Cauldron

Issue date: 10/30/07 Section: Features

Media Credit: Ben Felleman UST student Cameron Waldner, at home, with his beer-brewing equipment. Walder has been making homemade beer since he was 12.

Cameron Waldner was 14 when the beer bottle he was sanitizing shattered in his hand, cutting him, after he had spent the entire morning cleaning and preparing used beer bottles to be refilled.

"It was Shiner or something," the MLA student recalled. "My dad's a former Marine; he told me to rub some dirt on it."

The experience evidently did nothing to extinguish Waldner's passion. He has been brewing and bottling homemade beer since age 12. His youth was never an issue, since no age requirement is placed on buying home brewing supplies.

"It's a cultural thing," said Waldner, who learned the trade from his father and grandfather. His great-grandfather immigrated to the United States from Germany, bringing the tradition with him.

Waldner brews mostly seasonal beers using a two-stage fermenter and a five-gallon, galvanized steel drum that he adapted with a boiler press. Flavors range from a raspberry-apricot stout to "Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice," a Christmas blend. He bottles the various brews himself, using green Grolsch swing-top bottles that he gets from restaurants. Typical batches produce 50 bottles of beer, taking roughly one month from initial brewing to fermentation until the complete and final product is ready.

Some of the older recipes he uses were originally in German and required translation. Waldner used his own knowledge of the language to do so. "I probably have the proficiency of a 3rd or 4th grade kid," he said of his German-language ability.

Waldner said he considers cleaning the beer bottles to be the most time-consuming part of brewing. "While most brewing itself takes only two to three hours, depending on the brew, cleaning and sanitizing the beer bottles can take up to five hours and leaves your hands in the state of a prune," he said.

Businesses have approached Waldner, wanting to sell his beer. "Catbirds offered to buy it and so did Poison Girl," he said, referring to two Montrose-area bars. However, Waldner said he has no plans to sell his product anytime soon.

"You have to have a permit," he said, making a gesture that seemed to indicate impatience with the process. He said he plans to keep brewing for himself and for friends. "The greatest thing about it is that my friends look forward to it," he said. "It's fun to see which brews turn out well and which ones don't."

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