By Karen Klinger

On his Web site, celebrity Cambridge brewer Dann Paquette describes the inspiration for his flagship beer Jack D'Or (Jack of Gold, a "wise old grain") as "nature's magician, creating sugars from starch and bringing together all the Pretty Things to produce the beautiful substance we adore: beer!" Setting in motion that kind of alchemy is also a pretty good description of the core mission of the novice brewers at the center of a new documentary titled "BrewHaHa: The Tale of an Ale" by the Project Doc team at CCTV scheduled for a premiere screening March 14 at 7 p.m. in the station's studio in Central Square.

Paquette is one of several notable figures involved in the local craft beer movement featured in the film, but the central story belongs two of the documentary's producers--Rebecca Yadegar and Susan Hunziker--who are also onscreen participants and carry the tale along as they first take part in the annual sampling event for micro brews known as the "Boston Beer Summit," and then decide to take the plunge themselves by making their own homemade batch of beer, a process that involves trial and error, attention to detail and not a small amount of patience.

The voices of experience they hear at the beer summit are not especially encouraging: "Don't have too high expectations" and "Bottles can explode. I've exploded a few." But they do have something of an ace in the hole located right in Cambridge--the Modern Brewer at 2304 Massachusetts Ave., a kind of supermarket for home brewers that caters not just to customers who know what a carboy is and can custom mix their own grains, but also to beginners content to buy ready-made kits (www.modernbrewer.com). Yadegar and Hunziker pick out a kit ("American Amber") and get set to brew.

We learn that the foremost factor in successful beer making is sterilizing everything. Containers, spoons, funnels, you name it, all have got to be carefully and thoroughly sterilized. It's a time-consuming process that tries the first-timers' patience (especially when the directions seem more than a little vague) and it leads to the documentary's first bit of suspense. Was everything done exactly right? Will the beer be flat? Fizzy? Will it even taste like beer (let alone tasty beer)?

Yadegar and Hunziker will have to wait for a few weeks to find out, while the brew ferments. In the meantime, we find out more about their own thoughts on beer making and beer drinking and meet brewers including Paquette and David Rosenbaum, a computer software salesman and amateur beer maker from Andover, who was the surprise winner of the 2009 Sam Adams Patriot Homebrew Contest, besting nearly 200 other competitors from all six New England states.

The two women, it turns out, came into the documentary project with very different ideas about their subject matter. Hunziker frankly likes drinking beer and has always been comfortable socializing over a brew, but Yadegar is decidedly ambivalent. She thinks about the stereotypes in American life associated with beer drinking (keg parties and frat boys come to mind) and even the widely-reported notion that many people voted for George W. Bush over Al Gore because Bush was a guy they'd "rather have a beer with."

Will she change her mind? Well, if anyone can persuade her of the merits of a good brew, it may be Rosenbaum, a man who won the Sam Adams honor only three years after he started brewing in earnest, but clearly has both the talent and enthusiasm of a born beer maker (among other things, he is a member of "Brew Free or Die," a home brew club in New Hampshire). We see him as he demonstrates his process to Yadegar in his kitchen and explains how he chooses his grains.

Rosenbaum won the Sam Adams contest with his Oatmeal Stout, and for his prize, he got to see his creation sold at Gillette Stadium during the New England Patriots' home games last season. Jim Koch, founder and brewer of the Boston Beer Company, which makes Sam Adams, approvingly described his stout this way: "Its full-bodied, roasty character is complemented with a slight sweetness." Following his big win, Rosenbaum created a blog to describe what he did "for those of you who are wondering how I got from David Homebrew to Homebrew Winner." (www.aboutthebeer.blogspot.com)

Paquette's experience is much different. He is a longtime professional beer maker who worked at a number of breweries (including one located in Yorkshire, England, where he met his wife, Martha), before settling in Cambridge and starting his own operation, the Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project. As his Web site (www.prettythingsbeertoday.com) explains, he is a "gypsy brewer" who rents space at the Buzzards Bay Brewery in Westport, a more than 60-mile trek from his home. The documentary follows Hunziker as she travels to the brewery to talk to Paquette about how he goes about his work.

Toward the conclusion of the piece, we see Paquette and others whom Yadegar and Hunziker encountered during their adventure at a "tasting party" where the two women break out their (now bottled) beer and let the crowd decide how it turned out.

And? We won't spoil the ending. Suffice it to say there were no exploding bottles.

As they reflected on their experience, Yadegar told this writer she was still pondering what she calls the "social value" of beer drinking. Hunziker, meanwhile, joked that she was thinking of something less lofty. "My goal," she said, "was just to make a beer that tastes good and doesn't kill anyone."

"BrewHaHa: The Tale of an Ale" will be screened March 14 from 7 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. at Cambridge Community Television, 675 Massachusetts Ave. Admission is free and open to the public (all ages). A reception will follow from 7:45 p.m to 9 p.m. For more information, call 617-304-1592 or e-mail: cctvprojectdocumentary@gmail.com.