Audio Slideshow: Home-Brew Kalamazoo

An audio slideshow exploring the emerging home-brew culture at Kalamazoo College.

The “Brewing” Process

I had a lot of fun reporting for this piece. I went into the process with no real sense of direction. All I knew was that I knew a lot of passionate people that loved to make their own beer. Well, I got lucky and those passionate people provided me with great interviews that led me in the direction of (I think) a pretty cool narrative.

After interviewing a handful of home brewers, two themes seemed to emerge. First, the students of this school sense a connection to alumni (and not just Mr. Bell) who have gone on to make waves in the micro-brewing industry. Second, everyone I talked to tied their passion for home-brewing to their cross-cultural experiences abroad. As a result, my piece, which is intended for the index, took up these two threads as driving topics. It seems that home-brewing is, to some, a truly a cross-cultural practice.

Interestingly, the home-brewers I spoke with all referred to their craft in creative and artistic terms.

“That’s the fun thing; being creative and taking [beer] styles in a different direction, taking them further, and altering them.” - Ben Dueweke

Cheers!

Enterprise Narrative Piece

International Flavor and Notes of College History Inspire New Student Brewing Club 

For potential publication in The Index

“I’ve come to learn that for the English, brewing beer and drinking is a social thing, for the Germans it’s a religious pastime, and then, for the Belgians it’s a gastronomic experience.”

When you ask Kalamazoo College students about their ever-analyzed study abroad experience, you can usually expect to hear a personalized regurgitation of “the W-curve” model. For those who are too young to have knowledge of the Center for International Program’s fit-all emotional philosophy, “the W-curve” refers to the figurative rollercoaster of positive and negative emotions that coincide with students’ journeys abroad. And while most returning juniors will share stories of home or actual sickness, brilliant vistas, language barriers, or quaint French cafés to highlight the highs and lows of studying abroad, there are a handful of students on this campus, like Trace Redmond, that prefer to talk about beer.  

  

“I’m really excited about American Beer. In Costa Rica I had a really good, beer-affirming experience talking to a British couple that had traveled through the United States – and America has a horrible reputation – but they were really surprised by how good the beer was in America.”

Mr. Redmond is just one of “a surprisingly high percentage of upperclassmen” that have found a passion for home-brewed beer. The number of K students involved or interested in home-brewing is so great in fact that some students are pushing for acknowledgment from the College. Chandler Smith, another junior who recently returned to campus is one of many who has been involved in a recent application for a beer brewing club on campus. He also remembers distilling his passion for brewing while abroad.

“During one of my rough periods on study abroad I got into learning how to homebrew and I became really obsessed. It was what kept me going…I literally spent hours watching videos on how to brew.”

And those hours of video instruction have paid off. Smith along with a friend, Ben Dueweke, have brewed nearly forty gallons of beer together this spring quarter. Driven by their success, they hope to share their new-found hobby with others next year.

“Since there’s so much interest and it’s really hard to get things organized, to get somebody into it, we hoped that we could just go through the school and we could have this be legit[imate] then we could do classes, and teach more people how to do it, and get everyone started.”

Despite their enthusiasm for the craft itself, Redmond, Smith, and Dueweke all are quick to mention another motivation behind bringing brewing to the fore on K’s campus – history. 

“Larry Bell was kicked out of ‘K’ for home brewing and they’ve since given him an honorary degree.” Smith mentions with a roll of his eyes.

“The couple that runs Arbor Brewing, they were ‘K’ grads and…when they were at ‘K’ they…studied abroad in Germany, fell in love with the beer culture, and when they came back they started, and just because of their study abroad experience Arbor Brewing exists.”

Indeed, it seems that many K grads have gone on to invest and be quite successful in the brewing industry. Mr. Redmond says that utilizing many of these natural connections that K has with industry professionals will potentially provide the Brew Club with a wealth of noteworthy speakers.

