Magazines » January/February 2009 Issue » Meet the Brewer: Dave Hoffmann
A beer fanatic with a background in chemical engineering, Hoffmann was inspired by an ad in Popular Mechanics to begin brewing in the late 1980s. Despite his early, “funky” homebrews, Hoffmann got hooked, and began fermenting wines, meads, and beers of all styles so frequently that he quit machining and opened his own homebrew store, The Brewmeister.
“I suddenly had access to all sorts of ingredients and learned what everything tasted like. I made beer with every kind of hop, malt, extract, yeast, whatever.” Those experiments honed Hoffmann’s now refined (and widely respected) palate and revealed a desire to brew full-flavored beers -- porters, doppelbocks, Oktoberfests -- traditionally.“I’m all for innovation, but the experimental styles on the market at that time were, to me, weird. I felt traditional, full-bodied beers had been around for centuries for a reason, so [I decided to brew those].”
Hoffmann’s call for a return to classic craft brewing went on to both birth and define Climax Brewery. “Every beer we make here is something I perfected as a homebrewer, and they’re almost all something you can sit and drink a lot of,” he says proudly. “We make beer the way it’s supposed to taste.”
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This article originally appeared in the January/February 2009 Issue of DRAFT Magazine
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