Home Brew Master

Brad Goins Thursday, November 17, 2016 Comments Off on Home Brew Master
Home Brew Master

FOR LOCAL RESIDENT TIM WHITE, HOME BREWING IS A THOROUGHLY SOCIAL ACTIVITY

STORY BY BRAD GOINS

PHOTOS BY JASON CARROLL, monsoursphotography.net

 

Local craft beer home brewer Tim White reckons the home brew craze in the U.S. began 22 or 23 years ago.

It was a few years after that when White, then a Cypress, Texas, resident, took a tour of Houston’s St. Arnold Brewery.

The tour went fine. But what really caught White’s attention was what he saw when the tour was over and he went out into the brewery’s parking lot. A crowd of men were standing around throughout the lot — laughing, talking and, in general, enjoying themselves.

“Everybody’s having a great time,” White recalls. He asked a participant, “What’s going on?”

Tim White with Meg Quinn: “She’s a great brew assistant.” Photo by Jason Carroll of Monsour’s Photography

Tim White with Meg Quinn:
“She’s a great brew assistant.”
Photo by Jason Carroll
of Monsour’s Photography

What was going on was Houston’s National Home Brew Day. One reason it took place in the St. Arnold’s Brewery parking lot was that the brewery provided those in attendance with free hot water and yeast — two of the necessary ingredients for home brewing. With these ingredients, and the crushed grains they’d brought with them, folks were making their home brews right in the parking lot.

“They seemed to be having fun,” says White.

At the event, he was invited to a meeting of the Houston home brewing club Kuyhendahl Gran Brewers, or KGB. The KGB proudly describes itself as the “Home of the Big Batch Brew Bash.”

The meeting went well, and one of the members gave White a flock of advice about how to get started on his own home brew operation.

So how did that go? “That’s a great story,” says White. He wanted to make an American pale ale. He and his new brewing buddy worked together to create the recipe.

White “wanted to put some crushed wheat” into the mix. The right amount of crushed wheat will, says White, give a beer a “nice frothy head.”

The problem with crushed wheat, it turns out, is that if you put in too much, you wind up with a wheat beer.

When he was done with the brewing, White invited members of the KGB over to sample the product. When the home brewers had a sip, they laughed and said, “This isn’t a pale ale.” But they all loved the taste of the beer. White agreed; “it was delicious.”

White decided to christen his unanticipated brew his American Wheat beer. The story had a very happy ending when White’s brew took home the award for best wheat beer at the next Texas-based Dixie Cup Homebrew Competition.

A Social Home Brewer

As we’ve seen, what first drew White to home brewing was the social aspect of what the brewers were doing. White expanded on the social function of home brewing — first by brewing with his friends, and then by introducing an annual brew session for the men’s group in his church: Cypress’ Christ the Redeemer Catholic Church.

Photo by Jason Carroll of Monsour’s Photography

Photo by Jason Carroll
of Monsour’s Photography

White says that “25 guys [wound up making] 10 gallons of beer.”

As it happened, the church’s priest, Father Sean Horrigan, was a beer aficionado. He worked with White on a pale ale White called Absolution Ale. Horrigan joked, “You have absolution, but only for venial sins” — a joke that became White’s slogan for the beer.

White prepared one specially decorated case of Absolution Ale for the auction at the church’s Spring Festival. White predicted the case would draw a bid of $100.

But before the auction began, Father Horrigan told the crowd that not only did he drink the beer, but he also helped make it. The case wound up selling for $700.

Easy As Makin’ Coffee

White relocated to downtown Lake Charles a year ago. “I love Southwest Louisiana and wanted to make it home,” he says.

In his 15 years of home brewing, White says he’s had a good record of avoiding the well-known problems faced by home brewers — exploding bottles and so forth.

“I’ve been very fortunate. I’m pretty big about sanitation and sterilization. One problem brewers have is cleanliness …” In the presence of bacteria, “the batch of beer will become infected …” Infected beer will both smell and taste bad. As one poster wrote on the site Beer Advocate, “If your beer tastes like pure rubbing alcohol, it’s infected.”

White maintains that it’s not all that difficult to make a good home brew. “If you can make a pot of coffee in a drip coffee maker, you can make beer.”

He points out the similarities between the two processes. To make beer, one boils crushed grain in water to get a mixture known as “wort.” Hops and yeast are added to the wort, which is then kept in darkness for two weeks. If the conditions are right, the result is fine-tasting beer.

Note that those conditions include strict climate control. White says beer should only be aged at a temperature between 68 and 70 degrees F. One implication of that is that beer can’t be aged in the interior environments of most Southwest Louisiana homes unless it’s placed in some sort of reliable cooling device that allows for temperatures to be measured and adjusted.

The Porter That Keeps You Cool

“My beer meets the two criteria of all my friends who enjoy beer,” says White. “It’s cold and free.”

White reckons he’s made 40 different styles of beer during his home-brewing career.

Early on, White asked Father Horrigan to write down his comments about White’s beers. The Father made many positive comments. But his most enthusiastic remarks were reserved for White’s Oktoberfest beer. Horrigan wrote simply, “Oktoberfest … Oh my God!”

“We’ve made a whole lot [of Oktoberfest beer],” says White. “And we’re still making it.”

Another big favorite is White’s home-brewed porter. White says the term “porter” comes from the old practice of porters in British pubs who took the beer that remained on tables at the end of the night; poured it all in one big pitcher; and drank it. The mixtures that wound up in the pitchers were a combination of ale and stout.

White’s contribution to the porter legacy is his Purgatory Porter. It is, says White, a dark-colored, roasted beer with a note of chocolate. For its name, White again (obviously) turned to his Catholic roots; the brew’s slogan is “Keeps you cool while you wait.”

And there are other varieties. White works closely with his “great” brew assistant Meg Quinn to make such fan favorites as the Cowpoke Pale Ale and the Cowgirl Blonde.

The Bar’s Open

White doesn’t sell his home brews. But he’s worked with those who sell theirs.

Photo by Jason Carroll of Monsour’s Photography

Photo by Jason Carroll
of Monsour’s Photography

One in particular stands out. “There’s some good beer being made at Crying Eagle,” says White. “I’ve brewed with their brewer. Beautiful beer. There’s the prime example of a home brewer losing total control of himself” and expanding his home-brewing operation into a large, well-known and successful business enterprise.

For the time being, anyway, White keeps his enterprise simpler. “I welcome people to come over and have a beer,” he says. There’s never any charge.

When White’s in the mood to serve free home brew, he turns on the sign outside his downtown Lake Charles house that reads “White House Brewery.” When folks see the White House Brewery sign illuminated, says White, they can be sure that “the bar’s open.”

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