you know that you are becoming a beer nerd when you book a home brewing lesson as your friday night’s activity with your wife.
my love found a company online called dead poets home brewing (döda poeters hembryggeri) that advertised workshops and lessons about all different things related to home brewing. and since we have decided to jump into this little subculture of society, we decided that we should sign up for a course. then we realized that the course was actually in uppsala, where we live!
so, we booked our time and waited (with great anticipation!) a few weeks for the day to roll around. a few days before, we got an email saying that we would be the only two people there. to be honest, i was super excited about that, but i felt bad for the leader to have to just deal with us. however, the teacher/leader said he’d get some beer and some snacks, and we could spilt the cost, and have something to enjoy during the course.
friday evening came, and lina and i grabbed our bikes and rode the 15-20 minutes out to the suburbs to find a man who would lead us down into a cellar to take part in this “secret” home brewing society. reason #326 i love living in sweden. we could never have done this in the states. hehe.
we rode up and met our fearless leader, kåre, who did indeed lead us downstairs into a cellar all set up for brewing beer. but, this was the real shit. they had tons of equipment and everything you needed. it even smelled like a brewery. and we were in heaven.
then the fun began.
we totally thought we’d be learning about the process of brewing, which we did. but, we had no idea that it would be a hands-on learning experience. we were gonna brew beer!
oh yeah. and while we brewed our beer, we were going to taste beer (and eat chips!). 
kåre suggested that we have a saison tasting night… so he poured us a glass and we began! we also decided that we would brew a red saison for our learning project. i can’t even begin to tell you how exciting this was. and i knew that we were going to learn so much!
ok. what follows are a bunch of photos of the process of brewing your own beer at home. but, in no way can i really, really tell you how to brew your own beer yet. i am a mere beginner in this process, just beginning to learn. so, these are some of the highlights of the night, and the process. and just a glimpse of the complicated, chemical, mathematical, and yet still so cool process of brewing your own beer.
first: we decided on what types of malt we would blend + use.
this is a chocolate malt that does not taste like chocolate, but that we decided to include so that we could get a little red color for our beer.
measuring malt. everything must be so freaking specific. and lina and i need lots of new equipment we realize. if we’re gonna create our own brews, which we totally are! 
another tasting!
crushing the blended malt seeds
heating up all of the malt and keeping tabs on the temp.
adding more malt to the water. here comes the beer!
sampling the sugary malt beer, before the hops are added. i actually thought that it tasted like sweet iced tea.
my favorite taste of the evening: an italian saison, of which we added a little bit to our beer in the end of our brewing process. wink. wink.
adding more malt to the wort (the water + malt mixture). and a good book tip.
more beer tasting + a little math lesson on figuring out how to calulate alcohol content. I UNDERSTOOD ALL OF THIS THEN. BUT, NOW, IT’S A BIT MORE CONFUSING. HEHE. IF I REALLY THINK ABOUT IT, I AM SURE THAT I CAN FIGURE IT OUT AGAIN. MAYBE… I THINK I NEED A SECOND LESSON.
hops!
measuring hops to add to the beer
and in they go!
still tasting and learning at the same time: my kind of education
cleaning + sanitizing the buckets for the beer. everything that touches the beer that has been brewed must be completely sterilized and scrubbed down. this is a really big deal, people. otherwise, your beer will end up tasting funky.
that’s our beer coming out!!
cleaning up the place after about 4 hours of an amazing experience!
our beer is all ready to sit + ferment for a few weeks! 
in the beginning of june, we are going back to bottle our beer and split it up. i can never thank kåre enough for all of this enthusiasm, time, effort, and wisdom. he shared so much with us, and we learned so much from him! i cannot wait to try our beer!
and, just so you know, kåre even motivated us to get good at brewing and create our own brew to enter in a contest next winter. challenge: accepted! and game on!
so, all in all, it was a great way to spend a friday night. and now, my love and i are members in this home brewing group/company. how freaking cool is that? i, for one, am totally excited and so ready for two chicks brewing to make some beer!
onwards + upwards! xoxo
I don’t drink beer and am not remotely interested in how it is made – except now, after reading this post, I suddenly want to make beer in my garage, like right now! Haha
Haha! Oh my gosh… that is so fun to hear! I never thought I’d be doing this myself, but now I can’t imagine not doing it! How much fun would it be to share a drink together and just talk and talk and talk?! Hope you’re doing well!