Teaching a Homebrew Class (community ed)

I have this interview coming up to pitch a homebrewing class to a director of adult/community education locally. The interest level is pretty high and I'm doing my best to illustrate how popular homebrewing is really becoming (and has become) by pulling some stats together like AHA membership, etc.

My goal is to teach a really high level class to get people who have no clue to the point where they can brew extract + steep kits with more comfort than most of us did on the first batch. I try to think back to my first batch and pick up on all those nuances that I could have improved upon if I only knew what I know now. The great thing about being so involved with folks around here is that it will enable me to not only present "MY" way of doing things but inform the class what other methods are used because the last thing I want to do is close off the progression of the hobby for them.

So, I'd like to get your feedback on the structure of the class. Try thinking back to your first batch and let me know if you think one aspect is missing or present but doesn't belong.

Day 1 -
Brief history of beer/ evolution of the modern brew (real readers digest level.)
Legality issues
Survey of class's favorite beers (with disclaimer that it is unlikely they will duplicate BMC after this class unless they really really really want to- wah wah wah)
Overview of the process/equipment/basic ingredients - what malting does to barley, how extracts really changed the accessibility of the hobby, hop types/bittering vs aroma, etc.

Day 2 -
Brew a batch. Sticking to grain steep, partial boil DME. I'll use a chiller to illustrate its use but explain that an ice batch will work as long as you stick with partial boils. I'm still a firm believer in rehydrating dry yeast (and using dry yeast in the while you're first learning to avoid making starters).

Day 3
(2 weeks later) bottling session. Batch size will ensure every student gets at least a 6-pack out of the deal.

If you attended this class yourself back in the day, would you appreciate being offered a beginner's equipment setup at the end of the class? I'm thinking of picking up at least 3 kits to make it easy on people who want to jump right in on their own.

Would you rather watch a batch or participate hands on?

Any other feedback would be appreciated.

Hands on, by all means. I'm a technical instructor and learning by doing works great when teaching adults almost anything.

how long is each session? What kind of facilities will you have? What is your max class size? There are a bunch of other variables, but this has potential to be very good thread.

EdWort said:

Hands on, by all means. I'm a technical instructor and learning by doing works great when teaching adults almost anything.

how long is each session? What kind of facilities will you have? What is your max class size? There are a bunch of other variables, but this has potential to be very good thread.

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I agree with you. I do training as a part of my day job as well which is why I considered myself qualified to do this at all ;-)

I'm shooting for 2 hours for each of the 3 days. Certainly the brew day would need that much at minimum. I'll be using a hop schedule that will compensate for a 30-45 minute boil just to save time. If I have to run two 5 gallon batches based on class size, I'll stagger by 20 minutes or so in order to facilitate the critical steps for each group.

I'm shooting for a max size of 16 students. That's 10 gallons / 16 = 6 12oz bottles.

I believe the facility will be a firehouse kitchen. They use a church for other culinary classes but they think beer is not cool there.

I would try to get your LHBS involved. You could maybe get 10% off first kit. Class ounds like alot of fun.

That's the thing though, there are no home brew shops within a 40 miles radius of this area. Sounds like a business op huh?

Bobby_M said:

Day 1 -
Brief history of beer/ evolution of the modern brew (real readers digest level.)
Legality issues
Survey of class's favorite beers (with disclaimer that it is unlikely they will duplicate BMC after this class unless they really really really want to- wah wah wah)

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Sounds like a great undertaking Bobby.

To drive home the point about the changing beer-world, point out:
The difference in what's sold down the beer aisle at the store compared to 10 years ago.
AB's latest remodel of Michelob back to an all-malt beer to market to a more demanding audience.
Here is a great article about the influence that the homebrewer is having on larget breweries. click here

Bobby_M said:

I believe the facility will be a firehouse kitchen. They use a church for other culinary classes but they think beer is not cool there.

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A firehouse kitchen sounds cool, otherwise a Catholic church would be your best bet. A few bucks in the collection plate and tell the Father you'll leave him a case of good brew and I'd bet you'll be good to go.

My only advice would be to try to spice up day one a little...two hours of someone talking about beer sounds awesome to us, but might put off some people who are on the fence. That's especially true if it's too technical. Keep it nice and simple, let there be plenty of hands-on stuff in the beginning. In fact, I'd sorta recommend doing it in one day--people will probably really just want to brew on the first day, plus you can give the lecture part while you wait for boils and stuff.

