Ability Level - Fundamentals f your proposal is accepted, this will appear as a description of your topic in the conference program. Please write in paragraph form. Limit to 75 words or less.(600 characters)
Follow our journey, from passively watching a brew day to winning steins at the Bluebonnet Brew-Off and a gold medal at the Austin region of the NHC a year and a half later. We share the tips and tricks we learned from others and a few of the comical and frustrating mistakes that we made along the way.
Learning Objectives Please list three (3) key objectives that the audience can expect to learn from this presentation.
* Patience, practice, and attention to detail pays off.
* Temperature control and yeast health pay huge dividends.
* Be daring and experiment; Solicit feedback from other craft beer lovers.
Methodology* Explain how you will conduct the presentation. You are challenged to be informative, creative and interactive. Provide enough detail that reviewers can clearly visualize your presentation. This information will be reviewed by the selection committee, and will not be printed in any conference materials. (1000 characters)
Simple story-telling of how we initially learned by watching others brew beer. How we learned not to judge a beer too soon and the true meaning of the Czech Proverb: “A fine beer may be judged with only one sip, but it's better to be thoroughly sure.”
We brewed with a "hippie" on a stove top. We watch NHC gold medal winners brew on a barrel system. We tortured fellow club members with beer that was too young and a few experiments. We got flavor tips, pointers on handling fermenter blow-off and learned the value of temperature control.
I also learned that it is not wise to dump priming sugar into a carbonated keg to try and sweeten it (make a great stage demo a la science fair volcano). Venting a keg prior to trying to free a stuck liquid post is also a smart idea.
Three yeast after brewing our first all grain batch, we're still on 10-gal orange coolers, but we've added temp controlled freezers and some prestigious hardware.