Charles N. Papazian (born January 23 c. 1949) is an American nuclear engineer, brewer and author. [1] He founded the Association of Brewers and the Great American Beer Festival, and wrote The Complete Joy of Home Brewing (1984). He is the longtime former president (1979–2016) of the Brewers Association. He is also the creator of the National Pie Day, a celebration of pies which is celebrated on January 23, Papazian's birthday.
Papazian, an American of Armenian descent, was born in 1949 and raised in Warren Township, New Jersey. His father was a chemical engineer who managed a manufacturing plant. He attended the University of Virginia, graduating in 1972 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Nuclear Engineering. [2]
In 1970, while in Charlottesville, Papazian was introduced to an older man who had learned to brew beer during Prohibition. Papazian, who was working part time as a janitor at a daycare facility, began brewing in the daycare's kitchen during off-hours. As people began to show interest in his beer, Papazian wrote up a two-page set of instructions and began distributing it by hand. [2]
After college, he moved to Boulder, Colorado where he eventually landed a job as an elementary school teacher, a position he held for ten years. During that period, Papazian began offering weekly home brewing classes in his kitchen. One of his earliest students was Jeff Lebesch, co-founder of New Belgium Brewing Company. [2]
In 1978 U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed a law reopening the beer market to small craft brewers, also permitting homebrewing. In 1979 Papazian founded the Association of Brewers, and remained president of that organization until 2005, when the Association of Brewers merged with the 63-year-old Brewers Association of America, and Papazian was named president of the combined organization.
Papazian also founded the American Homebrewers Association in 1978, a group that is also now under the umbrella of the Brewers Association. Other organizations and annual events subsequently founded by Papazian include the Institute for Brewing Studies, Brewers Publications, the Great American Beer Festival, [3] the World Beer Cup, and Zymurgy magazine.
The American Homebrewers Association is a division of the Brewers Association focused on homebrewers of beer, cider, and mead. The AHA was founded in 1978 by Papazian. The AHA runs the world's largest homebrew competition and also organizes several homebrew events in the United States and Canada. Gary Glass is the current director. The AHA publishes the magazine Zymurgy six times per year to its 47,000 members. [4]
Every year the AHA hosts events like National Homebrew Competition, the Homebrew Con (previously known as the National Homebrewers Conference) which includes the finals of the National Homebrew Competition, held the third week in June, the Big Brew, held the first Saturday in May, Mead Day, held the first Saturday in August and Learn to Homebrew Day, held the first Saturday in November
American Homebrewers Association gives the Ninkasi Award, a prize given for the brewer who gains the most points in the final round of the National Homebrew Competition, judged at the National Homebrewers Conference. [5] Points are gained from the brewer's winning entries in the 23 categories of beer and several categories of mead and cider. At least 2 points (1 bronze placement) must come from a beer entry. The Ninkasi Award is named in honor of Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of beer. [5]
In 1984 Papazian published his first book on the subject of homebrewing, titled The Complete Joy of Home Brewing. The book contained a foreword by influential British beer writer Michael Jackson. [6] As of August 2005, The Complete Joy of Home Brewing had seen 25 reprintings, 3 editions, and has sold over 900,000 copies. [7] A fourth edition was released in September 2014. [8] As the first American (and, for over a decade, the only) mass-market book to provide in-depth information on subject of how to brew beer in the home, The Complete Joy of Home Brewing was very often the sole source of home brewing information for novice home brewers in America. Consequently, the book has gained iconic status among America's home brewing community, who have referred to it as the "home brewer's bible." Throughout The Complete Joy of Home Brewing, Papazian reminds the novice brewer to "Relax. Don't worry. And have a homebrew." Papazian has since written five more books.
Papazian also began National Pie Day, a celebration of pies. It is celebrated on January 23, Papazian's birthday. [9] after he declared his own birthday, January 23, to be National Pie Day. [10] Since 1986, National Pie Day is sponsored by the American Pie Council. [11] In 2014, the American Pie Council partnered with Paramount Pictures in promoting the romantic thriller film Labor Day in conjunction with National Pie Day. [12] (A pie-making scene features prominently in the film, and the film's general release was within a few days of National Pie Day.)
Papazian lives in the Boulder, Colorado area with his wife Sandra. The couple have a daughter, Carla.
Homebrewing is the brewing of beer or other alcoholic beverages on a small scale for personal, non-commercial purposes. Supplies, such as kits and fermentation tanks, can be purchased locally at specialty stores or online. Beer was brewed domestically for thousands of years before its commercial production, although its legality has varied according to local regulation. Homebrewing is closely related to the hobby of home distillation, the production of alcoholic spirits for personal consumption; however home distillation is generally more tightly regulated.
The Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) is a non-profit organization formed in 1985 to recognize beer tasting and evaluation skills. The BJCP certifies and ranks beer judges through an examination and monitoring process.
The U.S. state of Oregon is home to more than 200 breweries and brew pubs that produce a large variety of beer.
