There are people who follow recipes.
And then there is Greg Feist.
Greg comes from a family where cooking instructions were more likely to include “a little of this” and “until it’s ready” than carefully measured teaspoons and timers. His grandmother was a professional chef who rarely wrote anything down. His mother was feeding seven children three meals a day and didn’t exactly have time to stop and level off the flour.
So Greg learned early that a recipe was really more of a suggestion.
“I firmly believe that a recipe is a skeleton at best,” he says. “Like jazz, the best result in the kitchen is a combination of the notes you play and the ones you don’t.”
That philosophy works beautifully for cooking.
It becomes slightly more complicated when you decide to start brewing beer.
Greg and his wife, Amy, have lived in Smyrna for eight years. They originally chose the area because it split the difference between his Midtown office and her job at Kennesaw State University. Then the pandemic arrived, Greg’s office went virtual and the commute that brought them here largely disappeared.
Fortunately, they had already discovered they liked Smyrna enough to stay.
The pandemic also revived an interest Greg had considered years earlier: homebrewing.
Greg has always loved breweries, brewpubs and tasting rooms. When he and Amy travel, they make a point of trying the local beer — sometimes one brewery and, in places like Asheville, perhaps considerably more.
“I don’t think you can truly know a place until you’ve tasted the local beer,” he says.
Friends first encouraged Greg to try brewing in his 20s, certain his tendency to experiment in the kitchen would translate well to creating his own beers.
Then he took a brewing class.
There were measurements. Precision. Exactness.
Greg reconsidered.
Years later, pandemic-era beer options were limited, some unexpected voiceover income was burning a hole in his pocket and, as Greg puts it, his need for a little “exbeerimentation” won out.
His first several batches were not particularly good.
Oddly enough, that may be exactly why he kept going.
Greg compares brewing to golf. You don’t play one round, realize you’re not Scottie Scheffler and immediately give away your clubs. You practice. Every batch became another chance to get better.
The results have ranged, in Greg’s words, from great to “virtually undrinkable.”
One of the great ones was an English Brown Ale he called Encyclopaedia Brown, which earned high praise from several judges from a regional homebrewing competition.
Another favorite, East-West Connector, combined the hazy, tropical character of a New England IPA with the piney, resinous flavors Greg enjoys in West Coast IPAs.
After 30 years as an advertising copywriter, creative director and occasional screenwriter, Greg admits that naming the beers is one of his favorite parts. His basement brewery has a name, too: The Hop Church Brewing, a fitting choice for a longtime “hophead.”
But one of the best things coming out of Greg’s home brewery isn’t beer at all.
It’s bread.
A 10-gallon batch can use roughly 28 pounds of grain. Once the sugars have been extracted during brewing, those “spent grains” still have plenty of fiber, nutrition and flavor.
And Greg hates wasting food.
So he and Amy divide the grain into two-cup portions and freeze it. Their most recent batch produced 45 bags — enough, potentially, for nearly a year’s worth of homemade bread.
They use it for whole-wheat loaves, pizza dough, soft pretzels, waffles, crackers, cookies and even dog biscuits.
They don’t buy bread anymore.
Greg toasts the grain, works it into the dough and even finishes the loaf in a 400-degree smoker for a hearth-baked quality.
Friends seem particularly fond of his basic whole-wheat loaf.
Greg, however, thinks the soft pretzels deserve more recognition.
There have been other creative pursuits along the way — barbecue competitions, plenty of time at the smoker and restoring vintage Sunbeam Alpines. But whether Greg is brewing beer, baking bread or feeding friends, the making is only part of what he enjoys.
The sharing may matter even more.
“Food sustains us,” Greg says, “but I think its superpower is its ability to bring people together.”
His circle of friends includes some very good cooks, and they gather regularly to break bread, try each other’s creations and talk about life, family and whatever may be coming next.
Which may explain why Greg keeps experimenting, even when the occasional batch goes sideways.
There will always be another beer to brew. Another loaf to bake. Another recipe to ignore.
And, hopefully, another reason to gather around the table.