So with their own ingenuity, a little help from alumni, and pending approval by the Office of Student Involvement’s liability review board, it looks like Kalamazoo College students will be brewing something big next year. And even if the Brew Club doesn’t take off officially, Smith has no doubt that home-brewing will continue to be a big part of many people’s lives off campus.

“[Home-brewing] is like buying a canvas, you can do anything you want with it, you can turn it into whatever you want, and you know, if you kick a hole through it or you make it into a sculpture, it’s still something special you create…and if you like beer, it’ll make you like beer ten times more.”

Vine (Revised and Polished Draft)

I recently moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan. I live in a lopsided, three-story, mold-accented, rental house – with seven other people. My housemates include an aspiring photojournalist, an Ultimate Frisbee guru, three National Science Foundation sponsored scholars, two practicing microbrew specialists, and a bike mechanic. The walls of our nearly 100-year old home hum with activity. And we are never alone. Across the street, three starving artists endure and paint and smoke away their days. Next-door, our neighbor Mike – or “Mikey” as his uniform reads – can be found most nights either barbequing on his front porch or working on renovations to his recently acquired 1980’s RV. His engorged American Bulldog, Lexi, is always by his side, or pooping in our lawn. Our block perpetually smells of marijuana, charcoal, and mildew. It rings with the drone of stereos and window fans, punctuated by occasional screams of laughter and carburetor backfires. Garlic mustard shoots outnumber flower beds, and it simultaneously looks as if everyone has just moved in is about to leave. I live on a street named Austin, on a hill named Prospect, in a neighborhood named Vine. These blocks, near the heart of Kalamazoo, are sometimes referred to as the “student ghetto” with the full spectrum of connotations that the title bears. The place is dynamic, potent, and very much alive, and I have to admit, it’s rubbing off on me.

The Vine Neighborhood, near the urban center of Kalamazoo, is sandwiched between downtown and two university campuses. The place, which borrows its name from Vine Street, running east to west through its approximate center, is a “vibrant haven” for a diverse community of college students, young families, and entrepreneurs. 75-80% of all properties in the Vine Neighborhood are rentals according to the Neighborhood Association which also describes the surrounding tree lined streets as a place for “committed urban pioneers who are reclaiming historic beauties as single-family homes”. As the result of this heterogeneous makeup and the relatively transient nature of the people who live here, Vine feels quite unlike most urban neighborhoods. It’s an eclectic place bubbling with a distinctive culture. The streets come with the antics associated with the emancipation of a college experience, balanced with an atmosphere of economic redevelopment, a few young families, and a long and colorful history.

When I recently spoke with Steve Walsh, the cordial Director of the Vine Neighborhood Association and a new neighbor of mine, our conversation quickly turned to the subject of history. As one of the oldest neighborhoods in Kalamazoo, Vine has been home to dozens of generations of traditional families and “families” of college students. It has changed significantly as the waves of new homeowners and tenants have flowed in and out of the blocks over the decades. The neighborhood officially dates back to the 1840’s but by the turn of the century, the Vine Neighborhood was one of Kalamazoo’s most fashionable neighborhoods and slow changes began that would eventually result in the unique place that Steve and I live in today. As the years past and the twentieth century rolled on, residents could eventually live, work, and shop all within the borders of the neighborhood. As small businesses began to pop up within the borders of the neighborhood, Vine became an ideal place for all types of people to live – a trend that Steve believes still holds true today.

 “As demand increased for university students in the area, the original, large properties were chopped up and subdivided to make more room - smaller lots with more homes made more sense, and more money.”

In several cases, Steve explained, older buildings were moved back in from the street in order to make room for new houses, resulting in the helter-skelter patchwork of properties you can see in the neighborhood today. As the neighborhood’s composition changed significantly, students and other low-income groups took advantage of the newly available, convenient, and affordable housing niche.