Anchor Brewing Company was a brewery on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1896, the brewery has undergone several changes in location and ownership throughout its history. After years of declining sales due to competition with larger breweries, Anchor was purchased by Frederick Louis “Fritz” Maytag III in 1965, preventing its closure. The brewery operated at its current location since 1979 and was one of the last remaining producers of steam beer, a variety of beer trademarked by the company.
Ninkasi was the Mesopotamian goddess of beer and brewing. It is possible that in the first millennium BC she was known under the variant name Kurunnītu, derived from a term referring to a type of high quality beer. She was associated with both positive and negative consequences of the consumption of beer. In god lists, such as the An = Anum list and the Weidner god list, she usually appears among the courtiers of the god Enlil, alongside deities such as Ninimma and Ninmada. She could also be paired with Siraš, a goddess of similar character, who sometimes was regarded as her sister. A possible association between her and the underworld deities Nungal and Laṣ is also attested, possibly in reference to the possible negative effects of alcohol consumption.
George J. Fix was an American mathematician who collaborated on several seminal papers and books in the field of finite element method. In addition to his work in mathematics, Fix was a beer and homebrewing enthusiast and educator, as well as the author of several books about brewing. He died of cancer in 2002.
Ice Harbor Brewing Company is a brewery founded in Pasco, Washington in 1996 by two former workers at the Hanford Site. They entered this venture after buying the Meheen & Collins brewery.
A Cornelius keg is a stainless steel canister (keg) originally used as containers by the soft drink industry. They can be used to store and dispense carbonated or nitrogenated liquids. Cornelius kegs were originally made by Cornelius, Inc.
Wort is the liquid extracted from the mashing process during the brewing of beer or whisky. Wort contains the sugars, the most important being maltose and maltotriose, that will be fermented by the brewing yeast to produce alcohol. Wort also contains crucial amino acids to provide nitrogen to the yeast as well as more complex proteins contributing to beer head retention and flavour.
The Brewers Association (BA) is an American trade group of over 5,400 brewers, breweries in planning, suppliers, distributors, craft beer retailers, and individuals particularly concerned with the promotion of craft beer and homebrewing.
Otto Frederick Eckhardt was an American brewer, homebrewing advocate, and writer. Eckhardt is best remembered as a pioneer in the field of beer journalism, publishing a series of articles and books on the topic, including the seminal 1989 tome, The Essentials of Beer Style. At the time of his death in 2015, Eckhardt was memorialized as "the Dean of American beer writers".
Sour beer, also known as Sours, is beer which has an intentionally acidic, tart, or sour taste. Traditional sour beer styles include Belgian lambics, gueuze and Flanders red ale, and German gose and Berliner Weisse.
Bell's Brewery, Inc. is an American craft brewing company, with operations in Comstock and Kalamazoo, Michigan. Bell's brews acclaimed beers such as Hopslam Ale, Oberon Ale, and Two Hearted Ale. It operates a brewpub and a store selling merchandise and homebrewing supplies at its Kalamazoo location. Begun as a homebrewing store in 1983, and producing beer since 1985, it is the oldest existing craft brewery in Michigan and the oldest craft brewery east of Colorado. As of 2021, it was the 6th largest craft brewery in the United States, and was the largest independently owned brewery in Michigan when founder Larry Bell sold the company to Lion Little World Beverages - an Australian subsidiary of the Japanese Kirin beverage group at the end of 2021. The company also owns Upper Hand Brewery, a separately operated division in Escanaba, Michigan.
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John R. McAuliffe is an American brewer best known as the founder of the New Albion Brewing Company in Sonoma, California. McAuliffe started the brewery, considered the first American microbrewery in the modern era, in 1976. As of 2013, he lives in Arkansas.
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Annie Johnson is a brewer who won the American Homebrewers Associations' Homebrewer of the Year award in 2013. She was the first woman in thirty years, and the first African American person ever, to win the award. In 2012, she won Pilsner Urquell's Master Homebrewer Competition held in San Francisco, where Master Brewer Vaclav Berka ) said the beer tasted like he was home. After an extensive career with the California State Legislature she began working for PicoBrew, a product development company in Seattle, WA that specializes in automated brewing equipment. In addition to that work, she is a Nationally ranked judge for the Beer Judge Certification Program as well as proctoring and grading exams. Shortly after she had heard about winning the AHA 2013 award she quickly accepted her job offer to be part of PicoBrew’s recipe developer. She's an active member of Pink Boots Society which promotes women as beer professionals in the beer industry.
Women have been active in brewing since ancient times. Though Western societies have viewed brewing as a male-dominated field for the last 150 years, traditionally, it was an activity engaged in by women. Ethnographic and archaeological studies have shown that brewing was an outcropping of gathering or baking traditions, which were predominantly women's roles throughout the world. From the earliest evidence of brewing in 7000 BCE, until the commercialization of brewing during industrialization, women were the primary brewers on all inhabited continents. In many cultures, the deities, goddesses and protectors of brewers were female entities who were associated with fertility.
F.H. Steinbart is a homebrew supply store on SE 12th Avenue in Portland, Oregon. It is the oldest homebrew supply store in the country and helped nurture the vibrant Pacific Northwest craft-brewing scene.