Pretty cool writeup on Brooks Hamaker, who recently passed. A couple of my friends own Cane River Brewing in Natchitoches, where he was most recently brewing at. Got to know Brooks over the two years he was there. He was a really interesting fellow to talk to with some pretty awesome stories. He will definitely be missed.

LINK

quote:
Charles Brooks Hamaker, a master brewer who created such Abita beer varieties as Amber, Turbodog, Purple Haze and Andygator, suffered a fatal heart attack Nov. 1 while brewing a batch of brown ale at Cane River Brewery in Natchitoches. He was 59.

He died doing what he enjoyed, said his son Miles Hamaker, who confirmed the death. “It was his love.”

Hamaker, who helped develop Abita Brewing Co. and breweries in Mexico, Ireland and Hong Kong, had a career that was an outgrowth of his lifelong love of cooking and working with recipes, which he learned from his mother, said Robin Hamaker, his ex-wife.

His interest in making beer for a living was piqued while he was tending bar at Carrollton Station in Uptown New Orleans, Miles Hamaker said. Among the regulars he hung out with were Jim Patton and Rush Cummings, who had launched Abita Brewing Co. in 1986, and brought in sample kegs.

Although the Hamakers moved to Baton Rouge, where Hamaker cooked at Mike Anderson’s Restaurant, he quit in 1987 and moved to Abita Springs to work at the brewery, one of the region’s pioneering microbreweries, Robin Hamaker said.

“They used to brew on Mondays and Wednesdays and deliver in the back of their Toyota truck on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” she said. “He was passionate about it. I think he just loved it.”

Although Miles Hamaker said his father, Cummings and Patton were “just fooling around” at first, Abita Brewing blossomed into a massive enterprise that outgrew its original home – a 100-seat brewpub – and had to move to a bigger facility to keep up with the demand for such varieties as Amber, Turbodog, Strawberry Lager, Purple Haze and Big Easy IPA, as well as nonalcoholic root beer.

According to its website, Abita Brewing Co. produces more than 125,000 barrels of beer and 13,500 barrels of soft drinks every year.

Hamaker became head brewer and the company’s vice president of operations.

He left after the company was sold in 1997 and moved on to work as a master brewer for three North Carolina breweries – Fullstream Brewing and Big Boss Brewing, both in Durham, and Black Jack Brewing Co. in Raleigh – followed by Flying Tiger Brewery in Monroe.

He also built breweries in Hong Kong, Ireland and Tecate, Mexico. The Tecate brewery was the only action in town, his son Charles Hamaker said. “There was nothing down there in the middle of the desert, and he was just making beer.”

Although Hamaker made his living from beer, he remained active in the kitchen. He was a member of the Southern Foodways Alliance and a regular attendee at its fall symposia in Oxford, Mississippi. He wrote for Gravy, the alliance’s magazine, and for Southern Living, The New York Times, Salon.com’s Kitchen Cabinet and Egullet.com, where he was known as "Mayhaw Man."

Hamaker was born in Monroe on Aug. 2, 1961. He graduated from River Oaks High School and enrolled at the University of Arkansas, but he dropped out after a year, Miles Hamaker said.

Charles Hamaker described his father as “an extremely intelligent, impressive person.”

“He was a talker,” Miles Hamaker said. “He was the life of the party.”

His marriage to Robin Hamaker ended in divorce in 2007. She lives in New Orleans and Monroe.

Survivors include two sons, Miles Franklin Hamaker, of Oslo, Norway, and Charles Graham Hamaker, of Oxford; his mother, Brooks Ellen Hamaker, of Monroe; two brothers, Thomas Lawler Hamaker, of Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Powell Williams Hamaker, of Mandeville.

Kilpatrick Funeral Home of Monroe is in charge of arrangements, which are incomplete.