Utah's 2012 Pro/Am Beers

One of the great things that came from the legalization of Home brewing in Utah was that it could finally bring a sense of legitimacy to hoards of talented home brewers, who for years were always denied participation on a national stage. Now that we've entered the twentieth century, our talented brothers and sisters in brew finally have their time in the sun.

For years the Great American Beer Festival has been giving  home brewers & breweries a chance to showcase their stuff. Last year,  home brewer Travis Grimm & Uinta took home a silver medal with their Shwartzbier in the festivals Pro/Am competition. The following three home brewers are hoping lightening strikes twice.

Chris Detrick has been a colleague of mine for... Well, quite a long time. His images adorn my web pages (that his photo up above) and if there's a beer related story in the Salt Lake Tribune, odds are it's photos came from Chris' talented eye. Chris has been brewing for the past nine years and became his neighborhood's therapist with the advent of the Kensington Ave Brewery. Granted, it was only a garage set-up - but it kept residents of Kensington Ave happy. Chris' favorite style of beer to drink is Saison. For the Pro-Am, he teamed up with Uinta Brewing to recreate his award winning Double Rye IPA.  It will eventually be a limited release under Uinta's Crooked Line.

One of the things I had hoped would come from this blog was to create a sense of community, to provide beer folk like me with a forum to engage one and other. That's how I became friends with Dallas Barlow, at our first Utah Beer Holiday Tasting. Dallas grew up in a homebrewers house and always had fond memories of malts & hops wafting throughout the house. I guess it was only natural that he'd carry on the tradition. Dallas has been brewing for about 8 years.  Saisons are his brew of choice as well. Dallas has teamed up with Hoppers Brewmaster and secret agent Donovan Steele to produce Dallas' award winning British Style Mild Ale. Dallas & Dono's dry hopped Rated X Ale will be released very soon at Hoppers.

Our third Pro/Am beer comes from Salt Lake City native, Scott Hunt. Hunt is an electronics engineer with 25 years in the semiconductor manufacturing industry.  After enjoying his first Sam Adams Boston Lager in the late ‘80’s, he began extract brewing in his kitchen.  In 2008, he invested in an all-grain basement brewery and pub, and brought his knowledge of process control and design of experiments to a very successful homebrewing system.  He recently surpassed the “1000 gallons brewed” milestone. Hunt brewed his award winning IPA 74 with Epic Brewing. The Pro-Am version of Hunt’s beer will be released under Epic’s Hopulent IPA brand label sometime in September, it will carry a unique stamp, Pro-Am ’12, in the “release information area” familiar to dedicated Epic imbibers.

Congrats, guys! Just getting this far is a big deal. We'll let you know when their beers become available.

Cheers!