Here’s a great topic for us to explore, that I have no good answers for - how do we (as homebrewers/clubs) effectivel promote the hobby in a festival scene where we’re not allowed to pour beer. An obvious answer is to brew, but even that might be dodgy for some folks.
How else can you guys think of?
I ask for the very selfish reason of I’ve signed up the falcons to do a booth at the LA Beer Week Festival and I still don’t have a good way to tackle it.
One thought that had occurred to me the obvious - do a grain and hop display.
Here’s another one - get LME, make an LME dipper out of it, let folks taste the LME - off of breadsticks or pretzels or something.
that would be interesting except, at least to me, LME tastes kinda nasty. I don’t know what they do to ovaltine but it is not the same. Grain and hop display is a good idea. Brew day at the festival might be kind of cool if you were already interested in homebrewing, which given that it is a beer festival seems likely. If youhad a couple of systems so you could have a batch is several stages of completion that would be better. then you could pull the cooking show trick, Mash in, turn around and sparge and start the boil. as long as you don’t pitch yeast I don’t see how anyone could have a problem with that.
+1
As long as you don’t put the yeast in it, it’s just soup!
Go with the Denny plan and make hop tea too ;D
You could have a big old yeast starter going at full kreusen or for that matter a carboy of wort bubbling away. That makes a pretty impressive show and tell. Even after 20 years of brewing I can stare at that activity for a long time. It’s like a lava lamp.
I can’t imagine how this would promote brewing… really. Hop tea and extract on a stick? Blech.
I did a demo at the Delaware State Fair, but it was in a demonstration kitchen in my agency’s building (Dept. of Ag). I was pretty set against bringing propane burners near kids and people at a public event. The owner of the LHBS came too and brought lots of display items from the shop. It went well (though one lady though I was lieing when I said we were brewing beer, then she looked at me like we were resurrecting the dead).
OK, extract on a pretzel might be good.
Get lots of homebrewers to donate a beer bottled in a clear bottle (just one clear bottle, breathe easy) and have a display of the range of colors of beer. Put some lights behind it or something.
Brew simultaneous extract and all-grain batches. People love it. Set up a literature table, put out some ingredient samples and an email sign-up sheet, and get some volunteers to take turns standing there to answer questions. Get some free copies of the introductory Zymurgy issue (or find someone with a lenient place of business where you could print them for free from the online .PDF.)
Another great thing one of our members did was to make up a huge score sheet by blowing up different portions of it and taping them together from behind to make one big-ass score sheet (BASS), then covering it with clear laminating plastic. We bring it to every public event we have…put it on an easel, hang it from a hook or rope, mount it to a board, or just duct-tape it to a pole or canopy awning.
We do this every year at the Maryland Microbrewery Festival, where the organizer asks us to have educational demos and informational talks. We cannot pour our beers except when it’s one of our own brewing events at one of our homes.
I wonder if AHA would have extras of old issues of Zymurgy that could be handed out.
There is a free issue of zymurgy that can be passed out, it’s a homebrewing intro.
Kathryn can hook you up with a stack of them for events.
AFAIK, the AHA isn’t printing those any longer. You have to d/l and print them yourself.
She just sent me a stack recently by mail.
So what do I know?? ;D
Just a thought. People’s attention span is pretty short so brewing beer at the event will probably lose most folks. How about a kiosk with a short video that goes through the steps, but skips the “waiting” time. Have it continually repeat. Then have a display of the various ingredients & tools. ie. barley, hops, yeast, mash tun, BK, burner, IC, kegs, bottles (demo bottle capping) etc… Maybe a flow chart of the process on display as well. The guys running the booth can be there to answer questions & get into more detail for those you “hook”. Cheers!!!
Another brain fart: Set up a one keg system to demonstrate how easy it is to configure & use, with water of course…
Actually, I found it worked out well. There is often not much to do leaving plenty of time to talk to people. The process drew in people to talk to. And several homebrewers stuck around all day providing extra people to interact with the public. People love seeing the mash.
I don’t know what you’re tal…