Rio Rancho home brewer going national

RIO RANCHO, N.M. (KRQE) - What started off as a small homebrewed operation is now going to be distributed across the county, after taking home a national award.

A lot of guys like beer, but Ben Miller took it to a whole new level.

“I realized pretty quickly that there is a lot more to it than what I thought,” Miller said.

Two years ago he had an idea and ran with it.

“I originally envisioned something bizarre in the corner of the room that, hey, it looks terrible now, but someday I will be able to drink it," Miller said.

With a small kit and some advice, Miller made beer.

“I did so many things wrong that first batch, but amazingly I had drinkable beer," he said.

Since then he's fine-tuned his batches and played with ingredients.

With dozens of batches under his belt, Miller entered the Sam Adam's LongShot contest, a contest for home-brewers like him.

“When I entered it I felt like the odds are so stacked against me,” he said.

With more than 1,300 entries, they were, but Ben got a call, he was a finalist.

“It's an American barleywine," he said. "That beer is about 12 percent alcohol and very hoppy as well.”

Weeks later he was showing off his barleywine at the Great American Beer festival in Boston.

He won.

“I can barely imagine it," Miller said. "It's going to be really strange.”

So this April, Sam Adams is putting Miller's barleywine in stores across the country.

The same day Miller won the LongShot contest, he also won a gold medal in another competition where he teamed up with the Chama Brewing Company.

No one had ever won both before, Miller said.