"I have a compulsion to taste all beers whether made from clear mountain water or mosquito-infested swamp water. I've never tasted a bad beer."

—Fred, 1976

Welcome to my beer and homebrew page. I had planned on omitting this page from the current incarnation of the website but changed my mind after hearing from a few friends who still enjoy homebrewing and want me to keep the recipes online. Far be it from me to disappoint any of my friends (especially those who usually have beer). So here is an updated version. Enjoy. If you make any of the recipes let me know how they turned out. If they turned out good, give me some of the beer!

I've been drinking beer for about 30 years and started brewing my own in 1991. I haven't made much in the last ten years, though. Having Harrison's Bar & Grill (where they have about 60 on tap) and a Harris-Teeter (where they stock a wide variety of the kinds I like) down the street have about made it unnecessary. But I still have all the homebrewing equipment so maybe one day.

Unlike some other homebrewers I've met, I don't have my head up my ass and claim to know everything about beer. I originally started making beer for fun and because—in the late 1980s and early 1990s— it was very difficult to find imported and microbrewed beer unless you went to a beverage shop that specialized in beer. There were two or three in Raleigh but all were several miles from home.

Another reason the true beer enthusiast should make a few batches of beer is that this gives one an opportunity to learn about the ingredients that make up beer and experience them hands-on in their original forms. This tends to heighten one's appreciation of the finished product. Also, while there are lots of women who make very good beer, for me it's always been one of those male-bonding things. Kind of like making chili.

I first became interested in home brewing when I lived in Asheville. One of my friends there brewed his own beer and brought me some. It was pretty good and I told him so. So he brought me some more. And I complimented him again and he brought more. This went on for several months. The moral of the story is: if you like home brewed beer, find somebody who makes it, tell them how much you like their beer, and sit back and enjoy the benefits. With homebrewers, flattery will get you everywhere.

So after moving to the Triangle I decided to give it a try. My wife came home from the library with Charlie Papazian's book "The Joy of Homebrewing" and after reading up on it a bit I went off to get all of the necessary supplies and ingredients. I soon discovered that Raleigh is home to one of the world's best homebrew supply stores, American Brewmaster.

Working in the Home Brew Shop, 1991

Upon visiting there, I immediately made friends with owner Mike Williams. Mike is the kind of guy you expect to find when walking into a homebrew shop. He is a fun, friendly guy who is extremely knowledgeable about beer and wine. He helped me get all of the basic equipment needed for homebrewing, helped me decide upon which kind of beer to make first, helped me get all the correct ingredients and even wrote out a recipe.

I became a regular customer and later—after becoming completely fed up with the cheapskate bastards who bought WPTF-TV and resigning in 1991—worked for Mike at the store for about a year. During this time, I made about 50 batches of beer—some good, some not so good, but all fun to make. The best of those recipes are included here.

I was making one batch of beer (about 48 bottles worth) every weekend. Soon I had about 50 gallons of beer on hand at any given time, stored in the downstairs "aging" closet where I'd built shelves just for this purpose. My old TV friend, Greg Short, came over several days a week and between us we drank about one batch per week. This went on until the Summer of 1992 when I enrolled at N.C. State and no longer had time to make it, drink as much, or work at the homebrew shop.

One night we were watching TV and I heard the sound of shattering glass. My first thought was that either there was a fire nearby, or someone was breaking into the house. I carefully went around from room to room checking the windows. No broken windows. I checked outside. No fire. As we continued to our attempts to solve the mystery we both started smelling beer. I had over-primed a recent batch I had made and one of them had exploded in the closet.

So I realized that I potentially had 47 more "bombs" in the closet and began the careful task of taking them out back, one six pack at a time, with goggles on, and opening/recapping them to let off the excess pressure. I finished, put them back, and we went to bed. At about 2:00 in the morning I realized that I had sent a six-pack of this beer—by way of my father—to my cousin Rob in Roanoke. I had to wake him up in the middle of the night and tell him how to "diffuse" the bombs he had in the kitchen. I later apologized to him for this and he said something like "Oh it was no big deal, I just drank them all." Family tradition.

By early 1993, not only was I busy with school. We also now had a baby. There was no time at all for making beer. It took a while to finish drinking all that was in the closet. By the time it was all gone, we had begun shopping at a new upscale grocery store in town called Wellspring that had, among other things, a large assortment of imported beer. Over time, the chain stores began stocking it as well. Though I did continue to make a batch now and then, there was no real compelling need to keep doing so. Then in 1997 we moved and I'm now near Harrison's. Then in 2002 they built the Harris Teeter. Now there's PLENTY of beer nearby.

But if you want to try making some, the best of the recipes are listed below. Have at it and remember our slogan: "Relax. Don't worry. Have a homebrew."

