Better Know a Homebrewer: Omar Al-Nidawi

Omar Al-Nidawi is the current Education Co-Chair for the DC Homebrewers Club. He has won over a dozen awards at various national and regional homebrew competitions and is best known for his lower-ABV malty and smoked beers, such as an English mild and a smoked Porter. Omar is also an all-around great dude, malt traditionalist, and beer educator. I had the pleasure of meeting with Al-Nidawi on Indigenous Peoples’ Day while he was brewing up a pale ale recipe. What follows is a transcript of our interview, lightly edited for clarity.

Was there a beer culture where you grew up in Iraq? When did you get into craft beer in general?

When I was in college in Baghdad, it was more of a hard liquor situation. People usually drank imported whiskey, or if they couldn’t afford that, arak or other traditional Middle Eastern liquors. Beer was more of a youth drink. There were about three or four legal breweries when I was in Iraq; they mostly made the standard international lager, although one of the