Harry Allen, Home Brew Guru

Harry Allen is a man of few words, but he knows the art of home brewing beer and making wine. When we dropped into his shop at 4111 Martin Mill Pike, he was assisting two regular customers who buy approximately $600 worth of winemaking supplies every few weeks, not for business, but for personal pleasure. “This is the place to be,” one of them said as he pushed his two industrial-sized carts of materials out to his truck.

How long has the business been here?

Since 1961, in this location. I’ve been selling beer and winemaking supplies for 30 years. I had a TV shop in here before doing this; I used to repair TVs.

What kind of customers do you have? Are many of them like the customers who just left that come in every couple of months and make their own wine?

Some people I see every week, or once a week. They don’t usually buy as much as those guys. I see a lot of home brew customers who’ll come in and buy a kit about every week, an ingredient kit.

Why do people enjoy making and drinking home-brewed beer?

The appeal of it is that the beer has more flavor to it, it’s not watered down like a lot of the beer from these breweries. The beer you get is more like the breweries in Europe or the microbreweries. It’s a more quality beer.

How did you get into brewing beer?

It was a hobby, and I opened the shop because I was really dissatisfied with where I was buying my supplies, so I started buying wholesale and started selling a little bit of it. And about a year after I opened up and started advertising, the other place went out of business.

You have both beer and wine supplies. Tell me a little bit about the business.

I sell stuff to make beer and wine, and other stuff, too. I’ve got some stills in there; it’s illegal to make alcohol in them, but you can use them for other purposes like distilled water and making essential oils and essences.

I guess there might still be a moonshine market out there, though?

I think so.

Has the business changed at all in the last 30 years? Is the process still the same, or is there newer technology involved?

It’s about the same. Making beer is about the same.

And you sell a kit to get a beginner started?

Yeah, the equipment is about $80, and the ingredients run from $30 to about $38 for the ingredients for different style beers.

How much beer would that make?

Five gallons, which is about 2 cases and a six-pack. Fifty-three to 55 12-ounce bottles.

What is the brewing and winemaking process?

The kits have step-by-step instructions. The beer you have to cook, you boil it in hops and extracts to get the flavors and aromas out of the hops. With wine, you just mix it up, ferment it and drink it!

Is it an involved scientific process?

No, not really. You can get scientific with it — some people calculate the amount of alcohol they’ve got in it, and there are formulas to do that with.

What are some common mistakes people make when brewing?

Mainly, it’s not being clean enough. Especially in beer, not sanitizing properly. That’s the most critical part about making good beer is being real clean. But there’s lots of books that tell you how to do it and those ingredient kits with the instructions. If you can bake a cake with a cake mix, you can do that.

What will happen to the beer if you don’t sanitize properly?

It’ll spoil easily and get contaminated. It will get sour or cause over-carbonation.
Bacteria really loves beer, so you have to be clean. And wine, too; you sanitize with sulphites and use iodine or a chlorine base for beer. There’s nothing better for beer sanitation than iodine or chlorine.

Were you self-taught?