Joe Bair waters the hops plants growing in front of his store.

Kevin Trayner, president of the PALE ALES home brewers group, speaks at the group's August meeting.

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For many people, the phrase ‘home brewing’ conjures up images of moonshiners concocting putrid mixtures in their bathtubs. It is an association Joe Bair, owner of Princeton Homebrew, hopes to dispel.

Bair and his shop, located at 208 Sanhican Drive in Trenton, which has any equipment needed for home brewing, have started many local brewers on the way to their first batch of beer. Bair is perhaps the area’s most important advocate for the hobby, having founded a club for home brewers in 1995 called Princeton And Local Environs Pale Ale and Lager Enjoyment Society, or PALE ALES.

“You’re making something better than you can buy, and you’re doing it for less money,” he said.

Joe Scarlata, of Robbinsville, has been home brewing beer for 14 years. In 1995, when Bair’s shop was just starting out in Princeton, Scarlata’s wife Betty bought her husband a beer brewing kit as a gift.

Scarlata has been using the same equipment ever since to brew mostly dark beers and porters. Part of the appeal of home brewing is drawing inspiration from favorite beers and altering or even improving them.

“You’re creating something,” Scarlata said. “You’re creating your own recipe.”

Before home brewers can start crafting recipes, however, they need equipment. A basic home brewing kit costs between $75 and $120, while ingredients, which include cost between $30 and $45 per batch, depending on the beer. Brewers will also need a pot to cook in and bottles to keep the beer when it’s finished.

The key ingredients for beer are water, hops, yeast and malt. Malt, which is grain that has been converted to sugar, can be obtained one or two ways: The brewer can purchase malt extract or the brewer can go through the process to create the malt.

According Kevin Trayner of Hamilton, president of PALE ALES, many home brewers prefer being in control of the process of creating the malt, Brewing this way can cost between $100 and $1,000 more in extra equipment, according to Bair, but buying unprocessed grain for each batch is cheaper than buying malt extract.

Because of the extra equipment and space necessary, Trayner said, all-grain brewing was impossible for some brewers. That doesn’t mean they can’t make quality beer, though.

“It is important to note that brewing with extract can produce great beers, and I know many brewers who have won awards with their extract brews, and never gone beyond that,” Trayner said.

A home brewing kit typically yields a batch of 5 gallons of beer, or about two cases of 24 12-ounce bottles. Depending on the beer, a batch can take two weeks to a month to brew.

Trayner said deciding when to bottle can be a precarious choice. Bottling too early will leave the beer with a sulfury flavor at best, and can cause bottles to explode at worst.

After the beer is bottled, it needs to sit for 8 to 12 weeks to carbonate before it is finally ready to drink.

“It’s not a difficult process,” Scarlata said. “It just takes a long time.”

President Jimmy Carter signed a law allowing home brewing in 1978. New Jersey, however, requires all home brewers to have a license, a requirement Trayner said most of the club members, including himself, don’t meet.

During a PALE ALES meeting on August 7, former club president Steven Rowley shared a pilsner, a lighter style of beer that is generally smooth to drink, that he had brewed in April. Scarlata, Bair, and many of Bair’s customers are members of the club.
Rowley, as part of a presentation on pilsners, brought several examples of pilsner beers, but several club members declared Rowley’s home brew the best of the night.

Bair said that because home brewers have smaller quantities to manage, they can often produce better beer than they could buy in stores, or beer that commercial producers would never make.

Matt Taylor, a member of the club from Lawrenceville, created a cross between a Scottish ale and an Oktoberfest, a German style, to create “Scotchtoberfest,” a homage to an invented holiday from “The Simpsons.” The beer had a full, smoky flavor.

“It was a fantastic beer,” he said.

Taylor, a 32-year-old transplant from California, has been brewing beer since he was in college.

“I think it’s a great thing that anybody who has an appreciation for beer should at least attempt once in their life,” he said.
Chris Thackray, of Ewing, another club member, once created a rye IPA, another merger of two styles. Thackray, 29, has been brewing beer for about three and a half years, and says it isn’t a difficult hobby to pick up.

“If you can cook and follow directions, you can basically brew beer,” he said.

Trayner once combined three habanero peppers with a batch of beer, and learned the hard way that one pepper, or even half of a pepper, would have been enough.

Although he had to drink the batch extremely slowly, he said, “I liked the fact that you could really taste the habanero pepper.”

The PALE ALES club is a nonprofit group gathering several of the area’s home brewers. Trayner estimates that the group has between 30 and 40 dues-paying members.

The club meets monthly to discuss and drink beer. Every year the club holds a Big Brew, in which all the club members brew the same style of beer. All club members get discounts at Bair’s store.

Many of the members learned about the club through Bair. And some, like Scarlata from Robbinsville, and Marc Leckington of Trenton, were introduced to home brewing through Princeton Homebrew.

Like Scarlata, Leckington’s wife bought him a brewing kit from Bair’s store as well. At the time, Bair was just starting out at his Trenton location.

In just 14 months of brewing, Leckington estimates that he has created 20 batches of beer. He already has in mind what beers he will brew in the spring.

“It’s funny how people fall into it,” he said.

Leckington considers Princeton Homebrew a great resource for home brewers.

“What I really like about it is it’s a nearly 24-hour technical assistance resources,” he said.

But there was a time when home brewing was as new to Bair as many of the customers who wander into his shop. Bair’s home brewing hobby started with a quest for Grateful Dead tapes.

“Back then, you had to know someone to get Grateful Dead tapes,” he said.

That someone also happened to be a home brewer, whose beer inspired him to home brew his own batch with a friend. Bair’s first batch, in 1984, wasn’t inspiring itself, by his estimation.

“We thought it was good, but it wasn’t really good,” he said.

Over 25 years of brewing, Bair has learned a few lessons on the way to his place in the local home brewing community.

“With home brew, you can get a beer to be 90 percent good without even trying,” he said, “but to get to that final 10 percent where it’s going to win awards, you have to pay more attention to the water, you have to pay attention to everything else.”

To find out more, call Princeton Homebrew at (609) 252-1800, or visit the PALEALES Web site at paleales.org.

Staff photos by Myles Ma.