My latest article for The Bulletin was about the Central Oregon Pro-Am People’s Choice tasting event which took place this weekend—not the particulars of the event itself, but looking instead into what’s involved in scaling up homebrew-sized recipes for commercial systems. The article is here:

A typical batch size for beer brewed at home is five gallons, while a smaller commercial brewery might brew five barrels at a time — or 155 gallons. As you might expect, scaling up a recipe by a factor of 30 or more can present challenges in maintaining the same character and flavors of the original beer.

I contacted several of the homebrewers via email to find out a bit more about this experience.

“We did have to make some changes to my recipe,” said Bobby Guzman, who brewed his American pale ale, Rookie of the Beer, with Bevel Craft Brewing. Guzman brews in 3-gallon batches, while Bevel brews seven barrels (217 gallons) at a time.

“First was that we did not use any bittering hops because of the way Bevel’s brewhouse does the whirlpool hop additions,” he said. “Secondly, we swapped one of the hops in my recipe due to that specific hop being very unpredictable this year.”

It’s interesting to hear about the various systems at play, and I’ve got quotes from four of the homebrewers who all brewed at different scales.

Incidentally, the results from the People’s Choice event are in, and the winning beer was Fruit Wagon, a Berliner Weisse brewed by homebrewer Chris Harper and Seth Klann of Mecca Grade Estate Malt. The selected charity is the Humane Society of Central Oregon.

And if you want a chance to try any of these Pro-Am beers (the list is still up on the COHO website), the breweries themselves will have them on tap at some point.

Photo: Professional and homebrewers judging the Pro-Am beers submitted. Credit: Denise Oldridge (COHO member).