Hobby has become his passion

Getting started in home brewing doesn’t have to be complicated, he says

Candy Stamper is probably used to it by now.

Whenever she and her husband Chris go out to dinner, a number of minutes will pass before her husband will take his eye off the menu.

It’s not that Chris is pondering what he’ll have for dinner that night. Rather, he’s browsing over the beer list to see what kind of beer he will try to make next.

For three years now, Stamper has made his own beer. The Geneva resident said it was a hobby he picked up after hearing his friends and co-workers at Gabriel Performance Products talk about their beermaking journeys at home.

Stamper is no longer on the outside looking in with those conversations. It’s a hobby that has turned into a passion, and he’s anxious to see where the journey

“My wife said if I am making beer, then I have to make wine for her, too. So I’ve done both. Beer is a little faster to make. You reap the rewards sooner than if you’re making wine.” Home brewer Chris Stamper

will take him next.

“I even built a bar in my house because I have my own beer now,” he said with a laugh.

“Right now I make it all in the house, but someday I’d like to build something off of my garage and have a brew room dedicated to just that — making beer.”

Stamper always considered himself “pretty much a Miller Lite guy,” when it came to having a beer now and then.

The thought of being his own beer producer never really came to mind until he started hearing his friends and co-workers talking about it at work.

Gabriel Performance Products, Stamper said, is a chemical plant.

“There we process things where you’re heating this and processing that,” he said of his work place. “Making beer is a lot of the same thing. You heat something, add something, add something else. Maybe that’s why it interests me so much. In a lot of ways, it’s kind of what I do for a living.”

Getting started making your own beer isn’t as complicated as it might sound. Stamper said he did some research into it, along with getting some ideas from his friends who already did it, and then made a trip to a local store that specializes in such endeavors — DIY Beer and Wine in Ashtabula.

“I got a lot of information there on how they do it,” he said. “They even have classes sometimes. I started off with that and went from there.”

There are many different levels of beer-making. Many grow their own hops and other ingredients. Others can buy the ingredients and build up from there.

Stamper said he started off by buying the ingredients he needed to make his own beer.

But there was one stipulation.

“My wife said if I am making beer, then I have to make wine for her, too,” he said with a laugh. “So I’ve done both. Beer is a little faster to make. You reap the rewards sooner than if you’re making wine.”

When Stamper is making beer — at least until his outdoor facility he plans on constructing comes to fruition — it pretty much takes up the entire kitchen, from the brewing to the ingredients spread around to the bottling process.

He has made 10 “batches,” as he called it. Each batch comes out to 48 to 58 bottles of beer.

He has also hade six batches of wine, and by all accounts he gets a thumbs up from his wife, family and friends.

Like with any upstart endeavor, it takes time to perfect the finished product. Proverbially speaking, you can’t make an omelette without first breaking a few eggs.

But Stamper said he has yet to make an undrinkable batch of beer.

If you follow the directions provided, all goes well, he said. Again, he recommends a starter kit such as he found at the DIY Beer and Wine in Ashtabula to get started.

After that, makers can dabble in different tastes and variations if they wish.

“Every batch I’ve made has been pretty good,” he said.

“I started out making an American light beer. That was the first one I did, and it came out really good. I was a little surprised because I wasn’t sure how it would be.”

“This year I’m going to start branching off and changing some flavors up,” he said. “I was always a Miller Lite guy, but since I started making my own beer, it’s opened me up to other craft beers and making different beers.”

A “craft beer” is a brewery that produces smaller amounts of beer, typically smaller than large-scale corporate breweries — or in other words, anyone who produces their own beer at home.

“I’m always trying something new,” Stamper said.

“I would like to start growing my own hops. I haven’t done that yet. I know a lot of guys who do. Some guys reharvest their yeast.

“The whole process can get kind of crazy.” But it’s fun. Being the processor is his occupation so making his own beer strikes a similar chord.

From the chemistry of it, to the home bottling set up that he has to just being able to enjoy the fruits of his own work with a cold beer — whether he is sitting at his newly constructed bar or around a campfire in the back yard — his newfound hobby is a home run.

If there is any regret, it’s that he didn’t start making his own beer sooner.

Now he is driven to try even more tastes, whether it’s with his wine-making or his beer-making.

“It started off as just a hobby, but I really like it,” he said.

“Everyone else (who has sampled his work) does too. I’ve never had anyone try something I made and not liked it, unless they don’t like craft beers in general.”

So if you ever see the Stampers out at a local restaurant and Chris has his nose stuck in the menu for a long period of time, it’s not that he’s that indecisive.

He’s just looking for ideas on what beer he is going to take a shot at making next.

SUBMITTED Chris Stamper has been making his own beer for three years, picking up the hobby after hearing his friends at work talk about the process of making their own beer.