Sirwisa Am-Pro Festival: Hops For Housing

A Home Brewer/Pro Brewer event at Standard Deviant Brewing, SF Beer Week 2017

Dave Jensen (beer47)
beer47

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The Sirwisa Am-Pro was the first time I’ve attended a home brewer focused festival and I’m really glad I attended. The beer was high quality and amazing, the location at Standard Deviant Brewing was spacious and fun, and a portion of the proceeds went to benefit a local charity, Family House.

When looking at the name of this event, a couple of questions come to mind. First, what is Sirwisa? The Sirwisa Brewing Collective is an organization of beer industry individuals and home brewers who’s goal is to promote excellence in brewing and to support SF Bay Area charities.

Sirwisa Brewing Collective strives to promote brewers with a common goal of excellence in brewing and to work as an organization to improve the profession. We work together to further the love of brewing and support the community we live in.

The second question that comes to mind: what is Am-Pro? Am-Pro is a twist on Pro-Am. A Pro-Am is an event or competition where amateur brewers brew with a professional brewer. So an Am-Pro is the opposite, where a professional brewer brews on an amateur home brew system, which is a really fun idea.

Each home brewer and made 10 gallons of beer in collaboration with a professional SF Bay Area brewer and served it at the event. Some home brewers even brought a few extra kegs of their delicious brew. Attendees of the event sampled the various beers and voted on their favorite. At the end of the night a winner was selected. This year the winner was Sami and Karlo with Jen Jordan from Anchor Brewing (see photo below).

In attending this event, I learned a few things. The first thing seems obvious but never experienced it on such a scale: home brewers make really good beer! As a former home brewer, I know how difficult it is to make a high quality beer that strangers actually like. I managed to try one beer from each team and every single one tasted very good. Sometimes you can’t go to a professional beer festival and make that same claim.

The next thing I discovered is that nearly all of the home brewers that participated were not interested in going pro. There were one or two exceptions, for instance Euphemia Ales, but for the most part everybody was content brewing as hobby. About 5–6 years ago, I would argue that this was not the case and more home brewers were interested in going pro.

I neglected to record all of the beers served at the event but in addition to high quality some of the beers were very creative. A few examples of the beer served:

  • Shocolate milk stout
  • Smoked chocolate milk stout
  • Saison dry hopped with Idaho-7 hops
  • New England-style IPA served on cask with Skittles in the firkin
  • English brown porter infused with bourbon aged oak
  • English brown porter infused with raspberries
  • Huell Melon pale ale (Huell Melon are hops that smell like canteloupe)
  • Thai pomelo saison
  • Ethiopian honey beer (made with teff, millet, ad gesho)
  • Saison with rose hips and lavender

Before the end of the night, I managed to take a photo of all of the home brewers and their pro brewer counter parts. If you’re in one of the photos below and would like a full resolution copy, please let me know.

Gone Boating Brewing with Miles from Marin Brew Co.(left), John Brick with Jason from Comrades Brewing (center), Casey Crynes with James Davids from Oro en Paz Winery (right)
Tom Pellack with Kevin Inglin from Ferment.Drink.Repeat (left), Evan Rusackas with Alex Porter (not present) from Blue Oak Brewing (center), Conner Frederick and Eddie Gobbo from Harmonic (right)
Mary Carten & Fort Mason Brewing with Jay Holiday from Pine Street Brewery (left), Heather from Euphemia Ales with Nelson from HenHouse Brewing Co. (center), Matt Murray from Lone Mountain Brewery (right)
Kenneth Libeson from Fair Oaks Brewing with Ben from Old Bus Tavern(left), Derek with Guy Cameron from Mission Creek Brewing(center), Vivek Krishnan with Aaron Bryan from Tag + Jug Cider Co. (right)
Liz and Matt with Sam Gilbert (not present) from Temescal Brewing (left), The Crew from Method Brewing (center), Sherman Souther with Paul from Standard Deviant (right)
Sami and Karlo with Jen Jordan from Anchor Brewing (right), Yerba Buena Brewing with Ross Halligan from Southpaw BBQ and Brewing (right)

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