Birth of a Brew Master Rockport obstetrician delivers award winning beer

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Any guy with a six-tap beer dispenser in his kitchen must really enjoy having a cold one.

That’s the kind of setup Dr. Thomas J. O’Connor III has in his Rockport home. And considering he is one of the top home-brewers in the country, it should come as no surprise that Dr. O’Connor likes beer and that he always keeps a half-dozen kegs of his latest brew chilled on tap.

Known on the beer making circuit as the “Home-brew Doctor,” O’Connor has won more than 500 trophies and ribbons in beer, cider and mead making competitions all over the country.

O’Connor has been named New England’s top brewer for five years in a row, holds a national home-brewing championship and also is the only nationally sanctioned home-brewing judge in New England.

O’Connor has been mixing up frothy brews of homemade beer for a decade and has been a prizewinner from the beginning.

Not a bad track record for a man whose day job is as an obstetrician-gynecologist physician at Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport.

Despite his avowed taste for the stuff, O’Connor is not some beefed-up, pot-bellied, beer guy. Most of his home brews are given to friends or distributed during competitions. He does enjoy the occasional quaff, however, and keeps an ample supply of brews at home for like-minded friends.

As a disciplined physician, O’Connor is not the kind of guy who lolls about on the couch sucking down brewskis. He keeps fit by keeping his beer intake to a minimum, playing hockey twice a week and trying to keep pace with sons Thomas, 9, and James, 6. O’Connor crafts championship beer because he enjoys the challenge of being among the best.

“I always liked beer but never appreciated beer until I tasted my very first home-brewed beer,” said O’Connor.

That occurred in 1990 when the young teaching resident dropped off a broken VCR at a Pennsylvania repair shop. While there, he noticed home-brewing magazines on the counter. When he asked the repairman about his hobby, he responded by pouring him a sample.

“I was in heaven,” he recalled. “For the first time I really tasted hops and malt. That beer really had character and I was hooked on the idea of making beer.

That Christmas, O’Connor had a brainstorm. He decided to get his wife (Rockport pediatrician Mary Smyth) a beer making kit and “get her to make me beer.” O’Connor figured wrong, though, because Smyth took one look at the present and said, ‘You do it.'”

That exchange led O’Connor on a journey that culminated in his becoming one of the top home-brewers in the region. It also catapulted him onto the national stage, where his brews also have been recognized in competition and where he is certified as a master beer judge.

As the most recent example of his expertise, in the 2001 Northern New England Home-brew Competition held in Rockport during September, O’Connor brews were judged best of show. He also earned first-place ribbons in the Scottish Ale, India Pale Ale, English-Scottish Strong Ale, Barleywine-Russian Imperial Stout, European Dark Lager, Bock, Porter, Strong Belgian Ale, and Cider categories. He won second- and third-place ribbons in multiple categories as well.

“I started out very simply with a can of malt extract, dry yeast and no hops,” O’Connor said of his first attempt at home-brewing. “With each batch, I would add one more ingredient or change some things … I’ve never made the same beer twice, and I’ve never made a spoiled or bad beer. I’ve made beer that was less than I expected, but never any that I threw out.”

O’Connor credited the boom in home-brewing that began in the 1980s with the advent of micro-breweries and brew pubs that are commonplace today.

On the other hand, he said, the increased access to those micro-beers in stores and restaurants has led to the decline of home-brewing. He said people who used to devote hours to making a batch of beer can now run down to their neighborhood market or favorite tavern to find a good, home-brewed quality micro-beer.

“You don’t have to home-brew to get a good beer anymore,” he said. “Making beers of character is fashionable again.”

Mankind has been imbibing beer for thousands of years, he said. Translations of some of the early clay tablets etched by man revealed beer recipes and tracked the yield of barley crops. Early workmen, like those on the Egyptian pyramids, were paid in beer. O’Connor said the reason the Pilgrims came ashore in 1620 was because they exhausted their supply of beer.

“The log of the Mayflower states that they ran out of victuals, especially their beer,” said O’Connor.

At the beginning of the 20th century, America had hundreds of regional breweries. Each city had its own preference and most were the hearty English and German style beers found in the brew pubs of today. That changed after World War II when taste began shifting toward lighter beers. Some of the larger brewers capitalized on that change and, through takeovers and shrewd product placement, eventually captured the bulk of the market.

O’Connor said many beer aficionados may deride those products, but that great skill is required to make bland, watery beers that never vary in flavor, case to case and keg to keg all across the country.

“As much as I’m not too thrilled with their product, the major brewers make great beer,” he said. “You expect it to taste the same when you open a can no matter where you are and it costs them millions in quality control to be able to assure that,” he said.

By law, home-brewers are allowed to make 200 gallons of beer for each household with two adults or more. O’Connor said he makes around that much each year, mostly in five-gallon batches. It takes a week to ferment a good ale, about a month to create a lager. Some Belgian ales, English ales and strong lagers benefit from additional time but it is critical to drink beer when it is at its freshest.

“Ultimately, all beer is at its best when it’s fresh, but you don’t want to drink it before it’s ready,” he said.

O’Connor approaches each batch of beer with the kind of focus and dedication expected of a physician. He has studied all the books about brewing and is particular about his ingredients and the method and preparation required to make each style of beer being brewed.

“I’m very meticulous, as you must be to be a doctor,” he said. “Every time you brew, it’s an opportunity to learn something and every time you brew is an opportunity to make the best beer you’ve ever made.”

O’Connor emphasized that, “Every cook is only as good as his ingredients. Bad beer comes from bad ingredients, bad beer comes from bad technique, bad beer comes from not understanding what you need to do. You have to pay attention. If you’re going to spend seven hours brewing it, you don’t want a stupid mistake to spoil it.”

Although he takes over the kitchen for half a day to make his brews, O’Connor said the family has learned to take his passion for beer in stride.

“Beer is not a dirty word in our house,” he said. “My home-brew buddies think I have the best wife on earth. It’s a great hobby. It’s a very rewarding one, and you can enjoy the fruits of your labor.”