My largest tasting audience occurred last Thursday, with roughly 200 people sampling our current three beers (you can find them here), learning about the Far Yeast, and grabbing some sweet stickers.
HOLY CRAP. For a little homebrewer like me, that's a lot of people!
As a side note --I gave this beer away for free.
Shine is perhaps the greatest adult show-and-tell you will find in San Francisco. After completing the Passion Co. program, I was asked, along with the 16 other participants, to showcase the work completed in the past five weeks.
When I originally set out to create these beers, I assumed I would only be sampling them with the 16 other participants in the class. There was no way I would make enough beer to have 200 thirsty guests sample all three. But you would be amazed how far three, 12-packs will go when you ration tastings our just right.
Nuggets from Shine:
- People LOVED the logo. Although I drew it out by hand, my buddy Julia made it come to fruition by digitizing the drawing and logo and printing out labels and stickers. If you liked the work she did for the logo (which I know everyone did), then please check out her work.
- The Thori Kaffee Porter was loved by most, although some folks wished for less of a bite at the end
- The Far Yeast is now listed in Untappd under the homebrewers section (thank you kind gentleman for submitting all that info on my behalf!!)
- Someone asked if I could brew beer for her upcoming wedding (probably not legal by any means, but how cool would that be?)
- Many people asked if I was selling the beer (sadly, no, more on that in a future blog post)
- Who knew the Layla and Majnun Rose Water Ale would have been such a hit?
Perhaps the greatest thing about Shine was having other homebrewers try my beer... and LIKE it. As a female homebrewer, I've succumbed to the thinking that most men do the brewing, own the breweries, drink the beer, judge the beer... Historically, brewing was a woman's job (yes, you read that correctly), and was akin to doing the other house chores such as baking bread or doing laundry. Some reports may even suggest that women are better than men at tasting the beer (maybe I should be a beer taster instead of an engineer....).
As I've embarked upon this project, I've made a conscious effort to not be tied down by the thinking of men being better at beer. Sure, West Coast drinkers may prefer IPAs (don't come to this site expecting an IPA; gunna just say that straight off the bat) but that doesn't mean that my beer is any lesser than any male homebrewer's beer. I practice cleanliness and sanitation, allow creativity to control my ideas, and experiment and repeat recipes to get it just right.
Again, thank you to all who came to Shine.
