First Draft Follies: The Founding Of The American Homebrewers Association, Part 3

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Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four --- Part Five --- Part Six

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. This edition concerns the creation of the American Homebrewers Association. The AHA celebrated its thirtieth anniversary on December 7, 2008. The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification. The excerpt is long, so I've broken it into manageable bits and am posting those bits as a series.

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Hence homebrewing, a nearly perfect expression of personal ecology. In an otherwise "artificial environment," explained one enthusiast, homebrew satisfied "man's yearning" to "create something that fills his needs." People could make bread or weave cloth, but "the fermenting of a potion . . . seems to grab him." (*6)

"[N]ow that growing your own (food, dope, hair, younameit) is hip," wrote the author of an essay widely reprinted in alternative newspapers, "it's time to resurrect the Dope of the Depression--Homebrew."

Homemade beer inspired "good vibrations" and a "pleasant high." Unlike the rest of the "plastic, mass-produced shit" of modern America, homebrew represented "an exercise of craft" and empowered the "politically oriented" to retaliate against "Augustus [sic] Busch and the other fascist pigs who [were] ripping off the Common Man." "If you're looking for a cheap drunk," added the beer adviser, "go back to Gussie Busch. But if you dig the good vibes from using something you make yourself, plus an improvement in quality over the commercial shit," brew on, brothers and sisters, brew on. (*7)

There is no way to measure the number of Americans who practiced homebrewing in the early and mid-1970s, but by the summer of 1973 enough were that the Treasury Department issued a formal warning advising Americans to "leave the beer-making to the brewers." (*8) Treasury's warning was a bit bizarre, even laughable, given that Senator Sam Ervin was a few blocks away conducting hearings into gross illegalities on the part of the Nixon administration. Such, however, are the ways of men.

Charlie Papazian ignored the advisory to cease and desist. He stumbled across homebrewing in the early seventies while studying nuclear engineering at the University of Virginia. A friend introduced Papazian to a neighbor, an older man named George Connor.

One day while the two were visiting Connor, the older man went to the basement and returned with a bottle. It's beer, he said; he'd been aging it for a year or two. Connor opened the bottle and poured samples.

Revelation. Papazian and his friends usually drank 69-cent six-packs of Ballantine, which was okay but nothing to get excited about. Connor's "cidery" brew sang with "clean, fresh, lively" flavor. It was, Charlie decided, not only delicious but "interesting." (*9) And Connor had made it himself. Papazian had never thought of "beer" as something that could be made at home. Beer came from the supermarket, right? Apparently not.

Papazian enjoyed challenges--he was an Eagle Scout--and he decided to try his hand. He obtained a recipe from Connor and loaded up with supplies from a local grocery store: Blue Ribbon malt, hop extract, some yeast.

The first batch was, in a word, "bad." So was the next one. But Papazian persevered, fiddled with the recipe, and eventually concocted a batch that was downright tasty.

He was hooked, enough so that he began hunting for better ingredients than the local grocery provided. On trips back to his parents' home in New Jersey he loaded up with goods from a nearby Wine-Art store, buying bigger quantities with each visit. He tracked down some instruction books, all of them British, but they were "confusing," so he set them aside and employed humankind's oldest tutor: trial and error.

As Papazian's skill increased and his beer improved, he discovered another benefit to this new venture: homebrewing was a people magnet. His friends loved tasting and talking about his experiments. Homemade beer, Papazian realized, created community.

Next: Papazian moves to Boulder

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SOURCES:

*6: Peter Lawlor, "Birth of the Brews," Clear Creek 9 (December 1971): 25.

*7: "Beer--Brew It Yourself," Great Speckled Bird (May 17, 1971): 22. This article, like so many, appeared in multiple publications, thanks to the Underground Press Syndicate, the hipsters' version of the Associated Press.

*8: "Treasury Warns Home-Brewers," Washington Post, July 27, 1973, p. A3.

*9: Unless otherwise indicated, following quotes are from Charlie Papazian interview with Maureen Ogle, April 27, 2005.

No Green In Going Green

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Yikes! So much for all that recycling we're being urged to do. Now I don't feel quite so dumb-out-of-it-whatever about my household's decision to dispose of much of our waste by putting out for the garbage guys:

The town where I live has a coal-fired power plant, but about 15% of the coal is replaced by burning residents' wastes. The newspapers I toss end up as electricity for my house. Yes, I know there are objections to coal-fired power plants, but the one in our city has a remarkably low pollution rate. Indeed, if you didn't know what the plant was burning, you'd never guess it was coal.

Anyway -- going green ain't gonna be easy. But then: we knew that, right?

First Draft Follies: The Founding Of The American Homebrewers Association, Part 2

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Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four --- Part Five --- Part Six

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. This edition concerns the creation of the American Homebrewers Association. The AHA celebrated its thirtieth anniversary on December 7, 2008. The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification. The excerpt is long, so I've broken it into manageable bits and am posting those bits as a series.

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Americans coped by turning inward. The self is one of the few aspects of life than can be managed and controlled, and a strong, morally upright self, Americans believe, provides the only sure buffer against the chaos beyond the gate. That was true during the unsettled years of the early nineteenth century, a reform era that produced a fascination with exercise and health as well as religious revival, abolition and the first temperance movement. In the late nineteenth century, citizens responded to immigration and industrial development by denying themselves the pleasures of drink.

