Commercials make brewing beer seem like a monumental endeavor. Giant metal silos, huge barrels of beer, wagons pulled by Clydesdales, and massive factories are all a part of the images associated with America’s biggest beer companies. Somehow, this paint bucket full of fermenting beer in my closet doesn’t seem to compare.

With nationwide breweries delivering a plethora of beers to our local grocery stores, why are thousands of people opting to brew their own beer in their basements, sheds, or vacant closets? “We don’t make our own things anymore,” said Ben A. Ayres K’11. “People can forget about the simple satisfaction of enjoying something that you’ve put your own time and labor into it.”

Ayres has made three different batches of beers since coming to Kalamazoo from Vermont. “I’ve made a brown ale, an India pale ale, which was delicious by the way, and a pumpkin ale which came out really nice for the fall,” said Ayres.

On the recommendation of Ayres, I went to the Bell’s Brewery General Store in order to get started making my first batch of beer. “Anyone who works there knows exactly how to help you. You can tell the people there brew their own beer,” said Ayres.

Almost all beer-drinking residents of Kalamazoo know of Bell’s Brewery. The brewery was born out of a home-brewing supply shop that Larry Bell founded in 1983. The Bell’s website explains how they got started selling beer “in 1985 with a quest for better beer and a 15 gallon soup kettle.” Bell’s Brewery now sells eight beers year-round and 14 seasonal brews, but the brewery’s origins in home brewing can still be detected in the care spent in running the general store.

As I walked in to the general store my eye was drawn to the array of Bell’s sweatshirts, hats, coasters, and slew of other paraphernalia. Once I finished looking at the Oberon lamps I walked into the other wing of the store. This section was all business. Bags of whole and ground barley and wheat covered one section of shelves. On the wall was a fridge full of dozens of bags of hops and row after row of mysterious vials.

I got lost reading the labels of the different hops; Northern Brewers, Chinook, Hallertau, Cascade, Simcoe. I moved on to the vials, which turned out to be different types of yeast specified for hundreds of kinds of beer. I finally found my way to a pile of boxes labeled brewing starter kits.

I spoke to Bell’s General Store Homebrew Specialist David R. Curtis and he explained how the popularity of home brewing has risen in recent years. “In the last year our numbers have gone through the roof, especially during Christmas-time,” said Curtis.

I ended up walking out with just the basic starter kit. I was slightly daunted by the size and price of the box, but I had been forewarned. “I probably spent about 80 or 90 dollars in my initial set up, but it was well worth the investment,” said Ayres.

I emptied the box out on my living room floor and stared at the contents. It looked like two paint buckets, some weird looking tubes and gadgets, a beginner brewer’s book, and a big glass jug. However, if Larry Bell started with a soup kettle covered in Saran Wrap, maybe I could too.

I found a simple recipe for a wheat beer. I went back to the General Store and picked up barley malt, wheat malt, dry ale yeast, and Cascade hops on an employee’s recommendation. I was reluctant to use the questionable Kalamazoo tap water so I picked up five gallons of spring water at Meijer’s as well. The total bill was under thirty dollars. I was ready for my first batch.

“Follow the directions the first time, exactly. Don’t mess around with it too much and just get it clean. Don’t think you know better than the recipe,” said Ayres. “Nothing is more discouraging than having 5 gallons of beer that you don’t want to drink.”

Home brewing can be a little tricky at first, but also becomes an engaging hobby once one understands the basics. Many Kalamazoo residents have not only brewed their own beer, but have also entered them in local contests. Bell’s recently held a home brewing competition; the winners were announced on their annual All Stouts Day. “There were 130 or 140 people who competed. The line was out the door,” said Curtis.

After an hour on the kettle, ten days in my fermentation bucket, another week in the bottles, and my beer was finally ready. A small pop as I took off the cap off let me know the carbonation had worked. I poured it into a glass to check the color; a pale amber.

I was reluctant to taste it. A small amount of bacteria, or some mistake in the brewing process could have left me with 50 bottles of garbage and a sense of utter failure.

