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Sarah Benson
McClatchy Newspapers

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Clint Newlan didn't like beer in college. Drinking Bud Light out of a plastic Solo cup didn't do it for him.

Newlan, 31, was in his early 20s when he began to appreciate the complexity, the craft — the pure bliss — of great beer.

The transformative moment occurred at McCoy's Public House & Brewkitchen in Westport, Mo. The beer, brewed in-house at McCoy's, was an India Pale Ale, a light- or copper-colored ale with a bitter, hoppy taste and a floral, citrusy aroma.

Today, Newlan is one of a growing number who brew their beer at home. He can talk at length about the origins of IPA beer, which British breweries developed in the 1700s and shipped to India. Because the ocean voyage was long and hot, the Brits added extra hops and alcohol, both natural preservatives, to keep the beer fresh.

Newlan gets excited and begins to talk faster as he tells this story. Then he stops and unleashes a sheepish grin.

"This is where the nerd part of me comes out," he says.

DO IT YOURSELF

The hobby started innocently for Newlan, a studio manager and part-founder of event-design company Blue Bouquet. He and a couple friends started brewing three years ago with a basic kit from Bed, Bath & Beyond and a 3e-gallon stovetop stock pot. The operation soon expanded to an 11-gallon turkey deep fryer on the back deck. Today, Newlan brews with a three-keg mad-scientist contraption stashed in the detached garage behind his Brookside home.

He steps past garden tools and bicycles and lifts the brown tarp off his heat exchange re-circulating mash system, which he paid a retired engineer to build.

The wheeled contraption holds three kegs and a series of tubes and valves. Here in his leaf-strewn driveway, Newlan spends a few hours every two or three weeks milling grain, heating mash and sprinkling hops into boiling wort. The system draws suspicious looks from Newlan's neighbors.

His friends split the work and the beer and keep him company, as does his chocolate lab, Porter, named for the dark beer. Newlan's wife, Nicole, opts out.

"He makes it, I drink it," she says.

BUBBLING OVER

At-home beer brewing appears to be a growing hobby around the country.

Surveys by the American Homebrewers Association have shown 20 percent increases in the popularity of home brewing for each of the last five years, said Gary Glass, the group's director. Generation Y — which includes those in their 20s and early 30s — has the biggest batch of new brewers, Glass says.

Glass gives two possible reasons for the increase. The first: shopping, eating and drinking local products is important to many Americans these days.

"You can't get any more local than brewing beer yourself," Glass says.

Second: Gen Yers are into self-expression, so personalizing everything, even beer, becomes an artistic outlet.

Local experts say the trend is catching on here, too.

Alberta Rager owns Bacchus & Barleycorn Ltd., a wine- and beer-making supply store in Shawnee. She says sales at her store have increased 10 to 15 percent in the past year.

"When the economy turned, people were looking for a less expensive way to drink good beer," Rager says. "And they were looking for a hobby they could do at home. Beer brewing serves both purposes."

At Bacchus & Barleycorn, basic brewing kits range in price from $80 to $186 and include everything you'd need to brew beer: buckets, airlocks, hoses, thermometers, sanitation supplies, malt extract, hops and more.

Dustin Jamison brews beer at home and professionally for Boulevard Brewing Co. Home brewing, he says, "is growing tons all the time." Technological advances in home-brewing equipment, along with increased access to malts, hops and other ingredients, makes brewing more accessible to amateurs, he says.

STRANGE BREWS

Jamison says every brewer he knows starts with something simple. Say, brown or pale ale.

"Usually within two or three brewing sessions, they're getting that bug" to experiment with new ingredients, Jamison says. A fading trend in home brewing is high-alcohol, high-hops beers such as IPAS, he says.

The "big, hot trend at the moment," he says, is sour beers. Good commercial examples of sour beer are Lindemans Framboise or Peche Lambic, which temper the sour aftertaste of lambic beer with sweet, fruity flavors.

Enter Newlan. His latest creations include:

—Farmhouse Saison, a French-style pale ale with a honeylike sweetness and a hint of a funky flavor that Newlan describes as "barnyard." Yep, tastes like it sounds.

—Westside IPA, a bitter, hoppy beer that's still a bit cloudy because the yeast hasn't settled to the bottom of the keg. The name nods to Newlan's West Coast origins in San Diego.

—Imperial Stout, a dark beer that's aging with fresh cherries and oak chips. Newlan won't crack this keg until 2010.

CENTS-UAL SEDUCTION

If you think you'll save money by brewing your beer at home, you might be wrong, says Tim Leber, a Kansas City home brewer.

The initial equipment isn't expensive, says Leber, a business analyst who has been brewing for four years. But the ingredients are, especially when you start to experiment.

"You can't make beer as cheap as Budweiser can," says Leber, 39.

Leber makes his beer with high-quality local ingredients, such as honey from Missouri or fruit from local farmers markets.

Phillip Mitchum, 25, started brewing a year ago. In February, he won first place in the Kansas City Beer Meisters Homebrew Competition with his peach wheat ale.

A bottle of Mitchum's peach wheat costs $1.32 to make, he estimates. Hard cider costs him only 53 cents per bottle.

By those measures, people who drink yard beers such as Coors or Miller Lite will pay more to make their own beer. But those who prefer the kinds of brews that sell for $8 per six-pack can save money.

And it's not just for men.

Jamison says home brewers share a "cool brotherhood."

"The majority (of home brewers) are men," he says, "but I know several female brewers that are just as serious as the guys are."

Amy Satterlund of Kansas City is definitely serious about her home-brewing habit. The 34-year-old software consultant writes a scientific home-brewing blog, kcworthog.com, and organizes monthly get-togethers for local home brewers and beer aficionados. She shares the hobby with her husband, John.

Satterlund estimates about 10 to 15 percent of the beer nuts who show up at her meetings are women. And more women are asking her about the beer-making process.

"I think women tend to shy away from home brewing because they don't know where to start," Satterlund says.

Satterlund says she tries to emphasize the fun of home brewing, not its finicky science, to attract other women to the hobby.

"It really is no different in concept from making an elaborate cake," Satterlund says.

The moral: Don't count out women as home brewers. Rager says she's seen more women come into Bacchus & Barleycorn lately. And a new Kansas City club called Women Enjoying Beer organizes ladies-only beer tastings. (More on that at womenenjoyingbeer.com.)

THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE

Every brewer has a horror story. Amy Satterlund's goes like this:

She and her husband were brewing a batch of rye beer in their apartment when they realized they had too much of the wrong kind of grain. They chucked the grain into the garbage disposal, clogging their apartment's water pipes. They called Roto–Rooter Plumbing & Drain Service, and two hours later, the water flowed through the pipes unobstructed.

Amid the chaos, though, they forgot to chill the beer.

Should've been a mistake. Satterlund says that if beer meets bacteria, it can develop odd smells and flavors that resemble wet cardboard or plasticky bandages.

Instead of tossing the sketchy batch out, the Satterlunds bottled it.

"It ended up being one of the best beers we made," Satterlund says.

That's the thing about home brewing: It's a lot of trial and error.

"Even when you think you've ruined your beer," Satterlund says, "go ahead and finish it anyway. You never know what you're gonna get."