Retired Marin surgeon wins prestigious homebrewing award

Ed DeMayo, a retired orthopedic surgeon in San Rafael, pulled in the top honor at this year’s World Cup of Beer, a home brewers competition put on by the Bay Area Mashers Homebrew Club — not to be confused with the professional brewers’ World Beer Cup.

“I’ve done OK in the past,” said DeMayo of the competition, now in its 31st year. “But this year, I got first place in two different categories, and then one of those beers went on to win best of show.”

Out of 335 different entries, DeMayo’s “I Am Science” saison took the overall best in show, as well as first place in the strong Belgian ale category, while his “Zoonotic,” a lambic beer, also took first in the sour beer category.

Saison, French for “season,” is a light-colored Belgian-style ale that’s often highly carbonated and fairly alcoholic (between 4.4% and 6.8% ABV). It presents most often on the palate as dry, light and fruity, as best typified by Belgium’s Saison Dupont.

“It’s a little bit of a quirky style,” DeMayo said. “And I think beer drinkers tend to gravitate more toward hoppier beers like IPAs and pale ales, also to some of the darker beers: the porters and the stouts. It’s kind of unusual for a more middle-of-the-road beer (flavorwise) to have won at that level. I was very, very pleased. “

DeMayo’s home brewery, which he whimsically calls Brewery 42, started out as a way to bond with his son, Nick. (The number “42” is the ultimate answer to the question of life, the universe and everything in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” science fiction media franchise.)

“We got started when he was in grad school. He was at USF and, gosh, it was San Francisco Beercraft at the time,” he said. “I don’t think they’re still in business, but he found them, and he started getting interested in home brewing. We did a couple of batches when he came home on the weekends in the kitchen, and then my wife said, ‘Go do this somewhere else.’”

DeMayo has lived in the same house in San Rafael for 50 years and was in private practice in Greenbrae as an orthopedist for 30 years before spending the final decade of his career at Kaiser in Terra Linda. He retired five years ago.

“We moved up to the garage and did a number of batches up there, and then about three years ago, we excavated the area under our house, and I actually put in a slab and made an actual dedicated nanobrewery down there. It’s been a lot of fun. It started out as a hobby, and it turned into an obsession,” he said.

DeMayo’s background as an undergraduate biology and chemistry major in college as well as his career as a surgeon has certainly helped him with his obsession.

“There’s a lot of science in brewing,” he said. “We say that wine is made by farmers and beer is made by engineers, and there’s just a lot of truth to that. Extracting fermentable sugars from grain is difficult because the starches are these long complex molecules that the yeast can’t metabolize. It has to be broken down mechanically and enzymatically so that it turns into a sugar that the yeast can then turn into alcohol and carbon dioxide.”

The 80-year-old retiree has zero interest in going into commercial brewing.

“The great thing about home brewing — craft brewing in general — is that you’re not trying to make money. You can use whatever ingredients you want, regardless of the cost. You’re not on a time commitment that you’ve got to get onto the shelves by Cinco de Mayo or whatever. So you can use yeasts that are much slower and develop much more character and nuance than you would if you were trying to do a commercial brewery,” he said.

DeMayo also laments what he sees as the change in the social environment surrounding beer.

“There was kind of an explosion in beer 20 years ago, and all of a sudden, all these craft breweries started popping up, and people started really paying attention. And unfortunately, that’s kind of fading away now, because the younger generation just isn’t drinking as much. They’re not going out as much,” he said.

That social connection is strong for DeMayo, whose father was a longtime restaurateur and bar owner in Southern California. He remembers him fondly.

“My dad was a bartender. I grew up around alcohol and liquor, and he had a couple of bars and a couple of restaurants when I was a kid. He was just a very friendly, very nice, very warm man. He had a lot of traits that I would look for in a doctor: connecting with people, listening to them, being authentic with their concerns. He was just a good guy,” he said.

And this father-son experiment has now turned into a major award-winning hobby.

“The reality is, I enjoy brewing even if there’s no acknowledgement, but that makes it extra special. It’s getting recognition for doing something that you already really like to do,” he said.

DeMayo’s goal now is to continue brewing as a hobby and enjoy it as much as he can.

“We do something in our neighborhood,” he said. “We call it ‘Free Beer Friday.’ We invite all the neighbors to come over and drink my beer. I could probably run for mayor of my block.”

The good money is on him to win if he ever does.