If you have a few different brews bottled you could let them do some tasting (not enough to put them over the limit obviously!!). You could talk them through the mouthfeel, the malt, the hops the finish the head, what parts of the tounge sense what etc, like wine tasting appreciation only for beer.
If you can get them to taste the differences then that would certainly help them to understand the importance of brewing to your own tastes and not what BMC serve up.
Good luck with it.

Bring a couple of primaries. Rack to secondary as you talk to them on day one. Also include the discussion of sanitation on day one. Then you have a practical demonstration there.

Also get some carb tabs. Siphon one bottle per student straight from primary. By the time they return to bottle their own beer, they will be able to RDWHAHB.

It'll be crappy beer, but at least it'll be something to drink. It'll also make things a little more hands on...

I really wish this was a viable option locally when I got started. Not that it's hard to do in practice, but there is quite a mental hump to get over. "Can I really do this?" "If it was easy, everyone would do it."

I do agree that day one is a little dry. What I hope to do though is first get them to hear about the process and use the brew day as the hands on reinforcement.
Here are some things I might do to make it more interesting.

1. As mentioned, tasting. I don't know if the director would be cool with this. I guess it depends on the venue. The only other risk is that they don't like my brews. They are far from BMC transition beers.

2. I plan to bring little baggies of ingredients so they can see, touch, and feel them to get familiar. I'll have some whole grain, some crushed, pellet and leaf hops, DME.

I would have done it all in a single day but that leaves out the bottling part. I think it would be strange to have one 3 hour session and followup with a shorter one hour bottling session. If you think about most classes that have a hands on practical portion, there's always a boring lecture preceeding it. These are great ideas guys, thanks.

If you do a one-hour boil with hops additions at 60, 15, and 2 minutes (or something like that), then there is literally nothing to do but watch for boilovers for 45 minutes.

Seems like you could do a lot of the talky part then.

I'd probably go for the three hour session (talk + brew), then maybe a 1-2 hour followup session (talk + bottle + taste?).

Do some of the talking before brewing, some during.

Think thats a good idea about bringing the grain etc in.
You know the course is crying out for a follow up advanced course using all grain
People love to feel they are progressing, i'd bet most if not all of the class would sign on again for an AG course, i know i would!!

You could demonstrate and explain the mashing process and talk about the diferent beer styles and how using AG you have almost total control of the process allowing you to replicate these styles.

I'm going to think a little more about working the factual lecture into the brew day. I think pulling this off would have a lot to do with class size. If I have to run two batches at the same (slightly offset) time, getting everyone's attention, while answering questions, could get confusing. I look at down time during boils as an opportunity to answer individual questions, etc because I suspect a few people would try to corner me after the session otherwise. Remember, I'm going to cut down the boil time to about 35-45 minutes and compensate with a little more hops.

I had already thought about offering an intermediate followup that goes into basic PM and all grain but I really don't feel comfortable acting as an authority on it yet. I'm still learning myself. I've made a couple great all grain batches, but I'm not instructor material yet.

delboy said:

Think thats a good idea about bringing the grain etc in.
You know the course is crying out for a follow up advanced course using all grain
People love to feel they are progressing, i'd bet most if not all of the class would sign on again for an AG course, i know i would!!

You could demonstrate and explain the mashing process and talk about the diferent beer styles and how using AG you have almost total control of the process allowing you to replicate these styles.

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I agree, but i understand that courses need to develop too. You could start this off, and ask the participants if they would be interested in a more advanced course utilizing all-grain, delving deeper into some different beer styles, and the like.

Get a couple classes under your belt before building a whole curriculum. That will do a couple things for you. First you will be able to build a little funds to get the whole program together. If you don't already have all-gran equipment that can fund the first setup. If you already have one setup, you could use those funds to purchase a second or larger system for the larger batches. Or even different types of equipment so you can demostrate fly sparging, batch sparging, decoction mashes?

You can always take the first couple of student's numbers, e-mail addresses or even (gasp) snail mail and send them a notice of the new class release dates and what not.

I totally agree about trying to get some vendors on-board. Since you don't really have any LHBS see if you could get some 10% discount cards from Northern Brewer, B3, or Austin homebrew? See if they would donate some supplies (a couple ounces of hops or pound of DME for your 'ingredient introduction'?) Are you doing this for a school or nonprofit organization? Companies are dying each year to give money and products to these organizations, just help supply them with the proper forms so they can write off the donations! Oh yeah, and ask early each year, don't wait or they might have already reached their limit on donations (speaking from experience.)