Beer Recipes

	Mexican Style Lager
	Danger Knows No Favorites Bock
	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Beer
	Rocky Raccoon Honey Lager
	Goat Scrotum Ale
	Toad Spit Stout
	Theakston's Old Peculier

I suppose that since this is my official beer page, I should also say a few words about "store bought" beer.

I'd put all of it into two categories: commercially brewed beer and micro-brewed beer. My very favorite commercially brewed beer, by far, is Foster's Lager in 25-oz "Oil Cans" and my favorite micro- brewed beer is Rogue Dead Guy Ale.

I drank my very first oil can in the Spring of 1976. I'd just turned 18 and one of my friends and I decided to skip school (shame on us) and drive out to Williamson Road in Roanoke to visit another friend who worked with me at the Pizza Hut. He wasn't home so we decided to go to Kroger's at Crossroads Mall to get some beer. I was talked into trying a Foster's oil can, which I sat and drank in the parking lot.

Today, Foster's comes in thin aluminum cans, tapered on the bottom (as in the picture, below) and all motor oil now comes in handy plastic bottles. But back then, oil came in cans and the Foster's cans really did look like real oil cans. Hence, the nickname. That day I remember only drinking one of the things but ended up so bombed that I had to sit there in the car for a while and let it wear off before attempting to drive home (obviously my tolerance was much lower in those days).

Oil Cans! Three is usually enough.

Over the years I went through periods of drinking other beers— mostly U.S. commercial beers such as Miller, Michelob and the like. I didn't really start to enjoy "oil cans" again until recently. My wife told me that I drank too much beer so I told her I'd cut down to two cans per day. And even though it's 25 ounces, an oil can is, well, just one can, you know.

Now, the drinking of oil cans has become a pre-game ritual at Carolina Hurricanes hockey games for my friend Steve Murry and me. We typically show up early, cook out, and drink an oil can or two prior to going into the RBC Center. I started doing this years ago to save money (beer inside of the arena is EXPENSIVE) and in the process, I invented NHL Hockey tailgating (read about this under the "Hockey" menu, above).

My love of Foster's oil cans, for years, had me wanting to go to Australia until my friend and former neighbor Dave that the Australians ship all of the good Foster's overseas and that if you order one in an Aussie bar the guy looks at you like you're an idiot and tells you in a very thick Aussie accent "That's horse piss, mate!" Well, so much for my dream of someday visiting Australia!

Another interesting thing to note is that during televised American sporting events one frequently sees lotsof Foster's commercials which feature kangaroos and guys saying "G'day mate" and suggesting that everybody is tougher and more manly in Australia, and that in Australia, Foster's is synonomous with beer. However, if you read the fine print on the Foster's oil cans that we get here, you'll see that they are actually brewed in Toronto! So I'm really drinking Canadian beer masquerading as being Australian. Well, that explains some of my behaviour after drinking them, then, doesn't it?

My very favorite micro-brewed beer is Rogue Dead Guy Ale, from the Rogue Brewery in Oregon. Dead Guy Ale was first brewed for a celebration of the Mayan Day of the Dead in Portland in the 1990s. I first learned of it while doing shopping at Wellspring Grocery in Raleigh in the fall of 1996 when I noticed the dead guy on the label. Since it was almost Halloween I bought a bottle and decided I'd drink it Halloween night after going trick-or-treating with The Girl (who was a bride) and The B-Man (who was a dragon). It was great and immediately became a favorite.

Dead Guys! Three of these is usually enough, too.

But the tradition of drinking Dead Guys didn't really become well-established until the night of May 9, 2002 when the Carolina Hurricanes came back from a three-goal deficit to beat the Montreal Canadiens 4-3 in an overtime playoff game. Feeling that the game was a lost cause, I joined Steve Murry and some of his IBM friends at Harrison's. The bartender mentioned that they had Dead Guys on tap and I ordered one. Turns out this was Steve's beer of choice, as well.

It was now the Third Period and while we were drinking the pints of Dead Guy, the Hurricanes' Sean Hill scored a goal. We ordered another round of Dead Guys and Bates Battaglia scored a goal. We ordered another round of Dead Guys and Erik Cole scored a goal and tied it up with seconds remaining. In overtime, we ordered another round of Dead Guys and Nic Wallin scored the winner. This game came to be known to most as the "Miracle at Molson Center" but to us it is remembered as the "Dead Guy Game". And since then, we have begun regularly including Dead Guys in our pre-game tailgating in the parking lot.

And while on the subject of store-bought beer, I'll also quickly mention that if you can't find Foster's oil cans or Rogue Dead Guy ale, I like the following varieties (this is for your benefit, so you'll know what to fill the 'fridge up with before I come visit you):