Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day - Saturday Nov 1, 2008

In typical fashion, I am writing about this event well after the fact. But, it was a fun event, so I wanted to include some information about it on my blog.

The first Saturday every November, the American Homebrewing Association (AHA) organizes an event called "Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day." The purpose of the event is to help spread the word about homebrewing good beer and take the mystery out of it. Homebrewing is something anyone can do and it is not hard, especially once you see it done. I did a Teach a Friend to Homebrew event at my house last year and enjoyed it immensely.(http://wallacesouthbrewnews.blogspot.com/2007/11/teach-friend-to-homebrew-day.html).

This was the first year we had a homebrew store in town to help organize the event. Bob Cuddleback, over at the Fermentation Trap, invited our homebrewing club to come out and brew at the store for the event. He advertised the event to the Charlottesville area and we did the same on our club forums. So, I packed up all my equipment and headed over to the store around noon. I had a good time brewing along side Bob, as well as comparing equipment and stories with him. I also really enjoyed showing those that stopped by my equipment and discussing the brewing process.

Here are some interesting bullet points about the day:

- I brewed a simple all-grain hefeweizen recipe, which took about 6 hours.

- In that time, Bob brewed two malt extract recipes, a hefeweizen and a scottish ale. His comment was that he was glad I showed off my all-grain equipment, but also glad that he ended up with twice as much beer.

- We had between 15 and 20 people stop by and observe the brewing process.

- The most gathered around me as I started to mash out, and promptly had a stuck sparge (where no wort comes out of the mash tun). This is particularly embarrassing, as it implies that I don't really know what I am doing (which I am not always sure that I do). I was able to salvage the beer without too much effort, but still . . . Murphy's law.

- I got to try a couple of people's homemade wine during the day, including a truly excellent cherry port.

- Fellow CAMRA members Christopher and Mike came out and kept me company during the long brew day.

- Everyone seemed to have a great time.