Homebrewing with Brewers

We recently had an amazing Saturday. We signed up for a homebrew demo at Eagle Rock Brewery. There were about 15 people there and two of the brewers, Lee and Andrew. We had a blast!

Dan already has brewed a handful of times at our various homes, but was never satisfied with his beers. I enjoyed them much more than he did. He also didn't like our old kitchen, so he only brewed their once. I thought this would be a great opportunity for him to learn somethings that would give him the kick he needs to get back to brewing.

The setup at the brewery is nice. They have a taproom out front and a big window looking into the brewery, which is pretty small. It was neat getting to go back there and feeling right at home. Some fun bit of info, most of their equipment turns out to be dairy machines converted to work with brewing. Pretty awesome. They actually got most of their equipment from AleSmith when they were upgrading.

Their homebrew setup was of course over the top awesome. Just watching Lee in action over it made Dan turn to me and tell me he wants a house with a yard. Ha! I love it. It had just about everything you could want/need right there at your fingertips. He even had tinkered around with it to add some pieces to make the process smoother and more laid back. It was almost a self-sufficient system. No real sticky mess all over. Super jelly. Our kitchen floor is usually glue after we brew.

They let us all be very hands on, everyone got a chance to try mashing the grains, we voted on which hops to use, and I even got to throw in the first portion of hops! Dan was suckered into grinding the grains, but he also got to add them to the mash which was cool.

It was a fun experience and I loved the way they did it. Lee wanted to try something new when chilling the wort and water ended up spraying all over. It took quite a bit of tinkering to get it to 'mostly' not leak. Even though we were just watching this process it was great. I didn't feel like this was a well rehearsed, boring for them, process that they do just to get people into their brewery. It was more like a learning experience for everyone and a chance to hang out with like-minded people, and there was a lot of hanging out to be done. If you've ever homebrewed you know that its mostly cleaning and waiting, which was fun. One guy even brought his own homebrew for everyone to taste. Of course we chatted about beer, and of course we drank plenty of beer as well.

They ordered lunch and were very accommodating to Dan and me. They got us a small cheeseless pizza that we devoured. It was super noms and Andrew was very nice about the whole thing. He even asked if gluten was okay, ha.

We gave them our email addresses, and when the beer is done they are going to let us know so we can come in and taste it. At the end we also put in a raffle to get some yeast Lee harvested from one of their beers, and I won a bag! Now Dan has to brew. 0:]

After everything settled down, we made our way to Golden Road Brewery for dinner. Dan got the quinoa burger and I got the noodle salad, both were amazing! I love this place because half the menu is vegan. Oh! And for dessert we got the oreo cheesecake which was devoured and we seriously contemplated getting a second one. I really love that place.

We got a growler at Golden Road, because for the second time we forgot our Eagle Rock one. Doh!

We decided on our way home to stop in Venice to get some hookah tobacco and coals. We had perfect timing because we were able to watch the sun just as it was setting over the water. It was beautiful. We got our hookah smoke (watermelon!) and headed home. Dan played some Skyrim and I watched Star Trek First Contact (best movie ever!) smoked a touch of hookah and called it a night.

I thought I loved Eagle Rock, but now I love Eagle Rock. :]

Quite the adventure! Sometimes I do love L.A.