I was reading a post that Adam at Beer Bits 2 had written about brewing during this economic volcanic meltdown of biblical proportions. It got me to thinking…should I be thinking of ways of cutting back my homebrewing spending?
Then, we received a comment today on a post that was happy we weren’t writing about the economy or the election.
If people are here to escape, I can morph this post into something less doom and gloom and more happy go lucky. No problem.
The Brew Dudes have many friends…most of them are dudes…just not brew dudes.
Homebrewing was/is Mike’s thing. I thought it was cool and I took the plunge too. No other dude has. Not sure why. Probably a number of reasons….but all the dudes like homebrewing…they just don’t know how to start.
My idea to help open the gate into the world of homebrewing was to plan a homebrew day for some non-brew dudes. Nothing fancy, just dudes around the brewpot.
The one thing I would ask of my invitees would be to pay for a portion of the ingredients. That way, I could save money and get more people into homebrewing.
Whatever we brewed, they could take home whatever portion they paid. In the past, they would probably get some portion of the brew…so now they can work for it a little bit.
Not a revolutionary idea, more of a “working within the framework of my friendships” idea. Plus, it’s a good time no matter what the news is telling you.
Adam @ Beer Bits 2
Hey there! What a great idea. Not just avoiding all that mainstream bad news, but, teaching others to brew. Did you ever hear about teach a friend to brew day? That’s happening on Nov 1st.
http://www.beertown.org/events/teach/
I’ve known about it for years, but, never really did anything. This year our neighborhood block party is that day so I’m going to demonstrate 🙂
Good luck!
Mark
I’ll be running my 3rd Teach a Friend to Homebrew gathering this year. I’ve actually had three people start homebrewing because of these events. It does work. It gets people interested in the hobby, and they walk away with a warm glow (partially from all the homebrew they ingest:), knowing that they can do the process and make quality ales.
Umberto
Sounds like a good idea.. I have tried the same and figured out that you should be very very careful if you want your friends to actually help because they never know what they are doing and in my experience they ask you dumb questions in crytical moments… My advice is to lend them a homebrewing book and make sure they read it before the brewing session…