BASKET RANGE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Adam Beauchamp’s salt-of-the-earth family has tended the same property for more than 160 years. Today they grow the cherries and apples that occasionally go into his homebrew batches. His grandfather made apple wine and kit beers. “That it could be done at home interested me,” says Beauchamp. So did saving money. He bought high-cost hop-smacked American IPAs from Green Flash and Stone but wanted to make something similar for less money.
Beauchamp built a bare-bones setup: wort boiled on the stove, a cooler that drains into a couple of pots. More than a decade later, he still averages around five gallons per batch, filling vessels with properly styled IPAs, pale ales, ambers, and malty lagers. “I focus on fresh ingredients, correct fermentation temps, good yeast health, and sanitation”—the holy quartet of homebrewing. He sources hops from wherever he pleases, ordering Citra and British-inspired New Zealand malts online. “We get them fresher than if we use Maris Otter or Golden Promise,” he says of the flavorful UK grains. Why not his native grains? “Australian malts, particularly the base malts, produce bland lagers. They’re very low color and low character. Unless you want to make a watery lager, that’s all they’re good for.”
Summer in South Australia isn’t for the faint of heart. Temperatures often crest into triple digits, a hard climate for humans and microbes alike. Beauchamp can brew for only six or seven months a year. “It’s just too hot here, and I don’t have good enough temperature control.”
He wrings his best from the remaining months, and his skill shows in the results. He’s been named South Australia’s best homebrewer multiple times, and he’s taken home Australia’s top homebrewing title. It’s a testament to the triumph of resourcefulness over technology. “I do the wort production in the kitchen and the fermentation anywhere that there’s a space, really.” He cooks lagers in winter, fermenting them in the laundry room alongside a couple of bricks of ice.
That make-do approach has made him a winner. Breweries have released several of his recipes, including his oat porter. Wins are nice, of course, but he doesn’t want to fashion ribbons and trophies into a ladder to the next level. “That might ruin a good hobby,” he says.
With no next-step brewery in mind and months between brew days, Beauchamp has ample time to think through his coming batches. He hits the area bottle shop monthly for research and, in between cooking curries and barbecuing dinner for his daughter and twin sons, perfects his next great beer. Today, it’s an American amber; tomorrow, it could be fruit from the family farm that he transforms into the fruit of his labors.
ADVICE
Pay attention to detail. “Everything I do, I plan it out before I do it. I make sure everything is clean. I ferment at the right temperature. I use healthy yeast.”
BREWER SPOTLIGHT
In 1993, Bell’s Brewery keg washer Rik Dellinger and friend Rob Skalla homebrewed an intensely grapefruit-y IPA for a birthday party. It contained exclusively Centennial hops, then new, and inspired Two Hearted Ale, Bell’s top-selling beer. Today, Dellinger is Bell’s brewing materials manager.