 

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The rippled and cracked sidewalks of my new neighborhood haphazardly collect half-block-long pools of rainwater in the spring. The low points on Davis Street are frequently visited by children jumping and stomping in the puddles. Their shrieks of laughter are a reminder that actual children live here along with the college students.

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On Saturday and Sunday mornings the corner of Vine and Westnedge, the patrons of the Crow’s Nest – a local breakfast spot –line up out the door and onto the sidewalk waiting for a table and a good hangover remedy. The house parties and block parties that fill Vine Neighborhood evenings with music and drunken pedestrians often end here. And it’s not the only good eatery in the area. Half a dozen small, locally owned restaurants and bars dot the neighborhood including O’Duffy’s Irish Pub which, ironically, draws a relatively affluent, middle-aged crowd into the “student ghetto” six nights a week.

“I have to say, the people here in the Vine neighborhood really care and are really supportive of each other and this restaurant.”

That’s the sentiment of Chris Danek, the man, entrepreneur, and aging hippie who has been behind the Crow’s Nest for the past 18 years. The restaurant thrives on the Vine neighborhood, reportedly experiencing a 20-30% loss of business in the summer months after Western Michigan University students leave town. The place has become an icon among student tenants in the neighborhood and features a 24-hour café and bakery that have both spawned from the nearly two decades of success Chris has experienced.  

“It’s a great place to live…on the cutting edge of something.” 

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For the past three Tuesdays, a woman, always in a maxi skirt, has been flying a kite on the Davis Street fields. Last Thursday I walked past a grad student playing saxophone on his front porch – shirtless. On Friday night I saw two tandem bicycles at different points in the neighborhood as well as a group of kids dressed as Jedi playing with glow-sticks as light sabers. 

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Chandler Smith is a Kalamazoo College student who lives in the Vine neighborhood. When I asked him to summarize how he felt in his new home he responded with a story.

“I was out back, taking pot-shots with [my buddy’s] BB gun. You know, just popping eggs and bottles in the backyard and a few shots kept bouncing off the wood fence, when all of a sudden I hear this lady’s voice right, and she just yells, ‘Learn to shoot better so you stop hitting my fence!’ It was really funny. I just froze, like my mom had yelled at me or something, but she clearly was cooler than my mom would have been.”

Chandler brags that his aim has improved; his neighbor hasn’t called the cops or piped up about the shooting since, but the encounter “sums up the atmosphere on [his] block. Everyone is chilled out and decent…the place has good vibe.”

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Chuck Taylors hang next to hiking boots along the telephone line at Vine and Davis. The sacrificial footwear seems less like a gang sign and more like artwork; either alternative is highly plausible.

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The other week I was walking through the neighborhood. As I rounded the corner at the base of the hill I lived on, past a tall rose bush, I was nearly run over by a girl on a bicycle. It was a girl named Michelle, a classmate, friend, and neighbor of mine. She had been racing her antique Schwinn down Austin Street, where I lived. Fortunately, the forty-year-old brakes on her bike still functioned and she narrowly avoided knocking my block off. When she stopped to say hello, and reprimand me for walking so carelessly, she brought up a poem she had recently written about the Vine neighborhood.

“This place is like walking through a poem!”

"The Events of October"

What can I say about “The Events of October”? As a student at Kalamazoo College, this book reads unlike anything I’ve ever read before. I know the places. I’ve met many of the characters. The narrative hits close to home. As a male student from a different generation, this book also has a strange dissonance. As I try to relate to the people and events I find myself mentally walking in their shoes at one point, yet by the next page I’m lost in a dark and surreal story that feels so very far from my own. It is a hard book to read. It was hard the second time as well. However, I’ve mentioned on a few occasions in this class, that the hard reading is often the most valuable.   

