I’ve been interested in Homebrewing for some time now.  Luckily one of my friends Gene is an amazing homebrewer. And how do I know this? Well, he let me sample some of his delicious brew. I was kinda iffy about going out and dropping $150 on a bunch of equipment, so Gene graciously let me brew in his garage, along with our friend, Sean.

I found a recipe online that wouldn’t take much time and emailed Gene to see if it would be ok to do it. He said it looked tasty, and so the horses were out of the gate. I gathered the ingredients for the IPA at Diversions (don’t be fooled, they sell beer making equipment/ingredients). We picked a time & place and hooked it up.

Here’s Gene & I working the wort:

Here’s Gene & super cheese-grin Sean:

Here’s the lil baby all carboyed up with lifting straps on:

It was a great experience & I am very excited to try it again. For this “KPA” (Kiki’s Pale Ale), we did a malt extract brew. Sean has decided to do a brew as well, so we are going to do a full grain brew, which involves you mashing the grain. Essentially it’s making everything from scratch. So I think we’re going to get to that this week. We’re calling that Homebrewing 102. Very exciting. And here’s the progress that Gene posted a few days into the fermentation.

Hope you all enjoyed “Baby’s First Homebrewing.” I know I did. And I can’t wait for the final product. I’ll let you know how it is!

Yes, please! I was really excited about the 7th Annual Empire Asparagus Festival, which was this weekend. A group of us went out to Empire yesterday to enjoy the festivities. I was looking forward to getting a tshirt, but really just didn’t end up getting one because I wasn’t in love with the design of it.

The main draw was the food, which was phenomenal. I had some asparagus crabcakes with remoulade & some deep fried asparagus with horseradish sauce. It was delish! I also had a glass of Tandem Ciders’ cider, but can’t recall the name at the moment. As well as a glass of Right Brain Brewery’s Will Power Pale Ale.

We then walked down to the beach and could see the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes from there. As well as the Empire Lighthouse.

Then we walked back into town, bought some of Deering’s Asparagus Brats and were able to catch the parade, which pretty much consisted of this:

And this:

All in all it was a beautiful. And if you are a foodie, I would totally recommend going next year!