Doppelgangers' ale wins 1st place award

Doppelgangers' V&T Honey Ale won first place at a Los Angeles beer competition last week.

The Carson City brewery's brewmaster, Joe Renden, said the beer took first place in the "specialty honey lager or ale" competition at the Los Angeles International Commercial Beer Compe-tition, which was a part of the Los Angeles County Fair.

The brew beat nine other breweries.

Renden said the honey ale recipe was the first brew he made for Doppelgangers in 2005 when he was hired as its brewmaster after working at BJ's in Reno and Great Basin Brewery in Sparks.

He said he uses some coriander and orange peel to add dimension to the beer. The same beer also won a silver medal at the North American Brewers Associa-tion competition in 2007.

"I try to make beer that people will drink," he said. "So most of my beers are made middle of the road so they're drinkable. But I think I'm going to start shifting to an IPA (India pale ale) and max it out for bitterness."

Renden has been brewing for about 10 years, a hobby that turned into a new career after retiring from Auburn University, where he was a physiology professor, and moving to Carson City with his wife.

He later went through the UC Davis masters brewing program.

He said the six-month course included lessons on biology, chemistry and engineering. Beer making, after all, is more complicated than just adding yeast to barley and water.

"I had a lot of chemistry when I went through school, but when I went through the brewing program it all made sense," he said. "There was a reason, the enzymes, the flavor products. All of a sudden you know why you're learning it."

At the end of the program awaited a nine-hour exam administered through the Brewers Institute.

"Besides the fact that it's an absolutely wonderful hobby, you can make it as simple or complex as you want because there's so much science behind it," Renden said

He said being a brewer isn't a lucrative business and can be very demanding. But he said he enjoys his time spent brewing beer, plus his post-career career in beer making helps supplement his income.

"It keeps me busy," Renden said.¬