Alright, so I'm finally getting around to looking at maybe perhaps setting up a couple of brewing classes. I am hereby officially starting this thread as a way to gauge interest and get a line on what people might like to get out of such a class. My end goal is to get enough people addicted and interested to brewing that we can work on building a 10 gallon, three tier system owned by TCMaker in place that would be usable by the members.

So, what say you all? It would probably be a good time to start the class yet in April before I hit a very busy May and June and before it warms up too much more (important for regulating fermentation temps... we'll get into it).

-The DTs

i'd be in to help out. we've got a few things rolling in april, but may is starting on to gardening season, and presumably the class would take a few weeks.

things that've been discussed for brewing classes:

do several styles with several methods, share the spoils. i.e. 1 stout, 1 ipa, 1 cider, 1 wine, as a full grain, partial kit, etc etc.

have class 1 be brew day, class 2 bottle washing and racking, class 3 bottling

I'd be interested. I've brewed up a few extract kits in the past. I'd really like to get into all-grain, but I don't have the space for it, so I'm up for getting a system put together at the Factory.

Personally, I'd be only interested in starting off doing one brew, and going through technique and theory during the downtime. I don't have experience doing cider or wine, and minimal doing mead. Plus, getting multiple batches would require multiple boilers (which I do not have) discharging a whole lot of steam, necessitating doing all of these outside. Splitting up bottle washing and actual bottling is generally a bad idea as you need to sanitize the bottles before filling them, so in essence you would be washing them twice.

In any case, I'm not seeing a whole lot of interest generated surrounding the topic here on the forum, so I'm going to assume that those that are interested in brewing already have the knowledge.

Would there then be any interest in building a brewing system? I know we have some kegs in the Hack Factory that have already been modded for this purpose. I also have 3-5 kegs that could be used. We'd need some significant welding skill to get this going.

remember that a big portion of most classes attendees are not members. just because there's only a little interest here doesn't mean the course couldn't get 6-10 bodies easily.

i'd totally be up for building a brew sculpture.

the idea on the different things was the wine would be concentrate, and +/- cover the extract brewing process, as would mead, since they're pour glop in hot water, and easy to understand, but that partial grain and full grain can be intimidating.

on bottles, the thought was getting the crud out and labels off. a quick sanitation isn't bad, but it's a pita to do that first scrub on recycled bottles that weren't quite empty. i suppose telling folks they need to bring CLEAN bottles would do it....

I was talking with a guy at work today, he said he knew "probably twenty people" who'd be interested in a basic brewing class...

And I'm for sure up for brew sculpture, both as a way to learn more advanced brewing techniques, and as a way to learn more advanced welding techniques.

I am interested but for mostly doing corny kegs.

I think that for classes/group batches, it would be well served to corny the first few and put them on tap at the HF. Used kegs are only $30ish and I do believe we've got an inside source to get us CO2, right Orion?

i've a few corny kegs, they want cleaning and may need odd connections, we'll want a fridge for em..... one that we can put holes in.

So I spoke w/ Dave (Welding Dave, not Me Dave) last night, and we are discussing getting a brewsculpture started at the HF with the assistance of any other members who may be interested. Next week, I will try to bring in my spare kegs so we can look at getting them converted. If we can talk to the owner of the keggles that are currently at the space, we might be able to use these too. In terms of construction of the frame of the sculpture, there are a couple of ways to go about this, following are a couple links that I've found:

http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtop ... 9&t=101219

Blichmann's Top Tier system looks like a very cool way to setup: http://www.blichmannengineering.com/bre ... dular.html