I have a lot of respect for Gail Griffin as a teacher and friend, and I have to admit that our relationship biases my reading of her work. While I find many of the aspects of this book to be profoundly well done – like her meticulous record keeping and her ability to weave interview with her personal reflection – a friend of mine recently reminded me that my opinion of the book is not universal. To my friend, an educated and passionate writer herself, "The Events of October" is “invasive” and makes her “uncomfortable on a lot of levels”. Her reaction got me thinking. How does one reconcile the ethics of telling this type of story? How do others, maybe Kalamazoo College outsiders, react to this very intimate telling of a very tragic event and its aftermath? How can we weigh the social and human benefits and costs of narrative nonfiction like this?

This book is an inspiration to me as a writer. It is so well crafted and also dances so closely with many edges of my personal (and adapting) philosophy that it keeps me up at night – in more ways than one. 

A Captive Audience/Some Answered Questions

Held Hostage

1. If you don't know Spanish, how did you feel about the non-translated parts of the piece at the start?  Did they enhance the piece, or were they distracting?

I personally didn’t mind the Spanish one bit. I don’t speak (much) Spanish, but I don’t think it would have mattered either way thanks to the translations. It added to the feel of the piece. I consider it similar to the background street noises and sound effects for those who cannot understand the specific words.

2. Do Viviana's story and the reporter's story work well together?  Would you consider this one narrative or two different narratives?

I think the two personal stories obviously work well together. In many ways, they are two sides of the same coin, two possible outcomes of a shared and tragic outset. I think we may simply be arguing semantics, but I would contend that the two stories are individual stories that are woven into one, cohesive narrative by the reporter.

3. The reporter leaves Viviana's story unresolved in this segment.  Is that okay with you?

It’s frustrating and hard not to hear the end of Viviana’s story, but I have to imagine that the decision to leave the tale unresolved was very intentional. The reality is that Viviana’s trials (or those of anyone related to a kidnapping victim) may well be unresolved in reality. Be leaving us hanging, the reporters of this story manage to capture and express a sad truth about the stories they are trying to tell.

The French Fry Connection Response

“The lowly spud provides an improbable window on these events.” - Read

I love what Richard Read did with this collection of stories. He tricked me into reading about global economics, history, and politics by disguising his story as a tale about french fries. How fascinating that Hutterites (a people I am ancestrally related to) are linked to the far eastern middle class and the global fast-food consumer. The potato is just Read’s vehicle for telling a much larger story of connectedness. This, to me, read as a four-part, turn-of-the-century commentary on globalization, not fast-food logistics. From Muslim cleric Mohamad Joban to American anthropologists and Indonesian entrepreneurs, Read managed to capture my attention and enlighten me as a reader about dozens of people across the globe and their stories – all connected by their tangential involvement with McDonald’s fries. After reading this, I wouldn’t say that I came away more knowledge of the world economy, but rather of the interconnectedness of our world in general. I loved this piece. It was thought provoking and made me crave French fries. My only general critique is that at times the writing seemed to ramble and go on a bit longer than was necessary. In some contexts the long narrative worked well and really added to the story/was entertaining, while in a few other places I siply didn’t resonate with the character/story and wanted to move on. In all, I think this was a small side effect of the massive scope of Read’s story and overall I enjoyed it a lot.

Aaron Aupperlee | Jackson Citizen Patriot

Mother who beat cancer walks miles every week to support son who is heading to prison

I was impressed by the way Aupperlee managed to drop big pieces of relevant information into this story subtly. For example, the excerpt, “Gail and her oldest son Steven, 30, live together in an upstairs apartment. It is tiny. Steven’s room — walls covered with ribbons from Special Olympic competitions…” manages to tell the reader a lot about Gail’s family while also providing a visual description of their home.

I couldn’t help but feel emotionally manipulated by this piece. At the end, I found myself almost subconsciously siding with Gail’s son in the short courthouse scene. I know that I wouldn’t have sided with him had I not read the long backstory of his family. I am left wondering if there is a larger message that Aupperlee was trying to send with this article.  

