At the monthly meeting in December of the Oak Park Homebrewers Club, around 20 members gather at Doc Ryan’s in Forest Park to sample beers they’ve made.
There’s an imperial red ale, a milk stout and someone has even brought a mead — a honey-based beverage that the maker named “Mead Life Crisis.”
Members sip and ask questions of the maker. What temperature was it fermented at? What does everyone get in the aroma? How long was it aged? Is it a good example of the style?
In recent decades, more and more people have started producing their own beer. That’s particularly true in the west Cook County suburbs, where the Oak Park Homebrewers Club started in January with five members and now has about 75.
“It was little by little, here and there,” said Steve Loranz, outgoing president. “The Oak Park newspaper did a little blurb that we had started a group up. We had a table at the Oak Park Microbrewery event. Went to Ottawa, Illinois and participated in Home Brew fest with a bunch of other brewers.”
Ingredients and basic equipment are readily available from area retailers or Internet businesses. Bob Alvord of Elmwood Park, however, remembers when brewing your own was more of a challenge.
Alvord, an electrical engineer, got started in 1975 while attending college.
“My best friend’s older brother had learned to do it because he was living in a dry county in Kentucky,” Alvord said. “I did it socially with my brother for years. You used to have to invent and build your own equipment.”
Home brewing of beer at its most basic involves boiling water, malt and hops on your stove. You let it cool, add yeast to start the liquid fermenting and age it. You can bottle it or store it in a keg.
Once they master the basics — Alvord says he sees people making good quality beer as soon as their second or third batch — home brewers tend to get more complicated.
“Home brewing has a lot of technical aspects,” Alvord said. “Just making (basic) beer isn’t terribly complicated. You can go into deep technology where you’re doing microbiology. I was talking to (a doctor) and he said you’re doing culturing of things, like we do in medicine.”
Keith Huizinga of River Forest, a mortgage broker, was inspired to start brewing his own beer in 1991 after a college overseas study program in the Netherlands.
“I got introduced to the concept that beer wasn’t just something that tasted like American lager,” Huizinga said. “It’s like saying the only bread you can have is white bread and then someone comes to you and says ‘Here’s rye bread.’ It blows your mind.”
Information on home brewing in 1991 was still less readily available than today.
“The first time I made beer, I saw these things floating in the beer,” Huizinga said. “It’s creating all this ugly scum on top. Is it supposed to do that?”
Around Christmas 2008, Mike Sagan’s wife bought him a brewing kit. Sagan, of Oak Park, liked it.
“I enjoy the technical side,” said Sagan, an electrical engineer. “To see it from grain to glass is very important — the idea that you can be constantly improving something to make it fit your palate. The further along you go in the process, the more scientific background you end up with.”
While home brewers can come from any background, Gary Glass of the American Homebrewers Association in Boulder, Colorado said that the scientifically-minded tend to flock to home brewing.
“Lots of engineers and scientists,” Glass said.
Home brewers tend to be predominantly male, although Glass estimates 25 to 30 percent are women.
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There are about 1.2 million home brewers in the United States, with at least 59,000 in Illinois, Glass estimates. Illinois ranks fourth among the top home brewing states behind Colorado, Texas and California.
The AHA has seen its membership grow from fewer than 10,000 members in 2005 to 44,000 members in 2013. He suggested several reasons for the growth in home brewing.
“One, the quality and variety of ingredients are far superior,” Glass said. “Two, the amount of information on home brewing is so much greater than it was. Also, millennials seem to be particularly attracted to the hobby. It’s easy to get into and reasonably inexpensive. Previously we saw most people getting into the hobby were in their 30s or 40s.”
With improved ingredients, inexpensive equipment and easy-to-get information, Sagan suggests the challenges of home brewing have changed somewhat.
“Easing up on yourself,” Sagan said. “It’s like around the house you paint a wall. Someone says it looks great. I know I missed a spot here, I scuffed it there. I personally do not want a (beer) recipe that is perfect. I always want to improve.”