Homebrew Summer: BLAH Brewing

Each year when breweries sign-up to take part in our Homebrew Summer program, they typically team with a single homebrewer to brew up one of their recipes in their professional environs. Every now and then, a brewery will go above and beyond, brewing up two or even three pro-am beers, but this year one brewery owner took things to the next level. That individual is Jeff Motch, the owner of BLAH Brewing, the in-house beermaking arm of Normal Heights’ acclaimed Blind Lady Ale House. After signing up for Homebrew Summer, he cast a wide net and reeled in numerous homebrewers interested in forging something special on BLAH’s nano-sized system. The result is a triple beer release, which will take place at Blind Lady Ale House tomorrow, Sunday, July 7, followed by the release of a special Pride-inspired beer on Wednesday, July 17. Not only that, but Motch has even more Homebrew Summer collaborations in the works with plans to tap those beers this month and next. We doff our caps to this generous fermentationist and are proud to share BLAH’s first four pro-am recipes with you below.

New pro-am beers will debut weekly throughout the summer, so be sure to check back with San Diego Beer News on a regular basis (or subscribe to our free weekly email newsletter and we’ll send all the recipes and release information straight to your inbox). Cheers and happy homebrewing!

Jeff Motch
Owner & Head Brewer, BLAH Brewing

Which beers are being released this weekend?
We’ll have a saison called Endless Mountains that we brewed with BLAH bartender Jesse Smith. He didn’t have a homebrew recipe for this. He just said he wanted to brew a saison, so we came up with it together. Ex BLAH manager and current North Park Beer Co. manager Michael Lakis (pictured above) gave us parameters for a lager he wanted, then worked out the basic recipe with us. That beer goes by the name Extra Innings. Then there’s Frodo, Don’t Wear the Ring, a New Zealand-hopped pale ale that homebrewer and industry member Jared Rowley submitted to San Diego Beer News for consideration in this year’s Homebrew Summer program.

What can we expect from your Pride-inspired beer on July 17?
It’s a session hazy called Brewed This Way. LGBTQ+ homebrewers Jess Sexton, Matt Paufve and Tori Birdsall provided us with a homebrew recipe using the BeerSmith homebrew-recipe program, then we scaled it up and made some adjustments based on what ingredients we had on hand, plus a few tweaks so it would work well on our system.

BLAH Brewing / Blind Lady Ale House is located at 3416 Adams Avenue in Normal Heights