Just Brew It

How do you properly ring in your 30th year of life? By brewing your own beer, of course! We grabbed a gang of friends and reserved a kettle at a local brew-your-own place, and it was such a good time. Really. I don't even like beer and it was fun. Check out the process:

First the Birthday Boy got to choose a recipe from the archives. He landed on a Belgian White Bier, which brings in the flavors of orange and coriander (think Blue Moon if you're a brew-lover). And away we went!

Glucose. Not so appetizing, but necessary.

All kinds of dry flavor ingredients - Others were refrigerated or liquid, like the glucose above.

Measuring and then grinding the grains.

Our friend Adam with one of two drawn ingredient pitchers.

In go the coriander and orange in a separate mesh bag.

Dry ingredients added at specific times.

Once the kettle hit it's alotted time, the pros did something with all these...

...and then the whole shebang went in a keg to ferment. Yum..?

The whole process took 2 hours start to finish, and we go back to bottle and tote it home in two weeks time. There was a pleasant amount of time between each batch of ingredients being dropped into the kettle, allowing our group to chat, taste the brews on tap (including an amazing root beer for me!), and just generally enjoy eachother's company.

And even though I won't be partaking in the results, it was pretty fascinating to see all the ingredients in their various forms knowing what the end result would be. The place we went also offers wine and hard cider brewing, and we had so much fun the chances are good we'll be back! Highly recommend finding something similar in your own neck of the woods next time you want a new, fun experience for you and your pals.


Jump ahead to two weeks later and check out the bottling process here.