The Dukes of Ale are men on a mission.
The mission: to teach people about beer and the home-brewing process.
Member Rob Briscoe said that 30 years ago, practically the only American beers available were Budweiser, Miller and Coors.
"If you wanted a decent beer, you had to get a European import," he said. "But there are a lot of great craft brewers now."
Edward Otero has been a member for almost a decade. He has seen the club grow from a social outing to an educational organization, he said.
"I got into it to learn how to brew and make better beer," Otero said.
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The Dukes of Ale were founded in 1989 by Guy Ruth and several friends as a social-drinking and home-brewing club.
Todd Coffey, president of the group, said he got into home brewing during graduate school at North Carolina State.
"I thought I would try it to save money on beer," he said.
Coffey said it is the allure of creating a world-class brew in your own home that keeps members experimenting in garages, sheds and just about any room that will hold a small brewery.
Briscoe said the equipment doesn't take up much space.
"You can start out with a pot on the stove," he said. "Then you have a fermenter, which can be anything from a five or six-gallon plastic bucket to a glass carboy. They're like the water bottles on your water cooler. These are the glass versions."
Briscoe hosted a beer-tasting night at his house two weeks ago.
"We're coming up with new ideas," Briscoe said. "We picked an imperial stout. We had four examples that were home-brewed, and I had another eight or nine that were commercial examples. At each of our meetings, we have a style that's a theme of that meeting, and it's pretty much to compare or get an idea for what your home-brewed examples should taste like."
Besides meetings and socials, the Dukes organize the State Fair's Pro-Am Competition in which professional brewers from around the state meet with club members and enter their brews to be judged on style guidelines.
"I've been brewing for 11 years, and I took a gold medal and two silver medals in last year's competition," Briscoe said.
The club will host club brews where members pitch in to buy ingredients and then all brew a similar style of beer.
Briscoe said people interested in joining the Dukes of Ale don't need home-brewing experience.
"Anybody can show up," he said. "We're interested in new recruits. Just have an interest in good beer."
Members said they are willing to share their brewing equipment with new inductees.
Coffey said that since brewing incorporates sciences like hydrology, chemistry and fluid dynamics, it allows them to play mad scientists in a safe manner.
"You typically start out with malt extract, add it to water, ferment it and make beer," Briscoe said. "After you get into it for a while, you start accumulating different pieces of equipment and doing all grain, and you're mashing the grain yourself to extract the malt sugars from the grain. After you get into brewing for a while, you start formulating your own recipes."
He said pale ales are his favorite.
"I like a little bit of an assertive hop character," he said. "And American IPAs are quite heavily hopped."
