My club is planning on holding a Learn to Brew event to raise awareness for our club and homebrewing.
Our plan is to have lots of pots going, and teaching participants the steps to brew beer, then send each of them home with a bucket with wort in it (and airlock) and a packet of yeast for them to pitch.
Has anybody held an event like this before? If so, what format did you use? Did you charge anything?
Cheers,
Bryce Nance
Nevada Homebrew Club
Never done one, but it sounds like it could be really fun. Id just set out 10 burners and pots. Have 5 of them demonstrating all grain and half of the demonstrate extract or something like that. That way if you get a lot of turn out theyll have plenty of stations to spread out on.
The owner of my LHBS and a local brewery are getting together to do an intro to brewing class at what is by far the best craft beer bar around. Everyone gets a growler w/ airlock to bring some home, a t-shirt, “free” drink, and more all for $25.
www.52taps.com is the bar but they don't have the event listed.Oh! Growler with airlock isn’t a bad idea. We have been collecting buckets from local bakeries to send them home with, but that would give us a solid measurement per participant. I’ll have to look into Growlers in the Reno Area. Maybe a sponsorship from one of the local breweries with them.
Bakeries are a great resource, I have a ton of 1-3 gallon experiments going in honey buckets and such from bakeries for free. Way better than the 20$ at the brew store for buckets.
Last weekend, I held a class at my home. We did the Innkeeper extract, all the way to pitching the yeast in the bucket. They’re coming back in 2 weeks for bottling. Everyone pitched in $10 for the cost of the ingredients, and all the bottles will be divied up.
Paul
How did you transport everybody’s beer back to their places? Buckets or growlers?
I kept the bucket at my place. They will come back this Saturday, we will bottle, and they will take the bottles home. They will keep the bottles as part of their “getting started” stuff.
Oh, BTW… every single one of them left my place saying how easy that was, and they can’t wait to start. I gave each of them a NB catalog. So, I think I’ve just given birth to 6 homebrewers. Awesome! And what’s funny, is the wives seemed much more attentive and interested than their hubbies.
Awesome! I’ll definitely suggest the buckets be kept at one place, that isn’t a bad idea. We’re going to look into the local brewery Great Basin to maybe supply us with Growlers as a promotion.
That sounds like a great idea. Maybe I’ll ask our LHBS to host the next one and do something similar. The angels rejoice when a homebrewer is born!
