The Philadelphia Inquirer
Neighbors
Bucks County

Sunday, February 16, 1997

By Douglas Belkin

INQUIRER CORRESPONDENT

Joe Rovito's deep-set, dark eyes stare out from the label on a bottle of the ale he brewed last month. In the picture, he sports a 5 o'clock shadow and a black hooded sweatshirt.

The product name: Pathological Pale.

The message conveyed is more mug shot than St. Pauli Girl, more Cujo than Spuds MacKenzie. There is no hint of galloping Clydesdales, beach volleyball or speedboats.

Instead, the brewer looks disturbed. When told of the effect, Rovito smiles.

This is the world of home brewing, where a backlash against things slick, sexy, bland and mass-produced has given birth to a culture of irony, irreverence and hearty better-than-you-can-buy-it-and-not-afraid-to-tell-you-so beers.

``My brother took the picture at a cheesesteak party two years ago,'' Rovito said recently, looking slightly less pathological in his Lansdale basement, where a refrigerator contained three of his latest brews.

``He held it up at my wedding and said, `I hope the kids take after [ your wife ] .' ''

Rovito is one of about 8,000 home brewers in Philadelphia and its four Pennsylvania suburbs who patronize the eight brew-supply shops in the Philadelphia area, local brewers and suppliers say. Half of the shops are less than five years old.

``It's the fastest-growing hobby in the United States,'' said Don Norlie, owner of Brew By You, a 7-year-old brew-supply store in Philadelphia.

From a demographer's point of view, brewers are well-to-do birds of a feather: 97 percent are men, and most are married and college-educated. They earn between $56,000 and $80,000 a year and are willing and able to spend an average of $500 a year on the hobby, said Dena Nishek, editor of Zymurgy magazine (named after the science of fermentation), a national beer-brewing publication based in Boulder, Colo.

Brewers are also disproportionately technically oriented, the locals say. At the monthly club meetings and tastings that dot the brewers' community, it is common to find that about 75 percent of the participants work as engineers, scientists or computer professionals.

That's no accident, brewers say. The craft allows them to both exploit their technological bent and indulge their creativity. The result is a growing and dedicated subculture of hobbyists who take the techniques of brewing seriously. Between slurps.

Last month, 324 beers were entered in the second annual War of the Worts home-brew contest at the Buckingham Mountain Brewery in Lahaska. They included Twit's Wit, Porker's Porter, Summa Cumma Stout and Expecting Alexander, along with Devil's Milk, Dog Day's Lager, Cherry Cheesesteak Stout (a derivation of Kurt Cobain Shotgun Stout), and Big Cat Pumpkin Ale.

The contest, like the industry it serves, has grown by leaps and bounds. The number of entries more than doubled this year. Contest organizer Jason Harris, a 1990 graduate of the University of Vermont and the proprietor of Keystone Home Brew Supply in Montgomeryville, predicts the industry will continue to grow, albeit more slowly than the explosive growth of the late 1980s and early '90s.

That is because the home-brewing industry has become a victim of its own success, Harris surmises. Commercial microbrewery production almost doubled from 1994 to 1995, Nishek said. The result is that prospective home brewers can go into a neighborhood pub or store and buy fresh, high-quality beer that a few years ago they would have had to brew themselves.

``A decade ago, you could go to the beer store and find maybe 50 microbrews,'' Harris said. ``Today, at the right store, there may be a selection or 700 or 800 beers.''

But the men who brew love to brew as much as they love to drink.

``They're pretty into the do-it-yourself genre,'' said Nishek. ``A lot of these guys make their own bread, maybe brew mead and wine. It's not just brewing beer; it's almost like a lifestyle.

``They collect stuff and take beer vacations designed around going to different microbreweries. It really permeates a large part of their life.''

The hobby has been legal only since a 1979 federal law lifted one of the final vestiges of Prohibition and is relatively cheap to start.

Basic equipment runs less than $100. After the up-front expenses, a home brewer can whip up a case of beer for less than $10. Just boil malt extract in five gallons of water to produce what is known as a wort -- a rich, nonalcoholic liquid. Add hops and cool. Add yeast, and let it ferment for two weeks to a month or more in an airtight bucket. Strain away the yeast sediment. Add some sugar. Bottle. Consume.

Unlike Rovito, most home brewers do not go to the trouble of making their own labels. And labels are not allowed at the War of the Worts competition -- just one of the more than 200 competitions nationwide sanctioned this year by the American Home Brewers Association (up from 45 in 1990).

Al Folsom of Warrington started brewing at home in the early '80s, then dropped out of the hobby for a while. ``There was really no instruction at all when I started,'' he said.

But Folsom managed to pick up the secrets of brewing success somehow. At last month's competition, he took three first-place awards for his beers: Nit Wit, Bodacious Bellhop (a porter), and the Bitter Formerly Known as Prince.

``Today,'' Folsom said of home brewing, ``it has really grown into something huge.''

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Philadelphia Online -- The Philadelphia Inquirer, Neighbors: Bucks County -- Copyright Sunday, February 16, 1997

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