About Damon

After six years in the beer wasteland of Japan (with a short break in the equally barren Spain), I moved back to Vancouver vowing never to be without good ale again and took up homebrewing.

That was in 2006 and since then I’ve been brewing about two batches a month. My first beers were pretty ordinary, but slowly I got more adventurous with each  batch. Now my approach is usually very experimental. I’ll make the same recipe changing one or two things (an ingredient, the fermentation temperature, mash temperature) and compare the results.

That is me enjoying a beer in Brussels

I’m quite lucky as a brewer since my father has a huge garden that produces way more fruit than he and my mother can consume. For those of you who haven’t had the fortune to eat fruit and vegetables grown at home, they are a lot tastier than their store-bought counterparts. As a result, the fruit beers that I make are largely dependant on whether it’s a good year for that particular fruit.

I also have to thank my father for introducing me to wild mushrooms. I couldn’t afford to use the gourmet mushrooms that I put in my beers if I couldn’t find them myself. Sure finding enough mushrooms takes a good chunk of time, but it is worth it to try beers that few others have had the chance to sample. The weather plays a large part in determining which mushroom beers that I can make in any given year, but that is part of the charm.