Three first places in beer-making at the Washington State Fair in Puyallup is a pretty good argument for naming Robert Jewell Renton’s amateur brewmeister.

While he doesn’t own a brewery, for eight years Jewell, with the help of yeast, has been turning grains and hops, first on his stovetop and now on professional-grade brewing equipment at home, into beer that wows friends and family and now the judges.

Beer-making had “intrigued” the Boeing engineer who works on the P-8 Poseidon at Boeing Field in Seattle. That intrigue turned into a hobby after a trip to Belgium – which, he said, he said is known as the “Disneyland of the beer world – with his wife Jennifer about 10 years ago.

Friends there offered a Belgian beer, which “opened my eyes to what is out there,” he said.

In the United States, most beer drinkers are used to the light-colored Pilsener beer, he said. One of the beers that earned a first place at September’s state fair, Munich Dunkel, also won Jewell a gold medal in the Cascade Brewers Cup competition that draws home brewers mostly from Washington state.

The Munich Dunkel is a German dark-lager style that showcases Munich malt, a barley, with its full flavor.

For him, one of the “fun things” do to in home brewing is to give his beers a name, Jewell said, often after someone in his life or something that’s going on. Jewell named his Munich Dunkel after his father Stan, who died in January. “Munich Dunkel was a tribute to him,” he said.

He named his Kolsch, a light-colored German ale “done in a lager way,” after the newborn daughter of Jennifer’s cousin. It’s known as June Bug Kolsch.

He hasn’t named a beer after Jennifer yet, but he’s contemplating brewing a “sour beer,” which, he said, is trendy now and they both like it. And, as an homage to their new “brew dog,” a puppy named Pepper, he’s mulling a pepper beer.

Beer has four ingredients: grain, hops, yeast and water.

Simply speaking, the yeast converts the starch in the grain into sugar, which then ferments to become alcohol. The hops provide the bitter beer taste and some other subtleties, depending on the hop, such as a fruitiness or the sometimes nutty flavor of dark beer.

Like many other home brewers, Jewell got his start on the stove top in the kitchen. “You can make some good beer that way,” he said.

But after some spillovers, he decided to get his own beer-making setup.

He was disappointed with his first beer, a Dunkelweizen, a German dark beer.

He realized beer-making wasn’t going to be easy. So he continued to learn more and six months later, he brewed his next batch, a pale ale. If that batch didn’t turn out well, he planned “to bag the whole thing.”

“I was happy with the way it turned out,” he said.

Jewell doesn’t have a favorite beer but he appreciates beers of different styles. For a time “hoppy beers” were the rage, he said.

“It almost became like an arms race right now with hop producers to come out with the new ‘it’ hop,” he said, with a lot of “crazy flavors.”

This year, Jewell has brewed about 40 gallons of beer. He even grows some hops in his backyard. The day of brewing usually lasts about six hours and friends and family occasionally show up.

Someone needs to drink the beer in his kegs, so he has room for his next batch.

But while friends and family are all “very nice,” he said, “if you really want some constructive feedback and improve the beer, I need to start entering some competitions and getting that feedback.”

And that led to the state fair, where his beers were judged against guidelines that focus on aroma, appearance, flavor, mouth feel and overall impression.

He came home with those three first-place rosettes and a cash prize.