GR Mini Maker Faire

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​This last Saturday and Sunday we had the opportunity to demonstrate at the Grand Rapids Public Museum for the Grand Rapids Mini Maker Faire. The Maker Faire is kind of like a show and tell for different makers of all kinds, be they robotics engineering teams, hot sauce makers, video game designers, cosplayers dressing up as our favorite characters from comics and film, woodworkers building their own house with hand tools and lumber scavenged from their own property, or even explorers braving the watery depths in a hand-built submarine! All of these different exhibits, (and plenty more!) were present and showing the world what they do. For those of us at Rivertown Homebrewers, that means we were brewing beer!

Saturday
While we were setting up early Saturday morning, we noticed an interesting exhibit sharing the covered drop-off area with us. Cop Car Karaoke, presented by the Lighthouse Group and the Grand Rapids Police Department. We were surprised to find out that karaoke is something that people actually do sober. As you can imagine, we were serenaded by the best and worst voices (mostly worst) of Grand Rapids (and even a galaxy far, far away)  over the two days.

We had three brewers each day, all brewing different beers on different systems to help display the varying complexities of brew rigs. Saturday, Joe was brewing the official beer of the Grand Rapids Mini Maker Faire, Michigan Heritage Lager, the ingredients for which were graciously donated by TwoGuys Brewing, who sponsored our club for the event. His enormous all grain rig was a big hit with everyone and certainly turned heads with all its bells and whistles. Drew brewed an extract batch cream ale to showcase the other end of the spectrum of brew equipment. Right in the middle, we had Johnny brewing an all-grain heather tip Belgian blonde ale on his Brewer’s Edge Mash & Boil system, which is basically a commercial EBIAB system.

Olaf couldn’t make the event, as he was hanging out with DDUB in NY for a motorcycle trip. We did have Helga watch over us and she was even helping explain the brewing process to passersby. She had to explain to several people that:

1. ​We don’t work for Elk, even though our logos are similar (we’ve been around long before they were)
   
2. We aren’t selling anything
   
3. We don’t have samples (unfortunately we couldn’t bring the jockey box to share for legal/insurance reasons, boo!)

Unfortunately, Helga doesn’t do as good a job of watching over us as Olaf does. I think she was distracted by explaining the brewing process to everyone, she didn’t do as great a job of keeping us on our toes.

Between trips to the TwoGuys booth (conveniently located only one booth away from us) for their excellent Michigan Heritage Lager, and answering questions from the curious public, we did manage to actually brew some beer. We had bit of a mixup and all needed to chill at the same time, and no one ended up with the gravity they were expecting, but great beers were still brewed (hopefully), just not what was originally intended. Of course, it wouldn’t be a brew day if something didn’t go wrong.

Sunday! SUNDAY!  SUNDAY!

​The morning brought about a new day, a new set of brewers, and new challenges. Once everything was unloaded, the brewers waited so we could stagger the boils and chilling times for optimum engagement. During this time we enjoyed a beer and some chatting with the gents from TwoGuys along with perusing the other booths at the faire. Johnny was off swooning over the cos-players intermittently, while Drew spoke with the people giving various electronics demonstrations.

Then the Brew day began, along with the issues.

As he began sparging, we realized Perry had forgotten to set up his equipment in BeerSmith after reinstalling it. Because of this, the instructions he printed up the night before had wildly inaccurate water volumes, leading to 2.5 gallons of extra wort than predicted, at a super low gravity!

​Mark’s mash continued without a hitch but calculations were not done correctly for his equipment, so he ended up with a volume of less than predicted OG.

The surprise of the day was Jeremy’s 1 gallon batch which was originally thought to be an extract with steeping grains. When he walked over to get his extract to add it was discovered it was an all grain kit and the modifications on the fly had began! Mark, being Johnny-on-the-spot, had cheesecloth he normally used for hop bags, which we were able to re-purpose into several BIAB bags to hold the grain for Jeremy. The hops from the kit of an indeterminate age (it was given to him by a friend, who got it for a Christmas present many moons ago) were immediately thrown out for some of the extra Loral hops provided by TwoGuys for us. To boost the malt flavor a small amount of chocolate malt was added thanks to Johnny’s handy dandy toolbox-o-brewing stuff.  ​

Jeremy was taking it like a champ exclaiming how he will start winning all of the club competitions!

While Jeremey was operating on his Frankenbier, Perry had began his 3 hour boil to reduce his wort to the desired gravity and Mark quietly was rolling through his own brew day.

Slowly, as the day progressed, Mark hit his chill time and made it through chilling easily. Jeremy ran out of propane with 8 minutes to go, luckily there was plenty of tanks from the other guys. All the while, Perry sat there waiting for boil off to continue. Jeremy soon completed his chill time leaving Perry to cool his beer as everyone began to pack up.

As the event wrapped up it was decided by all that this was a worthwhile endeavor and should be repeated next year.

Cheers!
Johnny and Perry