I would replace the history lecture with an ingredients lecture. Chewing grain and smoking... smelling hops is much more fun to talk to your friends about after the class than the history of beer. Some base malt and a crystal and black patent would illustate the difference in baley kilning. Cascade and Saaz could show some different hops (do a triangle test to see if they can spot the odd one out as an activity during the boil).

Catfish said:

I would replace the history lecture with an ingredients lecture. Chewing grain and smoking... smelling hops is much more fun to talk to your friends about after the class than the history of beer. Some base malt and a crystal and black patent would illustate the difference in baley kilning. Cascade and Saaz could show some different hops (do a triangle test to see if they can spot the odd one out as an activity during the boil).

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ditto on the ingredients. Maybe not replace it, but i wouldn't start off with too much history. like you said very readers digest.

"Been going on for thousands of years. Egyptians did it. Gruit to hops. Reinheitsgebot. Indian trade routes. Pre prohibition, prohibition, post prohibition. Now let's touch some hops."

You can have the history lesson integrated with the ingredient introductions (e.g. show them some gruit so they can see and smell what was used before hops)

Maybe you can add a small section to the class that shows different types of food pairings with beer. I know it's kinda a personal taste thing but it would encourage people to try different types of brew, i.e. stout and dark chocolate pieces.

Bobby_M said:

That's the thing though, there are no home brew shops within a 40 miles radius of this area. Sounds like a business op huh?

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How about a tie-in with either the nearest one or one of the more well-known online stores? It would be worth a try.

I like this idea a lot! The one thing I would really stress is the difference between ales and lagers. A lot of newbies want to brew a familiar BMC-type of 'clone' beer and then find out - usually after they have all the ingredients together and are ready to brew - that they are really brewing an ale, not a lager. How many times have we seen posts like that here on HBT?! Someone asks, "How does this look for a Bud clone?", only to see they are using an ale yeast. It doesn't have to be an eleborate dissertation, just a point during your opening beer overview.

Just my 2 cents.

I don't know much about pairings honestly. I do know however, not to mix saurkraut pierogi with IPA. Holy crap, it's disgusting.

I agree. The difference between ale/lager is extremely relevant and I was planning to use that as an introduction to the talk about yeast. This would probably happen right after I mention how americans got hooked on lagers after the huge immigration of Germans. I actually have an oktoberfest that I split and fermented as half ale, half lager. I need to do some more tasting to see if it would be an obvious example of the differences that I could let them taste.

drouillp said:

ditto on the ingredients. Maybe not replace it, but i wouldn't start off with too much history. like you said very readers digest.

"Been going on for thousands of years. Egyptians did it. Gruit to hops. Reinheitsgebot. Indian trade routes. Pre prohibition, prohibition, post prohibition. Now let's touch some hops."

You can have the history lesson integrated with the ingredient introductions (e.g. show them some gruit so they can see and smell what was used before hops)

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You could print out the history and pass it out as homework for the next class. Ask them to read it and be prepared to discuss it (over some brews perhaps at a local brew pub).

EdWort said:

You could print out the history and pass it out as homework for the next class. Ask them to read it and be prepared to discuss it (over some brews perhaps at a local brew pub).

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Or you could just have edwort's army of german gnomes plant the information into their brains for you :cross:

I'm sure he has some gnomes to spare...

"Willkommen class, whose ready for some onion cake and apfelwein? Ja! Ja!" :rockin:

One thing, I've noticed that some people tend to present some things as fact, or as the only proper way to do something, when it's really just the way they prefer to do it or because they don't fully understand other ways of doing things.

You could maybe explain why you prefer doing diffrent steps a particular way.

And good luck.

If you don't actually brew the first day, give the class a list of maybe 3-5 different commercial beers (Killians Red, New Castle, anything w/ flavor), and let them choose one or two batches for the next brewing class. That way, you'll know what style will be generally accepted by the class, and won't try to fit a double IPA to a group of Irish Red drinkers. Since you're probably going to do two batches, you could even do two different types, and give 3 bottles of each at the end.

neckbone said:

If you don't actually brew the first day, give the class a list of maybe 3-5 different commercial beers (Killians Red, New Castle, anything w/ flavor), and let them choose one or two batches for the next brewing class. That way, you'll know what style will be generally accepted by the class, and won't try to fit a double IPA to a group of Irish Red drinkers. Since you're probably going to do two batches, you could even do two different types, and give 3 bottles of each at the end.

