Silas Whitley’s hobby of brewing his own beer started when his mom began homebrewing around three years ago.
Whitley originally began with wine, but his attempts failed. He switched over to beer, and after he realized how much he enjoyed it, he decided to invest around $250 in brewing equipment. Now, Whitley makes his own recipes, grows his own hops and saves money by brewing his own beer.
“The last batch I made was $16 for five gallons,” Whitley said. “It’s about the tenth of the cost of going to the bar and buying a $4 pint.”
Whitley tries to make every batch around 5 or 6 percent alcohol, and it takes about 12 pounds of grain to make that percentage. Since he grows his own hops, yeast and grain are the only ingredients he has to buy, Whitley said.
“It would probably cost $40 for a batch, including hops,” Whitley said. “You can get the hops and equipment at any brewing store or down at Ace Hardware.”
He grows about eight different types of hops for his recipes. Hops are the flowers off of the hop plant Humulus lupulus. They help flavor and act as a stability agent in beer. There are about 50 or 60 different commercially grown hops, but there are also hybrids and ones people don’t even know about, Whitley said.
“I have a whole recipe book,” Whitley said. “I’ve made some funny stuff, like I’ve made a strawberry blonde ale, and the one I’ve got now is a coconut porter.”
Whitley uses the “all-grain method.” It takes about four hours to begin the brewing process. He steeps the grain in a cooler for around one hour, called the “mash” process. It has to boil for 60 to 90 minutes after the “mash” process and then cools down for about 30 to 45 minutes, Whitley said.
“The fastest I’ve made a beer that’s drinkable and good is about two weeks,” he said. “That’s absolute minimum and that’s if you keg it. When you keg it you can force carbonate it in five minutes.”
Bottling takes around three weeks to carbonate it. In either case, they both have to condition. They won’t be finished until the yeast is done doing its thing, and that can take a couple weeks, he said.
“I wouldn’t mind doing it as more than just a hobby,” Whitley said.
Tyler Hawkins turned his hobby into a career as a brew master with Rants and Raves brewery after he made his boss, Neil Marzolf, a batch of beer for his birthday five years ago.
“I think our moment was right away,” Hawkins said. “I think it was during his consumption of the five gallons that he realized ‘Why am I not doing this?'”
They realized that their dream was to own their own brewery. He worked on Marzolf’s farm as a goat milker and was brewing on his own for about a year before he and Marzolf started brewing together. They came up with their own recipes over the years, with many not making the cut, he said.
Rants and Raves received their Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) federal license at the end of March 2016. They started brewing their first original beer, an IPA, the first weekend in April, Hawkins said.
“We’re going to bring seven or eight up right away,” Hawkins said. “Every beer that we are coming out with right away is going to be ales. We’re not lagering or barrel aging, but we will.”
Before April, Rants and Raves served guest beers from different breweries. Since receiving their TTB, they will work toward having eight to 10 original beers on tap and 10 guest taps featuring mostly ciders, he said.
“Waiting on the federal government has been little bit of a hassle,” Hawkins said. “The last week has been the worst because we’ve had our TTB, but we’ve been waiting on all of our perishables that we couldn’t justify ordering earlier.”
The biggest transition has been going from a half-barrel system to a seven-barrel system since Hawkins used to make five gallons of beer at a time that used a one-ounce bag of hops. With the system inside Rants and Raves, he will be brewing 14, 15.5-gallon kegs.
Wolftrack Brewing and Tasting Den in Cottonwood, Idaho uses a smaller one-barrel system that produces 31 gallons. Owner John Candalot started back in the 1980s brewing five-gallon batches.
“A brew shop opened up near our house,” Candalot said. “So we thought that would be fun and we started brewing on the stove top.”
Candalot and his wife Pollyanna started to move around and stop brewing. They were visiting Washington and went to a couple breweries during their trip. Those breweries renewed Candalot’s interest, and he started making 10-gallon batches outside, he said.
“From there, I just started brewing a lot and the industry was growing,” he said. “We thought we’d give it a try here in Cottonwood and we opened up the Den about four years ago.â”
They have eight to 10 original beers on tap and around 12 recipes they have developed over the years, but Candalot said he brews all ales because they are faster to produce. Candalot, like Whitley, uses the all-grain brewing method like bigger breweries do, he said.
“We are considered a Nano-brewery by industry standards,” he said. “We pay for the Den out
of pocket.”
Cost of goods is different than when they started, because they started buying ingredients at more volume. The grain comes from River Port Brewing in Lewiston. Candalot uses two-roll barely, although there are many different grains like caramel, crystal and malt grains, he said.
“When I got back into all-grain, I definitely thought this is something I could do during retirement,” he said. “I’ve done floor covering for 30 years and Pollyanna still does massage (therapy).”
The Candalots are working to fund Wolf Track Brewing, but hope to retire to just brewing, he said.