Activity #2 – Making, Mixing & Brewing Beer

January 16, 2010
Shenandoah Brewing Company
Alexandria, VA

Cost: $50 pp, plus flight of beers and lunch on premises

http://www.shenandoahbrewing.com/

Shenandoah Brewing Company is the DC area's one and only brew-on-premise -- a Do-It-Yourself brewery. And it totally rocks. We definitely kicked things up from the somber-December-volunteering event with this gig. With steam kettles, wort chillers, temperature-controlled fermentation and aging rooms, automatic bottle washers and fillers, Club TAOS was totally set to chef up a mean batch (aka 5 cases) of our very own brew: Nutty TAOS Ale (a light nut brown ale… not too girly, not too lame, and tasty enough to impress our husbands – we hope).

While we did all the brewing, Andrew was there to help. And help, he did. It was 10 AM on a sunny, frigid Saturday and we were sipping samples of beer as soon as we got in the door. Helpful. He helped us with the recipe, ingredients, and guidance. But, he left us quite alone a bit too so we had plenty of guidance and knowledge-sharing from the older gentlemen who have been brewing together for nearly 10 years at Shenandoah. The ingredients we used were the same ingredients used by our commercial brewing operation - fresh grains, pellet hops, and yeast appropriate to the beer style.

Brewing is definitely a social activity. We made a few friends during the 3+ hours it took to brew. They helped us understand that we needed to scrape the bubbles off the sides of the boilers, stir slowly, watch the heat temp and repeat. While this activity was a bit labor intensive, super scientific and a bit stinky at moments, there were several periods of idle time too, making it easy for us to sip, brew, eat, sip, brew, stir, eat… Waiting time can be filled with darts (we did not), foosball (we did not), and checking out the old school beer can collection that lines the bathroom walls (we did – many times). Let’s not forget the time we spent creating our custom labels for our bottles, our little Nutty TAOS Ale.

Enter Chemistry 101: We made alcohol!

Recipe for a successful Nut Brown Ale

Sing along: "Roll out the barrell..." (yes, there is a reason this song exists -- we had to kick our beer down the alley, rolling it to 'stir' it all up!)