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BEING THERE : Brew U.

Sure, I’d sipped beers from all around the world, but I had never personally brewed anything stronger than the morning coffee before the day I headed down to Hamilton Gregg Brewworks. This Hermosa Beach outfit supposedly was the nation’s first brew workshop when it opened more than a year ago; now there are four.

Being a total novice, I enlisted the help of Michael Doherty, brewer at Gordon Biersch, the hip brewery-restaurant in Pasadena.

Soon after entering Brewworks, a beautifully renovated, brick-walled building from the 1920s, we perused a list of nearly three dozen brews. I chose the H.M. Majestic Ale; Michael, whose expertise is in German-style beers, opted for the Oktoberfest. We were given recipes and then set loose to find and measure our ingredients from among the many jars of hops and barley. Over the next couple of hours, we set times, monitored the boiling mixture in our kettles and poured and stirred ingredients as the recipes dictated. Finally, we pumped the liquid from the kettle into a storage container and added yeast. After two weeks of fermenting here, it would be a brew I could call my own.

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Altogether, it was as easy as baking a cake from a box, and much more social in Brewwork’s friendly, bar-like atmosphere, though the only drinking that occurs here is the sampling of one’s own beers.

Two weeks later, we returned to bottle the fruits of our efforts. My dark, slightly bitter ale tasted great; Michael’s faintly sweet lager was equally fine. Partner Patricia Spiritus whipped up some labels on her Macintosh (though many customers produce their own at home or at a local print shop, and dozens are pasted up on the “Wall of Fame”), and an hour later, we had each sealed the caps on our four dozen 22-ounce bottles.

Spiritus and partners Anthony Gregg and John Hamilton Scudder are working on plans to open another store, in Newport Beach.

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At $80 to $120 (depending on the beer) for four dozen 22-ounce bottles, Brewworks isn’t cheap and your handiwork might not rival the ultimate microbrews. But you’ll still wonder how you ever tolerated those tasteless, mass-produced beers on the supermarket shelves.

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