Many of you already enjoy their benefits: easy camaraderie amongst a willing pool of drinking pals; an exchange of information about beer, brewing and life in general; organized activities and an opportunity to achieve something bigger than one could do alone. For those of you not yet hooked up, I urge you to connect with an existing club or, if need be, go off and start your own.

Charlie Papazian started his club way back in the late 1970s, as a way of building a community of participants in the homebrewing classes he taught. Based on Charlie’s fearless vision of a brighter, beerier tomorrow, he turned it into the American Homebrewers Association, which eventually spawned the Association of Brewers, now the Brewers Association, which represents America’s commercial craft brewers as well as its homebrewers. Think of the AHA division of the Brewers Association as your national homebrewing club.

At their best, beer clubs can be just fantastic, but everything goes through cycles, and maybe your club is not so lively as it used to be. People often assume the same responsibilities year after year, and burnout is a real possibility. There are things you can do to bring the life—and fresh blood—back into your club.

For God’s sake, get some new people involved. They’ll have new ideas and will be fresh and ready to help as soon as they feel comfortable in the mix. Brewers (or people who would like to be) are all around you. Put a stack of flyers in the local beer bar or brewpub. If there is a beer festival near you, ask for a table to promote your club, and while you’re at it offer to supply some volunteers. Most times, organizers will jump at the offer.

Conducting a session specifically oriented to beginners, and advertised at pubs and the local homebrew shop, will likely turn up some new and eager folks. The AHA celebrates “Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day,” on the first Saturday in November, and if you participate, they’ll help promote your event. Another national event, “Big Brew,” offers great opportunities for connecting with new brewers. It’s the first Saturday in May. Check out both at www.beertown.org.

Pass the tasks around. Often, the same people hang onto the same jobs simply out of inertia. Similarly, those willing to help are often timid about stepping up into leadership, so you have to make a real effort to identify good candidates and invite them to participate. In my club, we created an Events Committee to try out new people as a steppingstone to being on the board.

Expand your range of activities. In my club, the Chicago Beer Society, we find that members get tired of the same old events. Refreshing or replacing them altogether is sometimes necessary to maintain interest. Competitions, educational events, road trips, group brews, campouts, tastings and much more await you.

Take on a challenge. Sometimes stretching your limits is a great way to re-energize your group and bring your local community together. For smaller clubs, holding a modest competition, or an educational event like a BJCP judge class may be challenge enough. Larger clubs may want to hold a beer festival, host the AHA regional first round, or even the National Homebrewers Conference. Larger events may require multiple clubs to get involved, another great way to expand and strengthen the community.

Get involved with your craft brew community. Home and craft brewers have a lot in common, and most craft brewers know that homebrewers are their most ardent and vocal supporters. There is a lot we can do together, and the benefits flow to everyone. Depending on the size and experience of the club, there are a range of possible events, from tasting dinners, to festivals of all sizes, to multi-day extravaganzas such as the Spirit of Belgium, put on every few years by BURP, a homebrewing club in the DC area.

My own Chicago Beer Society specializes in beer, as opposed to homebrewing, events. We find, when properly run, they attract new people into the club, promote great beer in general, offer a venue for commercial brewers to hang out with us and with each other, as well as raise funds for less profitable activities. We are a dues paying member of the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild, and do some events jointly with them. Over the past few years we have run a variety of events including a Brews and Blues Cruise, blind tasting dinners, real ale and barrel-aged beer festivals, and our crowning glory, the Brewpub Shootout, where local breweries compete for best food, beer and pairing. (Hint: awards generate participation.)

While we find commercial and homebrewing events are happy under one roof, beer enthusiast organizations are popping up in places like Washington state and Pittsburgh. The AHA is also trying to encourage this activity, and is working on some helpful information on how to make it work for your club. Again, Beertown is the place to look. And while you’re there, check out the GABF Pro-Am competition, which brings home and pro brewers together to compete for real GABF gold.

Get political. As legislatures react to recent Supreme Court decisions regarding distribution, there are politics afoot in many states that would seriously impact your access to good beer. In states like North Carolina, homebrewers have worked with others to repeal or change unreasonable state laws, such as North Carolina’s limit on alcohol content in beer. The Brewers Association is collecting names of interested individuals who will be alerted when their action can make a difference, as it has recently in several states (www.beertown.org for more information). This is another good reason to get friendly with your state craft brewers guild.

