Brewing Demonstration

I'm not sure what was harder to handle at my recent brewing demonstration. The 102 degree weather or the sight of my hairy white legs.

In July I demonstrated how to make beer at Hometown Ace Hardware. I picked my all time favorite recipe, a clone of Mac-n-Jack's african amber. If you haven't had this beer yet you need to try it. Lots of body, great hop taste and nose that will nock your socks off. My clone is pretty close but I frequently jack up the hops and the alcohol content for a bit more bang!

The demo went well even with a small crowd. One guy who attended spent the entire day with me doing all of the tasks himself and learning as he went. It was his birthday and that was exactly what he wanted to do with his day. I couldn't argue, making beer is fun.

So everyone there learned about sparge water, making a mash, boiling, and finally about fermenting. It is a lot of information to take in but we had roughly five hours to cover it all.

Ace Hardware was demoing their treager grills by bbq'ing some pork. We made a delicious lunch out of it!

If you haven't used a treager yet, I encourage you to try one. They burn wood pellets for indirect heat and they can smoke at 120 degrees making for tasty meat that you cut with a fork.

So, is it easy to stand next to a 50,000 btu burner on a 103 degree day? No it isn't but it was worthwhile to introduce people to the wonderful world of beer.