Everything You Need
Beginners and seasoned homebrewers alike will find everything they need to make their own craft beer at the Modern Homebrew Emporium in Cambridge, Mass.
Though there are four locations, the Modern Homebrew Emporium is the Boston hub of everything homebrew.
Greeted by an enthusiastic staff and the distinct smell of hops, one can find anything from their very first brew kit, to malt extract - even the cultures to make cheese. While Modern Homebrew primarily deals in beer, they provide the materials to make wine, mead, hard cider, cheese, and yogurt - anything that involves a fermentation process.
To help a first time brewer, 30-year-old Homebrew associate Jeff Winning says he starts with this question: "What do you like to drink?"
From there, he said, he can get a better idea of how to help a customer make the beer that they really want. According to Winning, who has worked at the Homebrew Emporium since September, the staff usually gives first timers an equipment kit and malt extract. The basics of beer making. All-grain would be the more advanced version of malt extract, Winning said, and is closer to what commercial breweries are making today.
When choosing your own grain, the staff welcomes you to taste and smell the different grain varieties before making a decision about what you want for your brew. "Its a good habit for home brewers to get into," Winning said.
First time brewers frequently come in to have associates taste their concoctions in search of advice, and the staff is happy to help. “It’s great that people from all different levels [of experience] can have a conversation here,” Winning said.
Homebrew Emporium
For your first few brews, Winning suggests avoiding light and delicate beers. A heavy beer, like an IPA, can mask your first-timer mistakes, he said, though even those mistakes won’t be that noticeable – a homebrew is hard to completely ruin. According to Winning, the most noticeable mistakes stem from sanitation issues like cleaning your equipment with bleach. Homebrew Emporium offers more effective cleaning solutions for your homebrew materials.
Essentially everything you would need for your own craft beer is available at Homebrew Emporium, but if they don’t have it, they can order it. “If you’re missing a small piece for a keg or something, we can order those parts from a catalogue,” Winning said.
Randy Baril, the regional manager of Homebrew Emporium, is based at the Cambridge store. The 32-year-old New Hampshire native has been homebrewing for 15 years.
According to Baril, he has his grandfather to thank for his homebrew roots. "My grandfather had a rhubarb patch and I was looking for something to do with rhubarb aside from pies. So I made rhubarb mead. I did a terrible job with it but I had a whole lot of fun," he said.
Even though Baril helps local homebrewers every day with their projects, he still finds the time to work on his own brews. Baril said that now he is working on a celebration ale for the May Day Cask Festival in Porter Square on May 10th in addition to a malt liquor.
The staff at Homebrew Emporium love to share their beer with one another and have started a recipe binder that is available in-store for customers to use. Some recipes are from the original owner, one being the Fat Cat ESB that was sold commercially in the 90’s and can still be found in some places.
Baril added a chocolate porter recipe called Liquid Desert. According to Baril, this was a brew he concocted with Tazza chocolate beans when the company first got on its feet.
There are also a few customer recipes in the binder. Pink Haze is a gluten free bragget – a rare brew, Baril said, - that a gluten intolerant customer invented. “They brought it in and it blew us away,” he said. You can also find the White House beer recipe, a brew that is very popular with customers, Baril said.
Some of Baril’s customer’s even move into professional brewing – former homebrew enthusiasts now work at Night Shift, Portico, Backlash, Enlightenment, and Mystic Brewery. Baril also helped the two women at Bantam Cider with their inaugural batch.
But not all customer brews are hits. Baril said that one of the worst beer he has tasted in his time with Homebrew Emporium was a garlic beer, “but I’m sure theres a right way to do it,” he confessed.
“And don’t ever try to make chicken beer,” Winning chimed in.
Of course, there are some very unusual brews that circulate through the Homebrew Emporium. Winning listed jalepeno beer, tea and coffee brews, and even a vegetable soup brew with carrots and celery.
Baril recalled an unusual brew called “Frankenbeer” and asked a member of the staff if they still had a bottle in the back.
“Did you do a beer with frankincense?” he asked.
“No, but we could…” another employee thought aloud.