Get involved with the broader craft foods movement. In organizations such as Slow Food (www.slowfood.org) are people who are already excited about high quality, locally produced food and drink. Producers and retailers of artisanal foods are always looking for ways to get their products in front of willing customers, and they know that good beer is a powerful draw.

So you can see there is no shortage of things to do and places to take your club. All it takes is vision, determination, and a few really good beers to share. I’ll see you at the next meeting!

Only a few of these early brew shop proprietors were properly tuned into the potential of the hobby. The chain-smoking denizen of a particularly notorious Chicago brew shop denied the existence of the local brew club and remained hell bent on selling every customer his sure-fire combination of a can of extract and a 3-pound bag of dextrose until the very day his shop shut its doors forever.

How Far the Art Has Come

But from these impoverished beginnings, a passionate and sophisticated movement developed. Hops, malt and, most of all, information started to become available, and many of us tore Fred Eckhardt’s imperfect little books to shreds as we fed on his brewing revelations and uniquely cantankerous charm. About this time appeared a new kind of shop owner who saw the value in clubs, typified by John Daumé in Woodland Hills, CA. Daumé generously nurtured the Maltose Falcons, giving them the opportunity to build themselves into one of the great homebrew clubs on the planet.

Charlie Papazian recognized the value of community early on by, as he taught homebrewing classes in Boulder. Lucky for all of us, he had the nerve to think big, and he gave homebrewers—and later craft brewers—their own national organization.

And we continued to brew. Along the way we revived the venerable porter and India pale ale styles, which had pretty much vanished in their British homeland. We revived once-popular American beers like pre-Prohibition pilsners and stock ales, and sought out obscurities like Kentucky common beer and Pennsylvania swankey.

As we have marched along, our little band of brewers has gathered up a fascinating cast of characters: geeks and goddesses, artists and engineers, judges and poets. Yeast hunters, hop growers, party throwers and malt monks. We revived the dead, rescued the past, and charted a course for the future. We have built a culture of borderless collegiality, a welcoming community that may be our greatest achievement.

The Good-beer Revolution

Our influence has extended far beyond our sphere. Craft brewing, now a $3.5 billion business, was largely built by entrepreneurial homebrewers. Today, you would be hard pressed to name a small brewery not staffed largely by former, sometimes even current, homebrewers. The basics of beer judging were devised first to evaluate homebrewed beer. Without the behind-the-scenes effort of a horde of homebrewers, commercial beer competitions and beer festivals would be nigh impossible.

And we do love beer. Our thirst for hops appears insatiable. A dribble at first, in beers like amber and red ales, then a rush into pale ale, dripping with the uniquely American Cascade hop. We pressed on to India pale ales, rich and resiny, topped with the grapefruity tang of high-alpha hops whose vivid personalities command fierce loyalty from their fans. And today, a torrent–hops gushing out of our half-drained glasses of double IPAs, an arms race that rages on to who knows where.

Where indeed? Despite our achievements, there remain plenty of opportunities to strengthen and refine our institutions and individual skills. The camaraderie that is so strong within local clubs should be equally strong between clubs, as it is starting to become in certain regions. The pool of judging expertise continues to expand and should grow even more sophisticated in the future.

The American Homebrewers Association continues to thrive and has been given even greater autonomy by its newly reborn parent group, the Brewers Association.* Consequently, the framework for a national organization has never been stronger. Increased involvement will lead to expanded influence and opportunities, and I personally encourage you to join forces with us. The role of homebrewers as ambassadors of great beer will likely expand and come into sharper focus. We will be the ones who fill the void that exists in the area of organized beer appreciation.

Above all, we will continue to think big. In the Chicago Beer Society, we fantasize about a bricks and mortar clubhouse, a sumptuous temple of Gambrinus serving our every beer whim. Is this as ridiculous a dream as it sounds, or something to really work toward? Would today’s reality have seemed just as unreachable back in the dark days of 1980?

No dreams, no destination. So let’s keep going.

American Pale Ale

As it would hardly be a homebrewing column without a recipe, I leave you with the following recipe for American pale ale. It seems a bit quaint now, but it was a powerhouse in its day and is still quite delicious. Surely a classic!

*By January, 2005 the Association of Brewers will join forces with the Brewers’ Association of America to form a single, stronger organization called the Brewers’ Association, to represent the interests of small brewers. Homebrewers retain their seat at the table in the new organization, and our member-elected governing committee has been charged with charting the future for the AHA.