or “The locally made beer, and when I'm home that's my homebrew.” One of the more memorable beers I've held in my handâyou could have called it my “favorite” at the timeâwas an American-made British-style bitter I enjoyed frequently on the rooftop of Boulder's West End Tavern. It was called Ballard Bitter. Brewed by the Independent Brewing Company (now called Red Hook Brewing Co.), then located in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, Ballard Bitter was a wonderfully complex hybrid of American and British beers. I perceived a
predominance of American Cascade hop character combined with a mellow background of English Kent countryside hop flavor. You could taste a complexity of hops. Not only that, but perhaps you could see the hops in the ever-so-slight haze that was likely a combination of hops, yeast and full-malt ingredients.

Gordon Bowker, co-founder of Red Hook Ale, introduces the brewery in 1982.
Gordon Bowker, co-founder of Red Hook Ale. By David Bjorkman.

Ballard Bitter was also blessed with one other “flaw” that I loved. It was called diacetylâone of the textbook brewer's deadly beer sins, producing a flavor and aroma reminiscent of caramel or butterscotch. Textbook brewers despise diacetyl in any amount whatsoever. I am not a textbook brewer, but I
am
a textbook beer drinker. I drink what I like. I like the soft integration of caramel-, toffee-, butterscotch-like flavor that diacetyl harmonically contributes to some styles of English and American ales. A balanced amount of diacetyl contributed to my enjoyment of Ballard Bitter. Yet despite good
sales, this wonderfully balanced and distinct ale was eventually purged of its diacetyl by the brewery. Hop intensity was elevated and the brand renamed India Pale AleâBallard Bitter. The slogan on the bottle, “Ya Sure Ya Betcha,” remains, but it is no longer the Ballard I and thousands in my neighborhood enjoyed.

ORIGINAL BALLARD BITTER

My attempt to recreate this beer is “Original Ballard Bitter.” Ingredient and process information for the original beer was found in various publications and information provided by the brewery. This recipe can be found in About the Recipes.

My intention is not to denounce the brewery. The Red Hook Brewery, founded by passionate beer people and one of the co-founders of Starbucks Coffee as the Independent Brewing Company, began brewing in August of 1982. Paul Shipman, who still leads the brewery, was there at its inception to introduce their original and legendary fruity, yeast-influenced Red Hook Ale. It was a phenomenal success among homebrew enthusiasts and worth a story in and of itself. But I yearn for the original Ballard Bitter.

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