DEL MAR

Beer drinkers wanted.

Experience a must.

Joe Richardson and Jim O'Brien were naturals.

Richardson works in a microbrewery. O'Brien owns a brewpub.

They were two of 38 judges at the Del Mar Fair's Home Brew Contest yesterday. They were paid in beer. Maybe overpaid.

"One ounce of beer every minute for an hour will destroy you," O'Brien said while in the midst of doing pretty much just that.

Richardson, who lives in La Mesa, and O'Brien, a Pacific Beach resident tasted 44 of the 709 entries. Some, they tasted twice. But they did it in 2 1/2 hours, not one.

The judging might have been faster, but for a lack of spitters.

'We have the spitters, and we have the swallowers," said the contest coordinator, Russ St. Jean. "It depends on how many swallowers we have as to how long we'll be here."

No one was in a hurry.

Even the contestants were patient. Some brought a few extra bottles of their brew.

Allen Craven, a Leucadia construction worker, entered a potent barley wine beer and one that was raspberry flavored. He belongs to a club that makes home brew in his garage.

"Some guys get together and play golf," Craven said. 'We get together Tuesday nights and brew beer."

Club members buy hops; barley and yeast at San Diego's Home Brew Mart store.

Craven provides the water, right from the tap, and the stainless steel kegs and other beer-making equipment.

Craven's friends call him brew master, and he lived up to the name. His barley wine beer placed first in its class.

The four main ingredients in beer– hops, grain, yeast and water–can be mixed and mashed and boiled into an almost endless variety of brews Craven said. And at the end of tile brewing day, he uses the water that cooled the boiling beer to do his laundry.

Richardson and O'Brien still sported clean shirts as they tasted the last of their beers. Neither had spilled any beer. But both admitted to a buzz.

"Not straight now," O'Brien said. "Straightness is not an issue here."

But O'Brien and Richardson were in good enough shape after the judging to sip their favorite beers while completing their paperwork.

"I haven't really drunk that much," Richardson said. "It's just a little sip on each one, a little more of the ones you really like."

He swirled the beer in his glass to raise a head, then sniffed, sipped and swallowed.

"It's not like you're getting drunk, but you do have to keep track in your mind which beers are which," Richardson.

By Clark Brooks

STAFF WRITER