I can haz brewed beer?

Last Thursday, my dad and I went to Bev-Art in Beverly (has a nice ring to it) to partake in a beer brewing class. I had gotten a gift certificate for Christmas so I set up the appointment and off we went. When we got there and walked into the store, it smelled amazing. I don't know if many of you have been on a brewery tour, but when you walk into the room with the Mash Tuns (where they make the grain soup (Wort) which is beer before anything else is added) and it smells sweet and bready, well that's what this store smelled like. It was awesome. We checked in and the old man (hippie) told us that our classroom was actually across the street in an old insurance company storefront. "Just look for the door with all the white paper covering it," oookkk. Once across the street we walk into this room with some long tables and round tables and two big turkey fryers in the front. The two teachers were trying to find ways to move power cords to other outlets so that they wouldn't blow fuses, it didn't work.

The head teacher couldn't get his power point up and running because he kept losing power to the front half of the room. Also, those turkey fryers suck so much electricity that the fuse kept getting blown haha. So they kept trying different combinations of turning on and off different lights or only turning one fryer (which as I forgot to mention was being used as a water boiler with malt in them to make a "starter wort" for all of the participants of the class) and letting one stay off for a little bit and then turning one off and starting the other. Did I mention he was doing this all while explaining to the class the process and history of brewing beer? This guy was muli-talented and not easily discouraged that is for sure. During his lecture, he had his assistant pour out samples of different styles of beers to showcase different points in his lecture. I think this helped him keep calm, more alcohol the better.

Now, those who know me, know I love beer. I love talking about it, drinking it, and learning about it so this first part of the class was heaven for me especially because it was hands on and we got to try different beers. We probably started in the wrong order but that's ok, we had a Firestone Walker's "Walker's Reserve Porter" which is roasty, dark and delicious. Second was the Lagunitas "Doppelweizen" which has a lot of bananas and sweetness (not my favorite but I'm a hophead). Next was Firestone Walkers "Double Jack Double IPA", I love this beer and have had it before but I love it's grapfruity, mango smells and citrusy flavors. After that we started brewing but the beer didn't stop flowing haha. We had a Black IPA (Cascadian Dark Ale), Avery's "The Reverend" Belgian Quad and a Sweet Stout. The Black IPA and Sweet Stout were brewed by our teacher and OH. MY. AGAH! They were tasty. Through all these beers we learned that my dad loves sweeter beers, hates IPAs but LOVES Black IPAs haha go figure.

Back to brewing. There were about 12 people in the class and 2 people per beer so 6 beers were being brewed today. All different because when you sign up, they give you a list to choose from in the price range of the class. They also offer Imperial versions (stronger alcohol and flavors) and some specialty styles (Belgian Tripel). The Burnsides choose to brew a brown, but others that were being brewed was a Belgian Wit, a Pale, Irish Stout, and a Red ale. So each group came up to the boiling fryers one at a time to get their "starter wort" and threw in their grain tea bags to sterilize them. The room quickly filled with that sweet bready smells that I love and I was again in Heaven. Then, once you got your "starter wort" you brought your 5 gal. bucket back to your table and put your tea bag back in the bucket and stirred it for a long time to get all the goodness from the grains that you could. My dad took turns and made our brown look like chocolate sauce it was so dark. I mean, we wanted to get our money's worth haha. Then we added one container of hopped malt extract and one of non-hopped extract which saved us a step of adding real hops and probably making it too strong for most people (dad). At that point we added cold water to chill our wort and bring it up to 5 gal. Then we got a test tube of yeast from White Labs (which is a very reputable maker of brewers yeast) and added it to our bucket all while stirring. Our yeast was for an amber but it was the closest they had for brown ales. We stirred that in and hammered on our lids and put on the air lock to let the gas out and the alcohol in MMMMM.

The last order of business was to watch a scene from The Three Stooges about brewing beer. During the clip our teacher poured us all a sample of his chili mead that he had brewed. It was really good, sweet, dry, and SPICY!! Very good. Now dad and I will wait two or three weeks when we will make another appointment to rack our beer (basically siphon it into a glass container to help get rid of sediment and maker the beer "cleaner"). and a week after that, we go back again and bottle our beer. When we took the original gravity of our beer (basically what the original alcohol would be in our beer, we will take another reading when we are about to bottle to see what the actual alcohol reading will be) it came out to be that our beer will probably be about 7% ABV which is in the "Imperial" range, so for the regular price my dad and I were able to make it as strong as someone who paid more money BOOM! So in about 4 weeks, we may have a tasting of Burnsy's Brown for people to try. If you have any questions about beer or the class we took, ask away and I will try to answer as best I can.