Brew in a Day

Hey guys,

I am very happy to announce that the first Brew in a Day session will be running in Christchurch on the weekend of the 13th June.  There has been a lot of work involved in setting it up, writing content for course notes, not to mention building a new nano brewery for the job.

The initial thoughts were to be able to show a total novice or basic home brewer how to up their game and brew with all grain from home, minimal build and requirements with a good understanding of what, how and why.

Hopefully later we'll bring in some guest speakers for more in depth brewing and help bring moderate brewers to an advanced level (me included) but first we'll see how we go with the beginner classes.

I'll be working with Anna and John Mahy from Preserved who I met back in October last year.  Unfortunately due to my work commitments at the time I didn't have the opportunity to join them but since I quit my job, I've got a heap more time to play with!  They're a really neat family and are most certainly living the dream!  Out chasing eels in the local creek by night and smoking salami during the day.  Their youngest also found a good use for Johns Beer and used it to make his own brand of bacon!  To young to drink but never too young for bacon haha.  

One of the things I've enjoyed most about meeting the Mahy's is that we lead very different lives, they lead a highly rural lifestyle, coping with living in a remote area to a total urbanite and city dweller, with all my needs delivered and expected.  I never turn on the tap and find it's dry for instance.  I find we meet at a heartfelt level, enjoying the same basic needs to produce our own things and make it ourselves.  Going back to basics and curing your own meat, making your own beer or cheese.  This seems to transcend the very different lives we lead.  Certainly a very interesting relationship and I'm privileged to be able to have a look at how they live in the rural side.  I think I'll always prefer the cities though, hard to sleep without the flashing light and sounds of the sirens.

They run some awesome courses which I'll be helping run in the North Island.  One of these is Pig in a Day which is a great course on the curing processes for making salami, bacon and prosciutto.  I've run a couple of these courses before for our Auckland brewing club (AGWB) and for the Lions Club guys down in Rotorua which have been really fun, I'm looking forward to running these classes almost as much as Brew in a Day.

Brew in a Day is going to take up a whole day and will cover a full range of ingredients, types of equipment you can use and then make a full beer using a simple home made brewery.  The brewer is a neat little unit that will pop out about 25 litres although I'll only do 15 on the day to speed things up and stay within the time frames and will be followed up with a good feed or cured meats and maybe a refreshing beer to match.  It will be enough for a person to walk away with the confidence to brew quality beer at home and hopefully consider building their own kit.

The brewery itself is a little cracker (if I do say so myself, and yes I am very proud of it).  Small cylindrical 19 litre cooler and 40 litre HLT / BK.  Single unit tank with the sockets and nipples for both.  Electric 2.5kW so will heat quickly and a simple controller.  The thought being it's easy to describe how a gas one works but easier to show how an electric one needs to be set up (as there is a lot more safety requirements).  Also electric means I didn't have to worry about ventilation of gas fumes in an enclosed space.

I'll post some photos of the build and look forward to any feedback.  Especially if you think it might be something that you'd like to happen locally to you, with a community group or as a work function.  Any tips or ideas would be appreciated, it's a new area for me but Anna and John have a wealth of knowledge in the 

It's taken a huge amount of time and resources to put together the course, notes, documents and build the brewery itself (hopefully finished this Thursday...)

Thanks to those that have given support over the past few months and to my new employer (Morphum) for allowing me to share my time between office and teaching.  Big should out to Mike at Brendon Engineering and my mates Mike and Malcolm for all the help in the build itself.

Really looking forward to teaching and looking forward to seeing some of you face to face when I come to Christchurch and other towns.  Dougal and Zane I'd be keen to catch up for a cold one while I'm there if I get a chance!

L.

http://www.preserved.co.nz/