Homebrew Summer: Portrait of Van Gogh

Ih the spring, when local breweries were choosing homebrew partners to pair up with as part of our Homebrew Summer program, Chris van Hamersveld was selected by a North County brewery. Unfortunately, that operation decided to shut down in order to search for a new, larger San Diego base of operations. That’s when the folks from local brewpub Gravity Heights stepped in to pick up Hamersveld and his recipe for a Belgian-style witbier, Portrait of Van Gogh. The result is a quality beer that is on tap at Gravity Heights’ locations in Sorrento Valley and Mission Valley, the recipe for which can be downloaded below.

Chris van Hamersveld
Homebrewer

I’ve had a blast participating in the Homebrew Summer at some amazing breweries over the past three years. This year, I had the honor of brewing my Belgian wit at Gravity Heights with Brewmaster Skip Virgilio and Head Brewer Tommy Kreamer. A particularly exciting aspect of this year’s collaboration was taking on the technical challenge of scaling up the recipe myself. Using specific metrics from Tommy, I had the chance to scale the recipe and process for their system and available ingredients. On brew day, Tommy gave me an incredible amount of freedom and control over the process. We worked side-by-side, making minor adjustments and solving problems on the fly to keep the brew on track. We dialed in the pH and hit our target gravity on the mark. I also manually crushed the coriander, putting the seeds into a muslin bag I then pounded with a rubber mallet against the concrete floor. It was a low-tech solution for sure, but very effective. When the coriander and orange peel were then added to the kettle, the aromas in the brewery were unbelievable. I want to extend a huge thank you to Skip and Tommy for the opportunity to brew my recipe at Gravity Heights, and to my friend John Bell for joining me on brew day and inspiring me to be a better brewer. This was a truly rewarding experience from start to finish.

Tommy Kreamer
Head Brewer, Gravity Heights

I teamed up with Chris for Homebrew Summer because he had an award-winning Belgian wit recipe and we had yet to brew that style here at Gravity Heights. Given how refreshing witbiers are, it’ll be the perfect late-summer addition to our tap list. Chris did a great job scaling the recipe. I only had to make a few tweaks to his attempt. On the brew day, Chris jumped right in and was a great help from mashing in to graining out. It was a total success and fun to see Chris’ excitement when I broke out the giant bag of orange peels we added to the whirlpool. It was so much more than the tiny satchel used with a homebrew system!

Gravity Heights’ brewpub is located at 9920 Pacific Heights Boulevard in Sorrento Valley, and its satellite bar and restaurant is located at 525 Camino De La Reina in Mission Valley