LITTLE ROCK — If you don't believe in beginner's luck, meet Jeff Clanton. After barely two years of brewing his own beer at home, last year he took home the Arkansas State Fair's top Best in Show prize for the craft, and he did it with an India Pale Ale, which is a style he'd never brewed before.
Of course, the award itself has only been around about as long as Clanton has been brewing. It'll be handed out for the third time at this year's fair next month. But don't think that means it'll be easy to win.
“I'll be entering twice as many beers as I did last year,” said Clanton, adding on a taunt that reads a lot more haughty than it sounded: “So everyone else will have to watch out.”
In this case, “everyone else” is the growing community within the beer culture of Arkansas that finds a great deal of enjoyment from brewing their own craft beers.
“If you do the right things, you can make a beer from almost anywhere in the world,” said Brad McLaurin, a Little Rock home brewer and member of Central Arkansas Fermenters, a club for beer- and wine-making enthusiasts.
Formed in 2003, the club has grown from roughly 20 members to around 45 or 50, McLaurin estimated. They range all over the spectrum in professional life and background, but when it comes to the brewing hobby, they're all on the same page.
“It's a very varied group of people, but it's fun and we enjoy getting together.”
The growth of the club, said McLaurin, is in part a reflection of the national interest in home brewing, a hobby on the rise since President Jimmy Carter made it legal for the first time since Prohibition in the late 1970s. But the local growth in particular, he said, is indicative of a keen interest in the activity, evidenced in another way by the loyal following garnered by local brewery Diamond Bear Brewing Company and restaurant-brewers Vino's and Bosco’s.
The reason why Arkansas — and central Arkansas specifically — works well for hobbyists and even microbreweries is in large part thanks to the water, McLaurin said.
“I like to call it a blank canvass. [It] doesn't have anything in it ... and that's nice,” he said. “If you've got good drinking water, you can make good beer.”
Also a contributor, he said, is the availability of specific regional ingredients that go into beers around the world — be it a specific salt, spice or yeast — thanks to suppliers like North Little Rock's Fermentables.
“You can pretty much brew any beer you want to,” said Fermentables owner Mike Byrum. “There's really no limit to what you can brew at home.”
The trick, he said, it to find a style you like and find a recipe. That can be done in books or online, or oftentimes just by asking the brewery if it's a specific regional microbrew. Generally, they're not going to be concerned about you stealing and trying to reproduce their product because of the legal and financial barriers involved in going from home brew to commercial distribution, he said. Whereas businesses have lots of regulations, home brewing in Arkansas requires no permit or license, it's just limited to 100 gallons per adult in the household, up to 200 gallons, at any given time.
Getting the recipe right is generally “just a kind of reverse engineering in a really unsophisticated way,” Byrum said.
And believe it or not, beer is really not that hard to make, both he and McLaurin explained.
“Honestly, it's a lot like cooking a pot of soup,” said Byrum.
“If you can boil water, you can brew beer. ... It's really amazing how easy it is,” asserted McLaurin, who broke down the process into two types: extract brewing, or using a kit with pre-made extracts, or going “all grain,” where the brewer will extract sugar from the grain himself, a more intensive and time-consuming process. From there you combine ingredients, ferment and bottle — and that's pretty much it.
There's no right or wrong way, said McLaurin, and even kit beers that take the brewer step by step through the process are perfectly legitimate contenders, even in contests. The important thing that most beginners miss, both brewers said, is sanitizing everything.
“The biggest thing is sanitization,” said Byrum.
Of course, it also takes patience. At a minimum of three weeks for a single batch, or likely longer; fermenting just takes time.
Good brewing also takes an audience, said Byrum. And that's where competitions and groups like the Central Arkansas Fermenters come in handy. Sure you can hand your beer over to a friend but quality judging based on set, objective criteria is part of what the Central Arkansas Fermenters is all about.
“Beer contests are really a great way to get evaluated by several independent judges ... and a great way to get feedback on your brewing,” Byrum said.
Then again, sometimes you just want to share. And this time of year in particular is good for that, hence the imminent celebration of local home brews, Little Rocktoberfest. Scheduled for Oct. 2 at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock, the event will feature live music, food and offerings from commercial breweries New Belgium out of Colorado and Boulevard Brewing Company out of Kansas City, as well as those local micro staples Diamond Bear, Vino's and Bosco’s. But the event will also feature home brewers of Central Arkansas Fermenters sharing their efforts with the general public.
“There's no competition [at Rocktoberfest],” said McLaurin. “It's just a chance to sit back, relax, listen to music eat a brat and ... and enjoy.”
And ultimately, he said, while the hobby may be more economical than making a trip to the liquor store, it's taking pride in the craft and sharing your hard work that drives most home brewers.
“It's really amazing to me, that you can take grains and water and you can turn them into this, and it's something to be proud of,” he said. “It's like an art and a science all rolled into one.
“You pop open that first batch and you think, 'You know, this is pretty good,' and it gets under your skin.”