08/27/2026
Member Spotlight: Michael Helzer, VP of CHAOS
If you've taken one of Michael's classes, you already know he brings something a little different to CHAOS: a biochemist's precision, a psychologist's curiosity, and the stamp of a BJCP judge who has tasted his way across four continents.
Michael is a freelance technical statistician by trade, and he studied Biochemistry and Psychology in school. "I use the Psych at work, so brewing gets my Biochem attention," he says. His path into CHAOS has a bit of a legend attached to it too — a chance meeting with a very drunk Jeff Whelpley at NHC in Pittsburgh a few years back — though he'll tell you the short version is simpler: he loves brewing b**r, and that was that.
Like a lot of CHAOS members, Michael is a cook at heart, and he pitches the club to friends the same way every time, talking up "how b**r nerds are sorta inherently flavor nerds, and that's especially true at CHAOS." Outside of brewing, he's into video games, home network engineering, and — weather permitting in the Midwest — camping and hunting. He might be the only person in the club dabbling in cheesemaking, too. "There is a lot of overlap between brewing and cheesemaking," he says, "but I haven't cracked the idea of condensing a 4hr process into a reasonable class yet."
His brewing story really took off in grad school, where — by his own admission — he "spent (probably too much) time reading technical brewing research instead of writing my thesis." That's also when he joined the New York City Homebrewers Guild and got his first real exposure to the B**r Judge Certification Program. He's been a judge since 2019, and the passport stamps show it: he's judged in almost every state ("I'm looking at you, Hawaii"), on four continents, and in a dozen countries. That kind of travel means Michael gets a front-row seat to what home and pro brewers are doing everywhere, and he's folding those lessons back into CHAOS — he's currently developing a brewing-with-fruit class "with a bunch of input from my Brazilian / Colombian brewing friends."
Ask him for a favorite b**r-world moment and he doesn't have to think hard. Recently, he found himself "sitting in a town square in a small town in Mexico, drinking b**r from around South America with John Palmer, while he read me a bunch of dad jokes from the list he keeps on his phone." It's the kind of moment that only makes sense if you've spent years in this world.
When he's not brewing, judging, or teaching, you can sometimes find Michael working at Jimmy's — officially the Woodlawn Tap, though everyone in Hyde Park just calls it Jimmy's, after Jimmy Wilson, who bought the place back in the '40s. By his own description, "it's somewhat divey, the b**r selection won't blow you away, the wifi sucks, it's cash only, and it can get a little packed with students at times," but it's also exactly the kind of place he loves — "an old neighborhood bar with cheap b**r and food and that vibe you get at old bars in Chicago." The real secret is Thursday through Saturday, when a chef comes in and the food specials are, in his words, "always to die for." His invitation stands: "So let's all go on a Thursday?"