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Right on. It's impossible to estimate what kind of beer drinkers I'll encounter. They might surprise me and already be into craft brews. I might end up with 12 BMC drinkers. I plan to briefly touch on the high level style catagories and give them say 4-5 choices on what we brew (vote). If they're all BMC, I'll probably make the executive decision to brew something blonde or an American wheat. I like the idea of making it two different kinds. Maybe I'll do a super simple wheat with no steeping grains and then do a light APA (on the IBU low end) and steep a small amount of crystal 10 and melanoiden. Eh, lots of time to think about that. I still have to get past the interview and convince the director I know what I'm doing.

It's official. My homebrewing class is making the summer class brochure which goes out to 150,000 homes. Sweet. We settled on three two-hour sessions.

I like the basic gameplan you presented in the original post.

What I would do on the third day, though, is spend about half the glass bottling, and the other half give them a flavor of some more advanced concepts. Bring in your mash tun and spend a little bit of time talking about how that process works, in a real basic form. Maybe a couple of minutes on kegging. Stuff like that, stuff to pique their interest into exporing the hobby further.

I think that if I did this class I'd set up the first days lecture to both give a little background on the diversity of beer as it exists now, maybe taste a few micros if that is permissible. And then go through the whole brewing process showing the importance of sanitation etc. While I was doing the explanations of the basic process I'd just brew an all extract beer, or may add some pre-steeped specialty grain "tea" so all you are doing is boiling and hopping. At the end of the demo they will have seen a whole batch of beer brewed and see just how easy it is. Let them know that next class you'll all brew a batch together while you continue the lecturing. Then you can also bring sample bottles of the extract batch that they can take home and condition for the third class. Then, bottle the third class together and you will probably have time to talk about kegging and some of the fun brewing toys and of course prepping them for the upcoming AG class.

I learned alot being a new brewer from your youtube videos, I think it would of been nice to see the aeration test you did before my first batch. possibly work aeration in when you are talking about the yeasts and bring a TV or laptop to play the video or some of the other good ones you made, possibly one for a over view of all grain brewing?
make sure you get a chance to explain the hydrometer and all the cool gadgets that you prefer for brewing so they don't think it's a big chore to brew (like auto-siphon ect..) . I would go if it were close by me, I have brewed 4 extract kits so far and still striving for more information.
The Midwest DVD was helpful but is missing some detail that would make it easier for the noob. It felt like too much like a infomercial that I didn't want to follow
Another good thought would to hand out paper with some basic notes or suggest they take notes as they follow the class

1 keg-ed, 1 bottled, 1 bottled and party pig'ed and the last awaiting the secondary. next batch is coming soon when I think I have my high FG problem sorted out Do you plan to tape the class and post it for us? I'd like to see how it goes.

If you're willing I'd like to get the outline you decide on. I think I might propose a similar class to our City. It might be kinda cool to put together an unofficial HBT syllabus for homebrew classes.

This is a revived old thread. The class that was offered in June wasn't booked by a single student. We're trying again in October with a lower price so we'll see how it goes. I moved the class to my garage to make it easier on me too. If I was smart, I'd just promote the class myself by plastering 100 flyers on the Rutgers campus a mile away.

The problem with colleges is most people who go there just want to get screwed up and party. They are young people that want to drink whatever dosn't taste too bad and get their buzzzz on. I noticed with my friends it took till our mid 20's to actually start going after the "finer" things in life. BMC worked up till then for my friends. ok, so i'm an odd one. It never worked well for me but now I brew my own! The trick with this class would be to find a hangout for mid 20's or older and post fliers. It is my humble opinion that kids are lazy. Socializing is much more important to them than a time consuming hobby such as this. However there are the lone wolves that this could be a blessing to as well. Maybe posting fliers at local brew pubs or even bars AS WELL as at the college. Plant the seeds of fate. I know when I was 21 I visited a homebrew shop out of curiosity. I diddn't have the time, the money or the motivation to do it but it stuck in my mind like a splinter. From time to time I would think about it on and off. If it wasn't for that spurr of the moment, hey I'm walking by a homebrew shop and I wonder what that's all about day I might not be a homebrewer today. Eventhough nobody signed up for the class don't be discouraged! I'm sure a few people saw it and thought, naw. Not for me. Then kinda toyed with the idea a bit. And if they saw it again maybe, just maybe they'd sign up. I love the idea of this class. I would have taken one a year ago if I could have found one. I say go for it! