(Picture of Blackwell On-air on the Radio Show, The Tasting Room w/Tom Leykis KLSX 97.1fm)
The Belmont and Bonaventure Brewing Companies are just like your local
baker. We make low tech beer that is just like your grandma used to
make. Our beers are fresh and untraveled. They are unpasteurized and
lightly filtered or not filtered at all (depending on the style). We
strive for a clean flavor that results from a clean process where only
our specially selected yeast eats the sugar and creates the beer.
Finally we use recipes that produce beer that is well balanced between
malty sweetness and hop bitterness. A clean easy drinking beer is the
result. Nothing fancy....just a few ingredients....and a brewer who is
dedicated to refining this simple process and making consistently high
quality beer.
How I got started brewing:
In 1989 I started brewing beer in my kitchen. I was a college student
in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This was a life changing time for me. I
have always enjoyed cooking and beer. Brewing satisfied my desire to
learn, cook, and my thirst for beer.
One sunny day my college roommate Gary came home from rugby practice
and said that some of his team mates were brewing their own beer. He
knew of a store where we could buy everything we needed to make our own
beer.My life took a new and exciting path on this day.
We drove to this strange store with a strange name "Victor's Grape
Arbor" (which also sold wine making supplies). We bought barley, books,
and buckets. By mid afternoon we were cooking beer in our kitchen.
The beer was bad but we drank it. I was determined to keep trying,
refine my process and make great beer. I kept buying books, talking
with other brewers, and brewing nearly every weekend. I am happy with
the beers I make today. It is fairly easy now that I have two great
facilities and many years of experience.
Words to live by:
"You are only as good as your last batch." Blackwell
One of my favorite aspects of the hobby of brewing:
I have always been interested in hobbies that provided endless
learning. The brewing process is as simple making bread. Making bread
is fairly simple and requires few ingredients. Refining your process to
make great bread can take years.
Brewing, like baking can be immensely complicated or very simple. Most
of our grandparents brewed some kind of beer in their kitchens using
very low tech methods. They controlled very few parameters in their
process. Large breweries today control hundreds of parameters in their
process. They have microbiologists who grow yeast and tell the brewer
how much to use. These scientists scurry around checking samples for
contamination and telling people what parts of the brewery need further
cleaning. They have "brewery engineers" who calculate flow rates, the
cooling capacity of heat exchangers, and the amount of grain needed to
get a the desired level of alcohol. Universities around the world study
beer, the brewing process, and yeast.
Grandma may not have had a thermometer but she still made good beer.
Our ancestors had to make beer because it is a natural way to preserve
the food value in water, barley, and other sugar sources (like fruit,
cane sugar, honey, corn and potatoes).
Technology and mass production has changed beer by making it readily
available even great distances from the producer. Mass produced beer is
sometimes less expensive than bottled water. It is brewed to such high
quality control standards that it is virtually sterile in the can and
will not spoil or turn to vinegar in that can for fifty or one-hundred
years. These facts have made home brewing much less common than it used
to be.
I found it intriguing to be able to brew beer with very little
technology. What is even more interesting is that the beer is sometimes
better if we use less technology...the old fashion way. Think about
it...your small local baker makes better bread than that white stuff in
the grocery store. But this local baker uses very low tech methods and
very few ingredients. The list of ingredients on white bread can be
huge and includes all kinds of dough conditioners and bleaching
agents...ick.
If I get bored with all of this science and technology...I can learn
about styles and history too.
Get the picture...if I want to learn more about beer and brewing...I
can...the information is out there and that fascinates me!
The blend of simplicity and complexity fascinates me.
Blackwell is happy to give guests a tour of the brewery. He's not on
premise every day so it's best to make an appointment with him.
If you have a favorite beer and would like to see it featured as one of
our seasonal beers, please let us know.
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Belmont Brewing Company
25 - 39th Place
Long Beach, California, 90803
(562) 433-3891
Fax: (562) 434-0604
** HOME of the BELMONT BEAUTIES **
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Bonaventure Brewing Company
213.236.0802
404 South Figueroa Street
Suite 418A
Los Angeles, CA 90071
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