Help Me Make a Better Brew Day

So the AHA’s Learn to Homebrew Day is right around the corner - what do you do to make a day of 2 hours worth of work crammed into 8 hours more fun for a novice brewer?

Washers and corn hole. Smoke meats.

Tell them how cheap ‘n’ easy it is.

And maybe make two batches instead of just one.  Maybe one extract and one all-grain, or BIAB vs. cooler mashing, so they can see the differences.

Enjoy homebrewed beverage(s).

Yep, pretty much the same here.

A well brewed home brew beer is the picture on the puzzle box

Strippers!

You can always give the summary of beer styles by country: Germans are fussy, English are not, Belgians don’t care about anyone’s rules, and Americans just want more of everything.

If that doesn’t fill the time, corn hole. Or kubb. Or beersbee?

An alternative is putting"How beer saved the world" or “Drunk history” on in the background.

I think next year I’m going to try and get the club to do some light beer education, and get 3-4 people to pick a style or topic to talk about. A little late for this year.

English are not fussy??? I don’t know about that.

So concise and true!

Football!  My man cave, equipped with a big screen TV, is in the basement adjacent to my brew room, and I brew outside of that area.  When there is some down time (mashing, sparging, boiling), pour a brew from the kegerator and check out the scores.  That, and the ceramic grill ready for sausages at all times, keeps everyone interested.

Six hours making cheap crafts you can sell on etsy for a large markup.

Bottle cap earrings are so fetch.

I just taught a couple groups of friends how to brew from zero to AG, and I agree on the two-batch method.  Everything was all set up, and they closely observed batch #1 while I explained what we were doing.  On the second batch, they pretty much took over and went through the steps with me guiding as needed.  It was cool, because there was an immediate chance to apply the new knowledge.  We met ahead of time and I showed them how I use my brewing software, Bru’nWater, and brewday spreadsheet to plan out a batch.  It was a good move to meet ahead of time over beer samples while working through the different calculations.

We also worked out a cost analysis for ingredients and calculated a per-beer cost, which is always eye-opening in a happy way.  Both groups are eager to brew again, and we’ll do a follow-up brew in the near future.

I just picked up a Grainfather and have been enjoying learning that new system.  I thought maybe it would be possible to have the new brewers working through a batch while I ran a batch if the GF.  But, I found that in Minnesota, the GF is an inside toy, so that won’t work so great.

Overall, I think it was cool to plan this out as more of a larger learning experience than just a single brewday.  The recipe design work ahead of time was really productive because the brewday had some context.  And the immediate practice in batch 2 locked in the skills and created the confidence and desire to continue in the hobby.

This is such an awesome way to teach someone. I have “taught” 2 or 3 people in the last 4+ years, but all the design and prep work was done before they were even around. It is a big piece of the project and I will work that in somehow the next time I have a student with me

Clean (I usually have my carboy/keg cleaning pipeline going), watch sports, smoke food, drink homebrew.

I always explain the software and design process, over a couple beers, during the downtime.

And here’s what we made of your feedback, my friends.

https://www.experimentalbrew.com/podcast/brew-files-episode-21-its-homebrew-party

A couple of posts deleted - not everything needs to devolve. please and thank you.

Sorry for offending.  I was making a joke.

I really hope everybody can please lighten up. It’s only beer.
RDWHAHB

Steve