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EdWort

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http://www.austin360.com/search/content/food_drink/stories/2008/06/0611beer.html

Houston's Saint Arnold pronounces local homebrewer's Wiezenbock recipe Divine

Kerry Martin to see his brew bottled as contest winner


By Patrick Beach
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Homebrewers who've been at it long enough will inevitably nuzzle up to the fantasy of seeing their own beer for sale in store to the parched masses. Sometimes all it takes is a glance at the shelves and a silent, self-congratulatory thought: "My stuff is better than that."
Those brewers have a couple of options: They can open their own brewery or, like Kerry Martin, get somebody else to do the work for them.
Martin, a project manager for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and an active member of the Austin Zealots homebrew club, won the 13th annual Big Batch Brew Bash, touted as "the biggest single-style brewing competition in the world." As a result, Martin's Wiezenbock, a strong Bavarian wheat beer, will be brewed as Saint Arnold Divine Reserve No. 7 later this year. He beat some 65 other entries in the contest sponsored by Saint Arnold and organized by the Kuykendahl Gran Brewers, a homebrewers' club in Spring.


The Houston brewery's Divine Reserve is a series of small-batch beers that tend to sell out pretty quickly — and the No. 4, a strong Scotch ale, recently took a gold at the Great American Beer Festival. The No. 6, a barleywine, should be hitting the Austin market Thursday or Friday, and it's a perversely appropriate strong ale perfect for sipping in Austin's eternal summer. Then again, some us have been known to finish an evening with a Sierra Nevada Bigfoot even on 100-degree days. This conventional wisdom that the hotter it gets the lighter the drinks should get is oppressive dogma, and perhaps the subject of a future column.


For those of us too insecure to enter our homebrew in friendly little local contests, Martin's moxie is unthinkable, but he's been brewing for about a dozen years and competing for two or three, winning plenty of props (and ribbons) along the way. For his winning entry, Martin simply tweaked a recipe he found in a book.


And his ever-widening fame just might keep spreading: Saint Arnold will enter Martin's recipe in the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. Martin figures his odds there are "an even longer shot" but he's thinking about going.


And now all his brewing buddies are asking for samples. Sorry, guys; until the Saint Arnold debut it's only on draft at his house. And if anybody does happen to stop by looking for a high-tech facility one might mistake for Apple Computer's R&D lab, they'll be disappointed.
"My brewery," Martin says, "is just a garage."
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Damn, need to email Kendra and see when this years divine reserve hits Dallas.
 
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