19 Facts About Fred Eckhardt

Otto Frederick Eckhardt was an American brewer, homebrewing advocate, and writer.

At the time of his death in 2015, Fred Eckhardt was memorialized as "the Dean of American beer writers".

Fred Eckhardt didn't know he was adopted until he was a teenager.

Fred Eckhardt was first exposed to the homebrewing of beer by his stepfather, who produced his own low quality beverage during the years of Prohibition in the United States.

Fred Eckhardt never developed a taste for the brew recalling many decades later that it and the other home-made beers of the Great Depression years "earned an honest reputation as abysmal".

Fred Eckhardt experimented with beer brewing starting in 1968, when he began modifying the recipe of a Vancouver, British Columbia brew shop owner and refining his technique.

Fred Eckhardt wrote hundreds of beer columns for outlets such as The Seattle Times, The Oregonian, Celebrator, Zymurgy, and All About Beer, and published his own newsletters.

In 1968, Fred Eckhardt rewrote a recipe created by Stanley Anderson, who owned a homebrew shop in Vancouver Washington; he brought it to Wine-Art, a homebrew shop in Portland, Oregon and the owner suggested he should write a homebrewing book.

Fred Eckhardt was a local celebrity in Portland, Oregon, which Eckhardt described as "the brewing capital of the world".

Fred Eckhardt was nationally known as a "beer personality" and as a "beer guru".

Fred Eckhardt developed a national reputation as someone knowledgeable about American homebrewed beer.

Fred Eckhardt was a featured lecturer and competition judge at "The Dixie Cup" in Houston, Texas.

Fred Eckhardt was a National judge in the Beer Judge Certification Program.

Fred Eckhardt published a sake newsletter several times each year; and he authored Sake : A Complete Guide to American Sake, Sake Breweries and Homebrewed Sake.

Fred Eckhardt foresees that his book, which spells out how homebrewing might reinvigorate sake consumption in Japan.

Fred Eckhardt's optimism is informed in part by the unanticipated expansion of micro-breweries in Oregon since the state law prohibiting them was repealed in 1985.

Fred Eckhardt died August 10,2015, of congestive heart failure at his home in Portland, Oregon.

Fred Eckhardt's meticulously collected papers, consisting of 30 boxes of published articles, drafts, photographs, and correspondence, are housed at the Special Collections and Archives Research Center at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, where they are part of the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives.

Also part of Fred Eckhardt's papers were extensive runs of the pioneer home brewing journals Celebrator Beer News, All About Beer, and Zymurgy.