Grass Lake teens paralyzed in separate accidents form friendship in hospital

Again, I liked the way in which Aupperlerlee shared visual setting details with character details simultaneously, as in the passage, “Dylan, an MSU fan, had decked out his side of the room in green and white. Paul, a University of Michigan fan, countered with a healthy dose of maize and blue.”

I think piece is a really well written story that accomplishes the daunting feat of making the reader identify with the subjects. At least, I identified with Paul and Dylan. I am wondering if other classmates felt the same connections? Or if my empathizing was a result of my age/class/gender?

Life on Chittock: Plenty of eyes watch Chittock Avenue, and there is plenty to watch

I thought this piece had a particularly strong lede. The line, “the 900 and 1000 blocks of the street are alive, teeming with activity, some neighborly, some not” really hooked me after the description of a neighborhood that painted the place in a friendly, stereotypical, and peaceful light.

I drew a lot of parallels between this story and the profile I am in the process of writing for the Vine neighborhood. I fully intend to use this article as a model for my revision process.

Vine: The Process

Writing a profile piece on an entire neighborhood has proved to be even more challenging and ambitious than I anticipated. I came up against a number of hurdles in the past week and a half while attempting to formulate this project. For starters, I had multiple interview appointments cancelled and/or rescheduled and as of right now, I have two interview appointments this Thursday, so those people’s stories won’t be found in my piece yet. I’ve also struggled with finding an arc and unifying thread to hold and guide the story of this place. I attempted to use a dichotomous form and a memory of walking home through the neighborhood to inform the flow of the piece but I’m not convinced that it accomplishes what I want it to – yet. Needles to say, this piece needs a lot of work and is already begging for additions and revisions, but it’s a start. Right now, it runs 1,215 words long and I feel like I could easily double that with another two weeks to work on it. Right now, this idea is a big one. I just hope it’ll turn into a good one as well before the end.

Profiling Place: A Rough Draft

Vine

Once upon a time on a dull and drizzly Monday afternoon, I found myself trudging what would become a very familiar five and a half blocks. It was the first time I had made the walk to my new home from campus since moving in as a student tenant in the spring of my junior year of college. This particularly drab afternoon was the tail-end to the kind of Monday that drives people to eat ice-cream for dinner and promptly go to bed. But what started as a dreary, prototypical Monday afternoon walk home in the rain, turned into an unexpected unveiling, a discovery of place.

In the heart of Kalamazoo, Michigan, sandwiched between downtown and two university campuses, there is a neighborhood named Vine. The place, which borrows its name from Vine Street, running east to west through its approximate center, is a vibrant haven for a diverse community of college students, young families, and entrepreneurs. 75-80% of all properties in the Vine Neighborhood are rentals according to the Neighborhood Association which also describes the surrounding tree lined streets as a place for “committed urban pioneers who are reclaiming historic beauties as single-family homes”. It’s an eclectic place bubbling with a distinctive culture – not quite like any place I have ever lived before.

As I followed the rippled and cracked sidewalks of my new neighborhood I was forced to cross the street in order to detour a half-block-long pool of rainwater collecting haphazardly in a low point on Davis Street. As I cut across the road, lamenting the melancholy afternoon, I caught the sight of two children – they couldn’t have been twelve years old combined – as they were jumping and stomping in the puddles I had been trying to avoid. Their shrieks of laughter forced a smile in the corners of my mouth. It seemed to be getting brighter as I walked past and waved.

