County beer brewers roll out the barrels and toast L.A. as nation's top suds maker.

County beer brewers roll out the barrels and toast L.A. as nation's top suds maker

Quiz: Which U.S. city weighs in as number one in beer production? A. Milwaukee. B. St. Louis. C. None of the above.

If you guessed C, you're right, the correct answer is Los Angeles County.

Los Angeles? Where are the artesian wells, snow-capped Rockies and babbling brooks? No major brewer is headquartered here, and L.A. isn't the home of old beer-making families like Coors and Busch.

Yet without much fanfare, Los Angeles has fermented into the nation's top beer producer, rolling out more than 18 million barrels (almost 600 million gallons of suds) per year. Milwaukee-based plants brew only 14.5 million barrels, while St. Louis taps out at 12.8 million per year.

Location explains how Los Angeles has foamed up to first place in the brewery battle. "You want to build a brewery as close as you can to the market," observes beer analyst Robert S. Weinberg of St. Louis. And what a Bavarian beer stein of a market it is. Consider that in 1987 Californians hoisted an average 24 gallons of beer each. Utah's per capita consumption, on the other hand, was just 13 gallons, says Phil Katz, vice president of research at the Beer Institute in Washington, D.C.

A visit to one of the big three breweries in L.A. gives visitors a flavor of the size of the Southern California beer market. Anheuser-Busch alone, with more than 50 acres under one roof, makes about 3,000 beer cans each minute and pays around $2 million a month in utilities.

A trip to the vast Miller Brewing Co. in Irwindale is also sobering. Employees, who use bicycles to get around the plant, may not drink on the job. Nor can they partake at lunchtime. "We're a dry brewery," says Miller spokesman Victor Franco. "It's like being on a raft in the middle of the ocean without drinking any of the water," one manager says.

Labor negotiators lost the right to drink on the job some time ago.

Don't expect L.A. beer to be made with water fetched from babbling brooks of freshly melted snow. That's more in the minds of advertising executives, Weinberg says.

Los Angeles County's three major breweries -- Anheuser-Busch and Stroh, both in Van Nuys, and Miller Brewing Co. of Irwindale -- use several hundred million gallons of water a year. Busch, with its $70 million payroll for 1,300 employees, produces 11.8 million barrels of beer a year, nearly double Miller's 4.5 million capacity and Stroh's 2.9 million capacity. Stroh alone pays more than $16 million in state and federal excise taxes.

Beer is made by mixing water and milled malt with rice or corn. Malt, by the way, is barley that has been softened in water until it sprouts. The result is kiln dried. The brew at this point is cooked down to what's called wort in the business. A dense, sugary liquid, it is strained so that the grain can be separated and sold as cattle feed. The wort is then transferred to closed fermenting tanks, where the brew manager adds yeast. It's the yeast that gives beer its foamy head.

Consistency is everything in the beer business.

Panels of eight to 12 judges test Miller's output several times a day. The batches are compared against identical brews at other Miller breweries and against other locally produced brews. The best judges are those who have the most highly developed sense of smell. Aromas that they are most alert to avoid include cooked corn, onion, garlic, banana and sour milk.

Flavor's another matter. All three local beermakers' brewing managers gather regularly to sample their competitors' efforts.

Still, Southern Californians are turning away from local brews. Imports account for 5 percent of the U.S. market; but as much as 20 percent in California. "People are trying to be different in California," suggests analyst Weinberg, and imports are getting more distribution. "The large brewers tend to treat all markets the same," he notes, so a niche-brewer can frequently draft a business plan that works.

Dennis Miller, brewmaster at City of Angels, a micro-brewery in Santa Monica, says he's turning a profit on just 20 to 30 barrels of brew per week. He's been open since January and is already looking to expand.

There's nothing like a fraternity brother, though, to analyze the Southern California beer market. Chris Brian, a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity at USC, says European beers are for "special occasions." He personally prefers Japanese beers, although Coors and Budweiser are "a safe bet" at parties.

"The only reason you would want to drink Stroh's is because it's cost-effective," Brian says. Stroh, however, wouldn't comment.

PHOTO : Heady job: Patrick Buzek on premium bottling line at Miller Brewing in Irwindale