Fair contest is one sign that state is home of brews

Like a doctor examining an X-ray, Steve Piatz stared hard at a glass of weizen beer. He swirled it, smelled it, held it up to a light. Just as he was about to finally taste it, though, a comment from another table broke his concentration.

"This math doesn't add up," another judge said, looking down at a surprisingly complicated score sheet.

Said Piatz, with a laugh: "Go figure. Beer and math don't mix."

Such was the oddly focused but unavoidably haphazard (or hop-hazard?) scene inside the Creative Activities Annex at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds last weekend.

While booths for the jammaking and knitting contests sat quiet, their neighbors from the fifth annual Minnesota State Fair Homebrewing Competition turned out at 9 a.m. on a Saturday to get down to business downing beers.

They had their work cut out for them: The number of entries in the contest has quadrupled since it began in 2003 to 346 beers this year.

Culminating today with a best-in-show ceremony, the competition reflects a trend that's brewing statewide.

Homebrewing is bubbling over in Minnesota. Two of the biggest homebrew supply stores in the country are based in the Twin Cities, and so are several national award-winning homebrewers.

"We're really starting to get national recognition," said Steve Fletty, president of the St. Paul Homebrewers Club.

The St. Paul group was named 2007 homebrew club of the year at the National Homebrew Competition in Denver. Its 100 or so members had more winning beers in the contest than any other club.

"We took the title from San Diego, which won it for like five years running," bragged Fletty, who won the national award for best brewer of mead (beer made from honey).

Learning from each other

Gary Glass, director of the American Homebrewers Association, confirmed the Twin Cities' burgeoning reputation.

"There are two components for a city or region to become homebrewing hotbeds: having a good supply store, and then having these clubs where the brewers can work off each other and learn from each other," Glass said. "You clearly have both those things going on now in the Twin Cities now."

The metro area's two homebrew shops -- Midwest Brewing Supply in Minneapolis and Northern Brewer in St. Paul -- both have mail- and Internet-order services that ship products internationally.

"They have enough supplies to start a brewery and ingredients from all over the world, and they're just a short drive away," gushed Adam Stern, the fair's judge and competition coordinator. "That's definitely been a big factor in creating the high number of fine local homebrewers."

Midwest Brewing Supply owner Dave Turbenson opened his store in 1996 at the height of what he called "the first wave of homebrewing fads." Since then, he has twice moved to bigger locations.

Turbenson said the trend in homebrewing today is not that more people are doing it, but that the ones doing it are much more serious about it.

"The brewers who've stuck with it beyond the fads are taking it to a whole other level and getting very creative about it," said Turbenson, whose clients have included now-professional brewers such as Herkimer Pub proprietor Blake Richardson and Surly Brewing Company brewmaster Todd Haug.

The State Fair competition is a clear indicator of how serious many local homebrewers are becoming, and it's not even the biggest in the state. That would be the annual Upper Mississippi Mash-Out, which draws about 1,000 beer entries annually at different locations.

At the fair's preliminary judging round last weekend, about 40 judges were spread across six tables, each going through the motions (and the smells and the stares). They included many engineers and computer workers, one survivor of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse (whose leg injuries couldn't keep him away) and -- to the surprise of a few other judges -- one woman.

"It's fun, but it's also pretty hard core," said Anna Bartholome, who defied gender stereotypes by judging the smoked-beer category. "It's a manly beer," she said.

The judging team is led by two experts with national "grandmaster" ranking (among fewer than 100 nationwide). One of them, Al Boyce, looked absolutely elated by the contest.

"We all got into this with the goal of finding and creating better beer, and here it is," said Boyce, who has won several national awards as a homebrewer.

Keeping the beer scorecard

The contest's other grandmaster, Steve Piatz, literally wrote the book on how to judge homebrews as an exam director for the national Beer Judge Competition Program.

The "BJCP Beer Score Sheet" includes such words as "acetaldehyde,"astringency" and "phenolic" as traits to look for. Piatz pointed to it as proof that the judges -- who generally sample an ounce or two of each beer and take many breaks -- don't just sit around getting drunk.

"It's pretty hard to do this if the room is swirling," Piatz quipped.

While some onlookers might doubt the judges' sobriety, competition organizer Sean Hewitt said the event has been warmly received by both the fair staff and most attendees who happen upon it.

Hewitt even predicted: "I think it's just a matter of time before we take over the butter sculpture and become the biggest thing at the fair."

Yeah, he'd been drinking.

Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658

Chris Riemenschneider • chrisr@startribune.com