CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
Hailing from a family of mariners, J. B. Zorn enrolled in the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York, soon learning the ins and outs of the life aquatic—beer included.
One long weekend on leave, he and his dad cracked into a homebrew kit and brewed the kind of lager you make without regard to sanitation or temperature control. “It was pretty rough,” Zorn says, laughing. Rather than leaving their newfound hobby bobbing dead in the water, father and son kept at it. “We had a couple regimental officers who were super-supportive.” When he turned 21, his superiors began sharing British beers with the freshly legal midshipman, who brewed IPAs such as Commodore Hopenfield.
Post-graduation, Zorn joined the Coast Guard, and his first tour of duty took him to Honolulu. While it was paradise on the one hand, on the other hand, blah beer. Selection was limited, and long transit times dulled flavors. “Everybody has a craft beer journey, especially homebrewers. As you start to brew, you try to make things you can’t buy at the store.” And when you’re in the Coast Guard, you forever hanker for a taste of a previous home.
Over the last decade, Zorn has sailed from Honolulu to Monterey, California; then Fairfax, Virginia; and now he is based in Charleston. He totes his brewing stand—welded by a fellow coastie in Hawaii—across the country, constantly acquiring new equipment and skills. The certified cicerone trained as a systems engineer but spends his days as a marine investigator. The methodologies for both jobs fit his homebrewing hobby as snugly as a wet suit. “What factors might’ve led to why this beer didn’t turn out? Was it the recipe? Was it the ingredients? Was it the yeast?” Constantly relocating also provides its own set of challenges to solve on the brewing side. “Everywhere I go, I’ve got to completely readdress how I’m going to do water, how I’m going to do cooling, and all these things.”
In Hawaii, he brewed a saison on New Year’s Eve and went to a party where he met a woman named Rachel an hour before midnight. A year or so later, he brewed her another saison—her favorite style—bottled it, and labeled it with a marriage proposal. Their wedding featured handmade beers: Pop’s Hops Imperial IPA for his dad, Big Ron’s Maple Brown Ale for his father-in-law, and, in lieu of a mother-son dance, a mother-son homebrew toast.
In Monterey, he brewed rye IPAs and saisons in his garage. In Virginia, he and his dad built a shed in the backyard, brewing outside before transferring wort to the basement for temperature-stable fermentation. “It was a little bit farmhousey.” In Charleston, the biggest challenge was installing a water line in the garage that also features a TV, a chest freezer, a 10-gallon brewing system, and three taps offering his preferred pale ales and dry West Coast IPAs, as well as stylistic stalwarts such as dubbels and stouts. “For me, weird and unique is not the ultimate goal. I’d rather put my stamp on a classic pilsner or pale ale and make it at home and make it fresh.”
Zorn has two kids of his own now, so, like many Costco-convert parents, he prefers to buy in bulk. He stocks his garage with 50-pound sacks of grain and his freezer with plenty of hop pellets. “At any one time, I can brew pretty much any style based on what I have on hand. I keep three or four different kinds of yeast and a couple hundred pounds of grain, just in case.” He’s as keen to test new recipes as he is to revise past efforts. Nothing ever stays static for Zorn, but that’s the life he signed up for. “Moving every couple of years isn’t for everybody, but at the same time it’s not this opportunity that everybody has.”
ADVICE
- “You can brew great beer with one pot. You don’t need a three-vessel system with pumps and a wort chiller. You can do it with minimal equipment.”
- “Keep on learning, keep on talking to people, and don’t be afraid when you fail. You can make it better. I’ve made some beer multiple times, back to back, because I’m like, This is all off. I’m going to redo it. You’re going to get to a point where you’re making consistently good beer. When you start, you might be making good or great beer three or four times out of ten. Hopefully as you keep brewing, you’re making good or great beer eight to nine times out of ten. For a hobby, that’s a pretty good ratio.”
- If your batch goes awry, look to your yeast strain, and don’t reuse it too many times. “Get some fresh yeast, and that beer will be a home run each time.”
- “Brewing with people is always going to be more informative than with a particular book. One style of brewing is not going to work for everybody. Measuring the pH each time and doing a triple decoction isn’t necessary for each beer. You can make great single-infusion pale ales by using fresh ingredients, making your starter, using the right yeast, and using enough of it.”
BREWER SPOTLIGHT
If, like Zorn’s wife, Rachel, you like saisons, check out Mike Karnowski. He owned a New Orleans homebrew shop and wrote Homebrew Beyond the Basics before opening Zebulon Artisan Ales near Asheville, North Carolina. He concentrates on bottle-conditioned farmhouse and historic ales as well as sour and wild ales, rarely repeating any of them.