I had a photo taken of me with my first bottle, and I nervously took my first sip. A nice wheat flavor followed by the tangy bitterness of the Cascade Hops; pretty good. “It was surprisingly good,” said Noah Oesterle K’10. “Since Jordan made it I thought it might be terrible.”

Will microbreweries and an army of college-aged amateur brew-masters ever beat out the onslaught of cheap beers like Pabst Blue Ribbon and Steel Reserve? “I don’t really think that the trend towards drinking cheap beer is changing,” said Ayres. “Until college students start not being poor.”

Making your own beer does require time and financial investment, and this might make it too daunting a task for some college students. “I’d say it’s only about twenty percent of our customers are college students. Most are working people,” said Curtis. “We get a fair number, but most are a little older.”

However, the success of breweries like Bell’s and local spots such as Olde Peninsula still gives hope that college students will venture into the world of craft beer and home brewing. “I think more people are starting to buy some nice beer once in a while, and later down the line, once they have a steady income, I think they’ll start drinking better beers, or even make their own,” said Ayres.

On February 1^st, the Pepsi-Cola Company declared the official Pepsi Refresh Project, a service from PepsiCo to contribute money for the formation of large-scale community service projects. Based on the votes of site-visitors, Pepsi will dedicate at least $20 million to “local” organizations (because sending money to unfamiliar charities is like throwing it in a public trash can). Their marketing campaign is executed with youthful social media services as advertising vehicles, like Facebook, Twitter, MTV, and Hulu.

In my research I came upon a “Nutrition Blog” praising the efforts of the Pepsi Refresh Project, and the recent contribution of some farmer’s market’s efforts to educate local children on “healthy food.” Perhaps I’m stating the obvious, but where does a soft drink brand get off advertising healthy food when they sell a product who’s main ingredients are high fructose corn syrup and sugar?

Allow me to support my point with some facts provided by Pepsi’s website:

Calories: 150; Sodium: 30 mg; Sugar: 41 g

Ingredients: carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, sugar, phosphoric acid, caffeine, citric acid, natural flavor

Pepsi has clever minds running the company. Anyone selling toxic waste like Pepsi in this day & age needs to find a way to detract attention from their product. The soda industry will not back down when it comes to sustaining their empire. McDonald’s has been up to the same thing for years—for this reason, the distinct logo and familiar taste of greasy fast food and sugar-packed cola can’t get out of people’s heads.

Obviously attempting to attract younger generations, Pepsi claims that each student should change the world by inspiring creativity, one community service project at a time. That way, the head honchos at PepsiCo, aren’t bad guys at all—just a big-time industry who’s willing to give away a little of their $40 billion kingdom and a lot of junk food. The more kids that grow to support the project, the less grip Pepsi will lose on its notoriety.

The tobacco industry is a good example of a destructive product that holds on to that household name. Despite a settlement in 1998 to prevent tobacco companies from taking any action towards advertising to kids, tobacco corporations still promote sexy, slick ads, flavored cigarettes, and the thrilling road to other illegal substances. The fact is, something so acidic and sugary like Pepsi’s soft drinks are damn comparable to the destructive properties of cigarettes. But unlike cigarettes, they aren’t deemed illegal or wildly dangerous…yet.

Pepsi is indeed making a smart move with this false positive self-image. But Pepsi’s kingdom will eventually fall in the way of the tobacco industry. With nutrition concerns on the rise over the past decade, a similar vortex will form similar to America’s cigarette drug bust.

One of the initial barriers that must be broken down is PepsiCo’s ties to education. The easiest solution for schools is to receive money from big soft drink industries by requiring a certain number of products sold. The hope is that the recent push for natural, organic food will produce more dependence on local resources and less dependence on large companies like Sodexho, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola. Education systems need to start searching for other sources of endowment and stop supporting the big, unsustainable food industry. Looking to smaller businesses or non-profits groups is a good way to get their name out, while building bridges for future relationships.

Community service contributions are possible without hungry, big-name corporations—with a bit more work, a group can receive just as much funding from lots of small pools, rather than one big pool. Interested patrons can try looking to the local government or small businesses in the area. Many local services are happy to donate to a good cause. A good place to start: Strategic thinking, a charming proposal, and a trip downtown to visit local businesses.