I recently met with Stephen Walsh, the proud Director of the Vine Neighborhood Association and a neighbor of mine. We talked for nearly an hour about the history of the place we both now call home. Steve, as he prefers to be called, bragged about the neighborhood, one of the oldest in Kalamazoo. He told me about the original Dutch immigrants that first called these streets home back in the 1840’s. Most of the original buildings have been lost to the passing of the decades but some of the larger, Queen Anne mansions that originally housed the town’s wealthy and influential families have been saved by owners and organizations like the Neighborhood Association. By the turn of the century, the Vine Neighborhood was one of Kalamazoo’s most fashionable neighborhoods. As a result, small businesses, grocery shops, and bars began to pop up and prosper in the neighborhood. Steve explained that by the early 1900’s residents could live, work, and shop all within the borders of the neighborhood. The place was alive with youth as well as students from all over the area attended The Public School established near the center of the neighborhood along Westnedge Avenue. Today the building houses the Kalamazoo Area Mathematics & Science Center. Original pieces of both Kalamazoo College and Western Michigan University can be found in the Vine Neighborhood as well, Steve said with a grin.

As the years past and the twentieth century rolled on, the Vine Neighborhood became an ideal place for all types of people to live – a trend that Steve believes still holds true today. Steve explained that as housing demands continued to rise for university students and families alike, once large properties were subdivided to create smaller lots with more homes. In several cases, he told me, older buildings were moved back in from the street in order to make room for new houses, resulting in the helter-skelter patchwork of properties you can see in the neighborhood today. As the neighborhood’s composition changed significantly, students and other low-income groups took advantage of the newly available, convenient, and affordable housing niche.

As I neared the intersection of Vine and Davis, I noticed something new; a pair of Chuck Taylors hanging next to hiking boots along the telephone line. The sacrificial footwear seemed less like a gang sign and more like artwork; the reality of which I will never know. As I stopped to snap a picture of the soaked shoes, I suddenly heard music – saxophone music. Four doors down, a Western Michigan University graduate student was sitting, shirtless, playing a silver alto sax under the cover of his porch. I walked up, bewildered by the sight of him, and introduced myself by asking permission to take his picture.

On Saturday and Sunday mornings the patrons of the Crow’s Nest – a local breakfast spot –line up out the door and onto the sidewalk waiting for a table and a good hangover remedy. The house parties and block parties that fill Vine Neighborhood evenings with music and drunken pedestrians often end hear at the east end of Vine Street.  [Insert information from interview with Chris, the owner and Manager of the Crow’s Nest – Scheduled for 4/33/12] And it’s not the only good eatery in the area. Half a dozen small scale, locally owned restaurants and bars dot the neighborhood.

The rain was definitely letting up now. I rounded the corner at the base of the hill I lived on, past a tall rose bush, and was nearly run over by a girl on a bicycle. It was a girl named Michelle, a classmate, friend, and neighbor of mine. She had been racing her antique Schwinn down Austin Street, where I lived, also on her way home from class. Fortunately, the forty-year-old brakes on her bike still worked and she narrowly avoided knocking my block off. When she stopped to say hello, and reprimand me for walking so carelessly, she brought up a poem she had recently written (Michelle fancies herself a poetic soul) about the street she lived on. “This place is like walking through a poem!” she exclaimed. And suddenly I too wanted to write about our neighborhood.

Today I still live in the Vine Neighborhood, in a large, three-story, mold-accented, rental house – with seven other people. My housemates include an aspiring photojournalist, an Ultimate Frisbee guru, three National Science Foundation sponsored scholars, two practicing microbrew specialists, and a bike mechanic. The walls of our nearly 100-year old home hum with activity. And we are never alone. Across the street, three starving artists endure and smoke and paint. Next-door, our neighbor Mike – or “Mikey” as his uniform reads – can be found most nights either barbequing on his front porch or working on renovations to his recently acquired 1980’s RV out back; his engorged American Bulldog, Liza, is always by his side, or pooping in our lawn. Our block perpetually smells of marijuana, charcoal, and mildew. It rings with the drone of stereos and window fans, punctuated by occasional screams of laughter and carburetor backfires. Garlic mustard shoots outnumber flower beds, and it simultaneously looks as if everyone has just moved in is about to leave. I live on a street named Austin, on a hill named Prospect, in a neighborhood named Vine. The place is dynamic, potent, and very much alive, and I have to admit; it’s rubbing off on me.