Ripening plums recently brought together a group of homebrewers in Novato for the first time in two years. In late May, two core members of the Marin Society of Homebrewers met in a suburban Novato driveway to share a homebrew while sitting more than 10 feet apart, in their respective pickup truck beds — the way friends share a beer these days. It was a fruit beer, made by homebrewer Kevin McMahon, and it got him and his fellow brew club member Rick Story thinking about making more.
“We have all this fresh fruit coming in now, and we thought, let’s brew a beer with it and get all these guys brewing again,” says Story, a homebrewer since 2012 and a core member of the Marin Society of Homebrewers, also known as MaSH or the Marin MaSHers.
Story and McMahon’s plan took shape and advanced as cherries and then peaches began to appear in local markets. By the time brew day arrived, June 20, Marin County’s ubiquitous wild plums were splattering on sidewalks.
I was the first day of summer, in fact, and the group gathered at club member Mike Brierley’s Novato home to brew up a giant cauldron of wort — the sweet, unfermented grain tea that results from an hour or so of boiling malt and hops. The brew process is always a delicate one, requiring careful measuring of grains and hops, and close attention to temperature while minding the time. After the wort has steeped at about 160 degrees for roughly an hour (the parameters can vary from beer recipe to recipe), the wort is brought to a roaring boil for a full hour.
Story says the brewing process was extra challenging since they had not made such a large batch before on Brierley’s system.
“Mike was used to doing 20 gallons, and this was close to 50,” says Story, adding that nailing down various parameters, including the desired pH, tested their technical skills.
Once the Marin MaSHers finished the brew and allowed the wort to cool, each participating club member took home about 3½ gallons in a sanitized container with the instructions of making absolutely any beer they wanted to.
“They just had to use fresh, local fruit — that was the one requirement,” Story says. “Nothing frozen, no canned purees.”
He likened the plan to an art project.
“’Here’s your canvas, now go paint’ — that’s how I saw it,” Story says.
The base wort contained enough sugar to produce about 5.5% alcohol-by-volume, and it was mildly hopped, to about 20 IBUs, or international bittering units. While all the finished beers will have some traits in common, each homebrewer’s choice of yeast, flavoring hops, some souring bacteria perhaps, and — the main thing — fruit type will mean a dozen very different beers.
Currently, the Marin MaSHers’ beers are in the secondary fermentation stage — precisely when cheesecloth sacks of fruit are added to a fruit-infused beer. The club plans to gather and taste their beers sometime in late July, while distancing, of course (wearing masks is difficult while tasting beer).
The project will hopefully inspire more like it — within the brewers’ club, and beyond. Summer, after all, is just beginning, and trees and vines are beginning to spill their spoils. Through the end of fall, indeed, the season’s bounty will keep coming, often in quantities surpassing what we can we eat. Peaches, berries, apples, pears, figs, persimmons, prickly pears and more will stage a presence between now and December.
Homebrewer McMahon suggests an idea for those with overladen trees and vines.
“Find a homebrewer and make a trade,” he says. “Ripe, spoiling fruit in exchange for a few bottles of exceptionally good fruit beer.”
Alastair Bland’s Through the Hopvine runs every week in Zest. Contact him at allybland79@gmail.com.