First we go out, we get some pizza at Bimbo’s or Bilbo’s, then, depending on which day it is, we go to Olde Peninsula, Shakespeare’s, or Green Top Tavern.  Now we’re hungover.  Now we need coffee.

Since most of the Kosmopolitan’s readership are students at Kalamazoo College, let’s talk about why you feel comfortable/need to get out of Biggby’s in the library.  I sit with egregiously caffeinated beverage in hand and think about how, if my heart wasn’t so much a-racin’, I would go upstairs and get that homework done.  Instead, I sit around in the Biggby’s lounge and talk to my employee friends.  Fine.  You come to the library every day to read, learn, and get coffee, but doesn’t that wear out its purpose pretty quickly?  Isn’t going to the library to do homework going to get old fast?

If you go downtown, ah ha!  Now you’ve got the off-campus energy, vigor, and CAFFEINE CAFFEINE CAFFEINE to get over that interminable homework hump!  So let’s start with the most likely coffee joint you’ll visit: The Strutt at 773 W. Michigan.  I go to The Strutt pretty often.  The coffee isn’t any better than anywhere else, the ambiance isn’t any less pretentious than other coffee joints, but I’m bound to see one or two friends and hear one or two good songs over the speakers.  If anything else, The Strutt has some nice eye-candy on the interior: t-shirts hanging in the corner, an interesting ordering area, and a new polished, wooden bar that looks like it came right out of the forest.  Coffee prices are a little high and the menu doesn’t include many more flavorful drinks that you’d expect, but the place is also a restaurant, bar, and concert space.  If you’re not in the mood for coffee, grab a beer and a delicious pizza, which sport some ingredients you won’t be able to find anywhere else in town.

Okay, read on if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, because we’re going downtown.  Near the Kalamazoo Public Library is a nice nook called Something’s Brewing (120 W. South).  This skinny coffee bar has only a few tables but is rarely busy, so head down to it if you need a book from the KPL and a quiet place to work.  Coffee is cheap at SB, but the service is slow; sometimes I wait up to five minutes for a simple espresso drink.  The two or three different bariste who have waited on me have been exceptionally nice, though, and I don’t mind waiting an extra minute to support a local business rather than the interminable Biggby’s or Starbucks.

Now onto my favorite downtown coffee bar, Caffe Casa at 128 S. Kalamazoo Mall.  Like The Strutt, Caffe Casa doesn’t have the best coffee in town (that distinction belongs to the next coffee joint), and it certainly doesn’t have the best ambiance.  Instead, you walk in and wonder why there are so many plants in the corner and why the loud techno music is trying to push you back out the door.  The bariste are…strange.  I’ve had some interesting experiences at Caffe Casa, including one during which I was being stung by an insect trapped on the inside of my shirt.  Another was on New Year’s Eve, when I was questioned ad infinitum by one of the bariste for wearing a tie.  Caffe Casa is a great place with a large bar at which to sit (I’ve sat at the tables – it’s just not as good) and a decently large coffee menu; the pastries are very good too, especially the molasses cookies with lemon frosting.

Inside Water Street Coffee Joint

Last but certainly not least is Water Street Coffee Joint, located at 315 E. Water.  This one’s a little off the beaten path, but the coffee is definitely worth it.  Upon entering, you realize that this a big stop on the morning commute: it has a relatively small interior which facilitates fast entry, fast exit, and a bunch of little Water Street knick-knacks lining the wall.  The food cooler in the front of the store, which you’ll inevitably stare at as you wait for your coffee, has some delicious looking (and tasting) food inside, including various breads, dips, sandwiches, and salads.  The staff is constantly friendly and always willing not only to take your order and apologize if they’ve kept you waiting, but also to make small talk.  With reasonable prices, Water Street definitely has the best coffee in town, especially they’re whole-bean stuff (assuming you’ve got a grinder); just make sure you’re up to the walk from the W. Main neck-of-the-woods.

That’s it ladies and gentlemen.  I appreciate everyone reading the Kalamazoo Comparisons and hope that they’ll at least get you off campus once or twice.  It may be cold, but it won’t be for long, so keep good ole Basel in mind the next time you feel like pizza, beer, or coffee.