I hear you started homebrewing in high school.
Yeah, I did. My entire life changed my junior year in high school in 1995. I went over to my friend’s house after school one day, and I walked into the house to say hello. His dad and a friend were making beer on the stove. And I said “What are you doing?” and they said “We’re making beer,” and I thought, that’s pretty amazing—you can make beer at home? It was mind-blowing. I asked if he would show me how to do it. He said, “You’ve got to ask your parents, and if they say yes, I’ll show you how to make beer.”
I went home and I still claim to this day that my parents weren’t paying attention to me when I asked them, but they said yes, sure, go learn to make beer.
Did they think it was a better alternative than other things you’d get into?
Yeah, I guess so. They were very open-minded.
What hooked you about brewing?
I was 17 years old, and I won’t say that I wasn’t drinking beer when I wasn’t supposed to be. But just the thought that something that was so taboo was something I could make at home, a magical elixir that we tried so hard to get. I wasn’t thinking I’d learn to make craft beer, I just thought that if beer can be made at home, that’s amazing.
I brewed my first batch from Charlie Papazian’s book. It was cranberry celebration ale, and I’ve saved a bottle to this day, I won’t open it, I’m sure it tastes like crap. But it was the beginning for me. I brought it home, made labels on the computer and slapped them on Corona bottles. They said “Captain Lawrence Brewing Co.”—that’s the name of the road I grew up on, Captain Lawrence Drive, and that’s where the name of the brewery comes from.
I immediately began buying all the books I could and reading up on everything I could on the subject. I homebrewed throughout my senior year in high school.
After high school, I took a little detour to Villanova to follow in my father’s footsteps and become an accountant. I played lacrosse, and my first semester there I went to the seniors on the team who lived in houses and I’d make beer on their stoves. Ferment it in a plastic bucket in the basement, bottle it with some of the other guys on the team, then throw it in the back of my 1978 Delta 88 and drive it around until it was carbonated.
I was still only about 18 years old at the time, so this probably wasn’t the smartest thing…
One day when I was reading Brewing Techniques instead of doing my accounting homework, I came across UC Davis. That’s when I realized I did not want to become an accountant. I couldn’t believe you could actually become a professional brewer. One thing led to another: the first thing, I couldn’t believe you could brew beer at home, then I was falling in love with it; then, wow, you could actually go to college to become a brewer. That was my epiphany.
After that came convincing my parents it was OK to leave Villanova where I was going to become an accountant like my father, and go to California to study a beverage I was legally not allowed to drink.
How did you convince them?
We had a lot of interesting conversations, but I told them this is where my heart was, and this what I really want to be doing. They said this is it. We’ll support your decision, but if you drop out of this one, you’re on your own.
I went to California, found a place to live, and it was UC Davis, here I come. I spent my first two years in the Bay Area taking the pre-requisites in junior college and establishing my residency. I was working at Fermentation Frenzy, the local homebrew shop. I worked there basically for free, because at the end of the day when I’d taken home all my brewing ingredients and kettles, I’d worked 20 hours a week and I still owed them money.
While I knew how to homebrew at that point, I was still extract-brewing. After I got the job at Frenzy, I started all-grain brewing, and I started brewing close to five gallons a week. I ended up having so much beer in my closet. I didn’t care about drinking it; I was just brewing something different every week.
