Home Brewing in Battle Ground, WA!
I have been a fan of micro brews ever since I moved to the Northwest about 9 years ago. Before I moved out to Washington state I had an experience with a home brew in North Carolina when a friend attempted his first brew, and it was terrible. About two years ago I brewed beer with a friend in Hillsboro, Oregon at his house and it was great. He made a Corona clone and it came out excellent. He had setup a pressurized CO2 system in a fridge with a pony keg. It was such a fun experience with a great result that I decided I wanted to brew my own beer sometime.
Turns out that our neighbor here in Battle Ground is a chemist and has been brewing beer for 10 years. I went over to their place for a brew day a while back and he made a great beer. I also had more of his home brews at their yearly Oktoberfest and they were equally great.
This past Christmas we decided to split a batch. We brewed a batch of Nut Brown Ale at our place. It was a rainy day but we were able to have a pretty good time under one of our covered patios. We had one little issue when we didn’t have enough light malt so we had to add some dark. We bottled the beer around the 21st of December. Of course we tried some when we were racking it and, although it wasn’t carbonated yet, it was really good.
I gave my mom and sister a 6 pack of our home brewed nut brown ale and it was a big hit. The taste, color, and quality came out amazing. I made a label to put on the beer (see the image that starts this post) and called it Sunshine Brewing.
Overall the process was a ton of fun and I can see why people get so into the process. I am looking forward to when we brew our next batch. Stay tuned to see what we come up with.
