Homebrewer friendly pros

Which commercial breweries are the friendliest to homebrewers? Bells has a contact us form for homebrewers and Avery has all their recipes online. Russian river has no secrets. Who are your top homebrewer friendly breweries?

Just went to Ol Republic in Nevada City. We talk for an 1.5 hours on Saturday night. Have me some great pointers. Wouldn't budge on some recipe stuff though.

Sierra Nevada posts the ingredients in their beers on their website.

I wasn't home brewing at the time, but I always made an effort to stop by Yazoo Brewery in Nashville when the wife and me went to a Titans and/or Predators game with some friends. Linus doesn't know me by name, but I'm sure he would remember my face if I walked in with a couple of growlers. He's a pretty cool guy.

Santa Fe Brewing Co. is very homebrewer-friendly. They even do 10 gallon batches where a homebrewer can select the recipe and go brew it with them on their pilot system. They get the ingredients and handle the fermentation side. If the brew is decent, they put it on tap in their brewery's taproom.

The brewers and other workers there are laid back and very cool.

Ranger Creek down in San Antonio posts several homebrew recipes of their beers, even some of their "small batch series" beers which are all bad ass.

SavoryChef said:

Just went to Ol Republic in Nevada City. We talk for an 1.5 hours on Saturday night. Have me some great pointers. Wouldn't budge on some recipe stuff though.

Click to expand...

Live down the road from them and have had similar experiences

I would say any of the breweries/brewers that appear on the BN are pretty homebrew friendly. Of those I know Firestone Walker, Kern River Brewing, and Russian River Brewing are pretty open sharing information/recipes. Stone's recent book has a ton of their recipes in it.....just not Arrogant Bastard.

The guys at NOLA brewery down here in New Orleans are super cool. I've even brought a sanitized jar and got some yeast right out a fermenter. (05)

Avery lists a homebrew recipe version of all of their beers, including seasonal offerings, on their website.

Kelso here in New York (they are in Brooklyn) doesn't release their recipes, but I've shared a few beers with one of their brewers in a brew shop here. Everyone I've met from there continues to be a great resource and helpful in all of my adventures.

Smuttynose has critiqued a couple of my clone recipes, and in one case sent me a scaled down homebrew version of one of their beers.

As such, I make sure to buy something from their brewery just about every time I buy commercial beer.

Tioga-Sequoia in Fresno is super cool an supportive. They always humor my annoying questions (I'm in the nano planning stage) and have been more than happy to drink my beer and give me honest feedback, as well as bring some of their pilots to me to have me do the same. They are very open to the local homebrew clubs, holding meetings and tastings at the brewery.

Jester King, here in Austin, are very supportive of homebrewers too - it's how they got started. They're happy to fully share recipes, they've kept barrels on site for the local club on site etc.

Flying Fish in NJ is homebrew friendly. I have emailed them a couple of time with questions and they respnded quickly. Alo I went on a tour and they said they will give yeast to homebrewers.

My wife and I go visit a cool little brewpub up in the North Cascades called Birdsview Brewing Co. Last time we were there my wife was drinking some of their Ditsy Blonde and she really liked it. I asked the owner/brewmaster if he would share anything about the recipe. He said "I'll be right back". Five minutes later he returned with a Beersmith printout of the recipe. He scaled it down from 200 gallons to 5.

They have a great thing going and would pretty much do anything for anybody. My kind of place! We love to go there and take friends.

Barley Mow Brewing in Largo, FL is definitely homebrewer friendly. The local HBC met there and the owner gave a brief lesson and invited all questions. He tastes our beers and offered critique, and said that he would invite a select few experienced brewers to brew with him if they wanted to start at 3am one day. Very supportive!

I was thinking macro-craft when I started this thread, but I'm pretty sure I win in the most helpful local brewery department. My local brewery is Depot Street, in Jonesborough, TN. I'm sure you guys have all heard of it. The brewer showed that homebrewing is pretty darn simple even though I'd been afraid of it for years and the owner has offered to weld my valves and such into my keggles for me. Can't beat that with a stick!

Dan at Mother Earth In Vista is the best. He gives me information on all of his recipes. He has also helped me formulate recipes of my own. I describe for him what I am looking for and he creates the recipet in beersmith. He hit it out of the park on an American stout that he created for me about 2 months ago. Ill be brewing a double batch of it this weekend

Yesfan said:

I wasn't home brewing at the time, but I always made an effort to stop by Yazoo Brewery in Nashville when the wife and me went to a Titans and/or Predators game with some friends. Linus doesn't know me by name, but I'm sure he would remember my face if I walked in with a couple of growlers. He's a pretty cool guy.

Click to expand...

They made me a life long customer a few years ago. We were in town for my bachelor party and stopped by for a tour. The staff was awesome and we enjoyed the tour and conversations after. I decided to grab a couple kegs to bring home for the rehearsal dinner which was a month later. Their policy is that kegs must be returned after 2 weeks. The girl ringing me out called Linus and he said it was fine to keep them longer. Really cool to do that for me. I make it down there every six months or so and always try to stop by the tap room and bring some beer back to Chicago.

Scubajay said:

Dan at Mother Earth In Vista is the best. He gives me information on all of his recipes. He has also helped me formulate recipes of my own. I describe for him what I am looking for and he creates the recipet in beersmith. He hit it out of the park on an American stout that he created for me about 2 months ago. Ill be brewing a double batch of it this weekend

Click to expand...

Good bunch of guys. Glad they got the new digs in downtown. Makes it hard to just get ingredients. Seems tough to talk to the brewers in most places, The folks at Mother Earth are easy to talk to.

I've posted this before, but Terrapin is very friendly and open too...I e-mailed a while back about their Gamma Ray Wheatwine, and eventually received a reply directly from Spike (owner/brewer) with grain bill/percentages and yeast strain suggestion...basically gave me the recipe! I've yet to actually brew the wheatwine, but I used the grain bill info to do my first Hefe a while back (and to practice decoction mashing) and it came out great!