Adam Odegard, HOF Inductee 2023

Adam is on the right. Charlie Papazian is on the left.

Adam Odegard has been a member of UNYHA since 2000. He starting brewing in 1987 when he lived outside Chicago. For five years he exclusively brewed stouts. His inspiration was Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout. Adam’s work as an engineer led him to relocate to Rockford, Illinois. It was there that he joined the local homebrewers’ club. Adam remembers that the Rockford club had a “brewer of the month” program. He thought that was an excellent feature of that club. Work opportunities led him to interview for a job in Rochester in 2000. While in town investigating the job and the city he learned there was a homebrewers’ club in Rochester. That proved to be a very positive consideration in his decision to accept the Rochester job! He joined UNYHA and has been active in it since then. He shared his experience of the Rockford brewer of the month with UNYHA leadership, and soon thereafter the UNYHA BOTM program was instituted. Adam has consistently participated in the BOTM and racks up high seasonal scores every year! Adam has fond memories of UNYHA. One that stands out for him was his 2 year experience doing BJCP training with Turk Thomas.

While Adam does consistently brew excellent beer, he does recall a difficult stretch of bad batches in 2000. Because of logistics of his move to Rochester his all-grain brewing equipment was in storage for almost a year. When he put it back into production he discovered that somewhere in his equipment there had established itself a covert and very persistent Lactobacillus infection. He said it was very hard to track down and led to him having to discard several batches of beer. Eventually after taking apart every piece he found the culprits in a valve fitting. With persistence and lye he eventually triumphed over the Lactobacilli. Perhaps because of this experience he says he has never acquired a taste for sours!

Not surprisingly, when asked what advice he would give new brewers, he emphatically instructs, “Sanitation! Sanitation! Sanitation!”

Adam likes brewing a wide variety of styles. He is proud of his record brewing tripels, saisons, hefeweizens and NEPAs. When asked how many batches of beer he has brewed, Adam’s comment is simply that he most likely complies with the legal limit of 100 gallons of beer per year. Adam likes brewing but does not frequently enter his beers in homebrew competitions (outside of our BOTM). He estimates that he has entered only about 6 times. However, he does each year participate as a judge in homebrew competitions.

When asked whom he would like to have met in his brewing journey, Adam says he would have liked to have spent time with Michael Jackson, the internationally famous beer journalist. He is curious about what country’s beer that Jackson felt was the best. If he were given the opportunity to collaborate on beer with some professional breweries, Adam says he would like to brew with Troegs since he thinks that they produce some of the best doppelbocks available. He would also love to work with the German brewery, Andechs, on a batch of weizenbock.

Adam has seen a lot of beer in nearly four decades. When asked about the weirdest beer ingredient he has encountered, he say, “Peeps.” He once encountered a pink peep beer released on a Valentine’s Day.

UNYHA has been a good experience for Adam. He says that he has remained a member for these many years since it has helped him to continuously improve his brewing and maintain his desire to brew at the highest level. He hopes that in the future UNYHA continues to serve to inspire its members to brew well. He also hopes that will continue to provide opportunities for younger brewer to become skillful judges of beer.