So in the 1970s, when Americans plunged into an unprecedented exploration of self. Twelve percent of Americans tuned into their inner self through yoga, Transcendental Meditation, and other forms of "mysticism." Hippies became Jesus freaks and middle class folks sought shelter in fundamentalism and evangelical religions. Est, transactional analysis, and self-help books flourished as weeds in summer.

A "culture of narcissism," scoffed one critic. Tom Wolfe dubbed the times the "Me Decade." (*1) There was merit to both charges, but both critiques miss a larger point. People asked not "what can I do for me," so much as they asked "what can I do to construct a more substantive me so that I can forge stronger, more meaningful connections with the world around me?"

The decade's passion for personal ecology traced its ancestry less to Narcissus than to old-fashioned pioneer ingenuity. Nineteenth century pioneers raised barns and hosted quilting bees; their late twentieth-century counterparts organized community daycare centers and food cooperatives; Emma Goldman clinics for women and free clinics for the indigent. Farmers' markets flourished in suburban mall parking lots, and adults shared wisdom and skills at "free schools."

In a world gone berserk, personal ecology provided a way to forge new modes of community. It allowed Americans to gain control over scattered lives and to retaliate against corrupt corporations and even more corrupt governments.

Enthusiasm for do-it-yourself, back-to-the-earth alternatives began in the hipsters' ghetto but spilled out into the mainstream. Middle-class people concerned about pesticides and additives shopped at "healthfood" stores and food cooperatives.

Edward Espe Brown's Tassajara Bread Book--zen and bread--first appeared in 1970 and sold 400,000 copies; it has never gone out of print. So, too, Frances Moore Lappes' Diet for A Small Planet, in print since 1971. Robert Rodale, publisher of Organic Farming & Gardening, watched as his readership rose by 40 percent in 1971 alone. Bennett Cerf at Random House, about as mainstream a man and company as was possible to find, paid alicia bay laurel, member of a Sonoma County commune, a hefty sum for distribution rights to her ostentatiously hippie/alt-lifestyle guidebook, Living on the Earth.

In April, 1970, some twenty million Americans celebrated the first Earth Day by planting trees, picking up trash, participating in teach-ins, and joining rallies.

Nothing better reflects the passion and possibilities of personal ecology than the Whole Earth Catalog. The Catalog was created by Stewart Brand, who spent the sixties participating in Acid Tests, organizing the Trips Festival, exploring Native American cultures, and thinking large thoughts. Brand believed that power exercised "remotely" through impersonal or oversized vehicles like "government, big business, formal education, church" had failed. The planet's best hope, he argued, lay in the acts and lives of ordinary people.

"We are as gods and might as well get good at it." A "realm of intimate, personal power is developing," he explained, including the "power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, share his adventure with whoever is interested." (*2)

But how to do that? "Fighting a system," he pointed out, "merely strengthens" it. (*3) Far better to co-opt the system's power by finding alternatives to its offerings; or as he put it later and more succinctly: "You have a stronger vote as a buyer than a voter . . . ." (*4)

Thus the Catalog, subtitled "Access to Tools." Brand and his staff stuffed each issue with advice about how to buy, build, and use geodesic domes, tents, kayaks, maps, plows, axes, and bees. As interpreted by the Menlo Park group, "tools" included silk screening, macrame, kerosene stoves, Kama Sutra oil, The Israel Army Physical Fitness Book, synthesizers, Gary Snyder's poetry, the Snugli baby carrier, aeronautical charts, the Yaqui way of knowledge, BMW motorcycles, adoption, childbirth, sex, and canning equipment.

The sum of this nearly hallucinogenic hodge-podge was greater than its parts. Such "tools" enabled Americans to challenge the system, transform their lives, and improve the earth. To vote more powerfully as buyers (and makers and doers) than as voters.

Mother Earth News picked up where the Catalog left off. John Shuttleworth, an escapee from Madison Avenue advertising, and his wife Jane launched the magazine in January 1970 with the goal of fueling the "revolution of consciousness" begun in Haight and the pages of Brand's Catalog. (*5) Within two years, nearly three-quarters of a million people were reading Mother Earth News for advice on how to build houses, grow organic produce, and raise chickens.

Next: Homebrewing As Politics

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SOURCES:

*1: Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism. For Tom Wolfe, see the wikipedia entry. The "me decade" essay appeared in the August 23, 1976 issue of New York magazine.

*2: "Purpose," Whole Earth Catalog Access to Tools ([Menlo Park, CA]: Portola Institute, Fall 1969), unpaginated title page.

*3: Stewart Brand, "Game Design," Last Whole Earth Catalog ([Menlo Park, CA]: Portola Institute, 35.

*4: Thomas Albright, "The Environmentalists," Rolling Stone no. 48 (December 13, 1969): 33.

*5: All quotes from David Armstrong, A Trumpet to Arms: Alternative Media in America (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1981), 196. The "revolution" quotation was from an essay by Gary Snyder that first appeared in the Whole Earth Catalog, and which the Shuttleworths reprinted in their first issue.)