Great Fermentations 20th Anniversary Party!

GF20 Poster

Great Fermentations has been a long time friend of homebrewers in Indianapolis. How long you ask? 20 frickin’ years 🙂 Come celebrate their 20th Anniversary bash this Saturday at GF’s Indianapolis location on 65th St. There will be plenty of beer to go around including contributions from Sun King, Dardevil, Broad Ripple Brewpub, Chilly Water, Flix Brewhouse, Grand Junction, and cider from McClure’s Orchard. Expect great food from Moveable Feast, and an acoustic show by The Indiana Boys. As a special thank you, GF will also  partner with Pack Away Hunger Saturday morning to pack 20,000 lunches for the hungry throughout Central Indiana (click here if you’d like to volunteer) The event is free, and starts at 3pm (volunteering will get you early entry). See you there!

Home Food Preservation – Pickles and Pickling Class

20110821-167153-finished-garlic-dill-pickles

 

Great Fermentations is hosting a Home Food Preservation workshop focusing pickles and pickling this Saturday from 9am-12pm. We are stoked!

In each workshop you will learn the basic principles of food preservation and the process focusing on making pickles.  You will get hands on practice producing product in each workshop, and you get to take home your finished product!

$25 gets you admission to the class, product, jars, and food safe preservation resources! Come join us at GF’s Northside location and maybe you can confront your fear of pickles 😉

Big Brew Day at Great Fermentations Revisted

Big Brew Day at Great Fermentations turned out to be a winner. Rain was expected in the forecast for the event, but after some slight spitting during the morning hours the sun decided to stick around the rest of the day. There were several notable events throughout the day including a brewing equipment “garage sale”, an introductory cheesemaking class, an off flavor seminar, Ask-A-Judge, and a class on making Sour beer. BBQ’n Fools was churning out some pretty fantastic smoked food including some excellent smoked bratwursts. At 1:00pm over 40 attendees participated in a global toast given by Mayor Greg Ballard. GF staff counted 25 batches brewed right in their parking lot, including a batch of mead. BIMP brewed a Wheat Wine and Dunkelweizen.

Although we were brewing somewhat outside of our comfort zones, GF offered burners, propane, filtered/RO water, and even a mobile wort chilling station (two daisy chained counterflow chillers, a couple of pumps, and a cart for transferring your hot wort to the chillers) to ease the stress of brewing away from your home setup. Another perk was that if you forgot any supplies or ingredients (WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!! ;)) all you had to do was head into the shop. We had a great time and wanted to thank Great Fermentations for putting on event, and everyone that hung out and celebrated National Homebrew Day with us. We are definitely looking forward to a bigger and better Big Brew next year!

Big Brew on National Homebrew Day

Big-Brew-13Come celebrate National Homebrew Day with us at Great Fermentations on May 4th. The Big Brew event looks like it is going be a great time. The event will include a Homebrew Garage Sale, Cheesemaking Class, Off Flavor Seminar, Sour Brewing Class, Ask A Judge, and a Worldwide Toast at 1pm. Beer Is My Passion will be there and plan on brewing two all grain batches. You can register for any of the events on GF’s Big Brew Registration Page.

Oak, Bourbon, and Homebrew Volume I

GF Templeton Rye Barrel 01

John Byer of Great Fermentations recently posted a helpful article on the basics of oaking beer. John is currently helping lead GF’s wood aging project, which has already led to a pretty fantastic Templeton Rye Barrel Aged Imperial Porter. This project will definitely be something to watch in the months/years to come. There has even been some speak of lambics and sours in the future. Here’s his post via GF’s blog:

Oak, Bourbon, and Homebrew Volume I.

Stout Bout Homebrew Competition Revisited

Thanks to all that made the Stout Bout Homebrew Competition at Great Fermentations such an awesome time! There were 10 great beers served, several of which beat out Hoppin’ Frog’s BORIS The Crusher Oatmeal Imperial Stout (a 2-time gold medalist at the Great American Beer Festival that I snuck in for kicks) in our blind tasting. Our top three homebrews selected this go-round were Josh and Ashley Jenkins’ Milk Stout, Doug Dixon’s American Stout, and Michael Catlin’s Breakfast Russian Imperial Stout. Great work guys! The entries were pretty spread out (we had entries for 5 of the 6 recognized BJCP stout categories), with two Russian Imperial Stouts (one was aged for 2 years), 3 Oatmeal Stouts, 2 Milk/Sweet Stouts, a Dry Stout, and an American Stout. Thanks again to Great Fermentations for lending us their classroom, and also to cosIT Photography for the outstanding camerawork. More photos can be found in a set on cosIT’s Flicker Photostream. Cheers!

