Last night a bunch of us from work took a trip down to Deja Brew in Shrewsbury, MA. Deja Brew is one of those joints that provides the recipes, the ingredients, the brewing equipment…all you do is show up and brew. 13 of us pitched in and are splitting up the beer. Because there were so many of us, we were able to make four different batches:
* Red Rock Bock: A deep, red medium bodied Bock with a sweet and hoppy flavor.
* Jealous White: A wonderful example of a Belgian White ale.
* Blueberry Ale: A delicious ale. It smells good, tastes good and finishes clean.
* Express Porter: The addition of crushed espresso beans give this a unique flavor.
I had never brewed beer before, so it was quite an interesting experience. As I regularly tell people, I’m far too busy drinking a variety of beers to brew my own beer. After spending months of drinking 4-5 different beers each week, I’m not sure I could deal with having gallons of one beer to drink.
Thus, I’m only taking home a single mixed-12 pack of 22oz bottles from the batches we are brewing.
Besides the nifty experience of making beer, we also got to drink quite a bit of it! The store had two kegs on tap that we could help ourselves to. In addition, they had a cooler full of bottles to try. Each person/group that brews is kindly asked to leave one bottle per batch behind for the next guy to try. We took advantage of this and opened 3-4 bottles.
The whole process took roughly 2.5 hours. I think we all had a great time and had limited screw-ups. The folks at Deja Brew were nice and did a good job of giving instructions and explaining what was going on at each step of the process.
In two weeks we go back to bottle. Stay tuned for my reviews of the four beers.
The pictures in this post come from my coworker Al. This represents only a small sample of the pictures that were taken at the event. If you want to look at the whole set, check out Al’s album here. Note the particularly hilarious before and after mug-shots of the two guys who ate some hops.
Glad you were able to enjoy the process of brewing. I can take some time and be a little frustrating when something goes wrong, but the end result is well worth it!!
Sweet deal.
I can understand not wanting to get into homebrewing. It definitely takes some time. My weekend is going to have at least 3 hours of bottling and racking invovled with it. However, I really enjoy crafting beer. I think its because I'm a "creative" person. I just like to create and call it my own I suppose, plus it saves a little bit of money…Well, in a few years it will, after I'm done buying accessories and all the fun stuff that comes with brewing. LOL.
Hope your brew turns out yummy.
This kind of gives me an idea. If I sent you some of my homebrew, would you review it on your site? You can be as brutally honest as you like, my feelings won't get hurt.
Later
Mike
Mike's Brew Review
I'd love to review some of your brew. That said, it's illegal for me to recieve beer in Mass.
-Lost
I brew my own at home, though now that I've gone on a diet, cutting out all beer consumption during the week to cut out thousands of extra calories. I still have some beer left over from the last few batches I made last year.
While brewing leaves you with a ton of beer, more than I drink, it's fun to give to people, bring to parties, have at parties, etc. And the most rewarding part of it is that you did it all yourself. I made some interesting beers from recipes I created myself (though they were all tweaked a bit by the experts at my local homebrew shop). The downside, of course, is that the beer won't have the same consistent quality that you get at a brew on premises place.
I'm gonna pick up brewing again in March I think, but I likely won't brew as many batches as I did last year (I was on a schedule to make beer as a wedding gift for someone). I'm thinking about trying some bigger styles that will age well since I likely won't be getting to drinking it as quickly as I went through some of the others I made.
That's a great idea. If you don't drink a lot of beer, just make an awesome aging batch. I like that.
I hear ya as well on the giving away. I find that I make a batch and end up trading half of it away or just giving it to people. Its like when you make an awesome meal and want to share it with everyone that is around.
As for Lost…I'm not making any plans real soon to come out east, but its definitely on my list to make it to D.C. or back to Boston or NY. I'll for sure give you a heads up and I'll just carry some on with me to give ya if we ever meet up.
Mike
Mike's Brew Review
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