1 Week Until Stout Bout

Great Fermentations on November 17th
From 12-5pm

There are still seats available at our Stout Bout Homebrew Competition at Great Fermentations next week. You can submit your entry using the form below. Cheers!

• All entries need to fall within Category 13 – Stout Ale BJCP Guidelines for style.
• The first 15 people to register their brews using the Homebrew Competition Form are guaranteed a seat in the competition.
• 2 bombers of homebrew are required per entry. 1 bomber goes towards the tasting, and one is set aside for “the pot.” You can also enter four 12oz bottles, but 2 will go to the pot.
• We’ll label your entry at the start of the tasting (I’ll have plenty of sheets available when we start), but please make sure your brew is refrigerated.
• This tasting is blind, and each person who enters also gets to taste/judge each entry. The winner at the end of the tasting gets to take home the pot plus prizes!
What makes this event unique is that each participant is also a judge! All beers will be served randomly, and rated on a scale of 1-10. The entry with the highest average score receives a gift card to Great Fermentations, a special blog post on BIMP, and takes home one of every homebrew entered.

Erik Howell – Oatmeal Stout
Jenn Myers – S’more Sweet Stout
Hunter White – Udder Cream Russian Imperial Stout
Richard Meyer – Substitution Dry Stout
Mike Catlin – Breakfast Stout Russian Imperial Stout
Doug Dixon – American ExPat Grab Bag American Stout
Justin Kloer – Brown Sugar Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

[contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Beer Name’ type=’text’/][contact-field label=’Beer Style’ type=’select’ required=’1′ options=’13A. Dry Stout,13B. Sweet Stout,13C. Oatmeal Stout,13D. Foreign Export Stout,13E. American Stout,13F. Russian Imperial Stout’/][/contact-form]

Sour Beer Presentation at Great Fermentations

Caleb Staton of Upland Brewing Company will be doing a presentation on Sour Ales at Great Fementations on November 3rd. As many of you may have already heard, Upland took home a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival this year for their Sour Reserve entry into the Belgian Style Lambic or Sour Ale category. This is going to be such a great event! There are a limited amount of seats available (30), so make sure to reserve your spot here ASAP. I’ll see you there! Here’s a great interview with Caleb from Embrace the Funk.com.

Stout Bout Homebrew Competition

Great Fermentations on November 17th
From 12-5pm

• All entries need to fall within Category 13 – Stout Ale BJCP Guidelines for style.
• The first 15 people to register their brews using the Homebrew Competition Form are guaranteed a seat in the competition.
• 2 bombers of homebrew are required per entry. 1 bomber goes towards the tasting, and one is set aside for “the pot.” You can also enter four 12oz bottles, but 2 will go to the pot.
• We’ll label your entry at the start of the tasting (I’ll have plenty of sheets available when we start), but please make sure your brew is refrigerated.
• This tasting is blind, and each person who enters also gets to taste/judge each entry. The winner at the end of the tasting gets to take home the pot plus prizes!
What makes this event unique is that each participant is also a judge! All beers will be served randomly, and rated on a scale of 1-10. The entry with the highest average score receives a gift card to Great Fermentations, a special blog post on BIMP, and takes home one of every homebrew entered.

Erik Howell – Oatmeal Stout
Jenn Myers – S’more Sweet Stout
Hunter White – Udder Cream Russian Imperial Stout
Richard Meyer – Substitution Dry Stout
Mike Catlin – Breakfast Stout Russian Imperial Stout
Doug Dixon – American ExPat Grab Bag American Stout
Justin Kloer – Brown Sugar Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

[contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Beer Name’ type=’text’/][contact-field label=’Beer Style’ type=’select’ required=’1′ options=’13A. Dry Stout,13B. Sweet Stout,13C. Oatmeal Stout,13D. Foreign Export Stout,13E. American Stout,13F. Russian Imperial Stout’/][/contact-form]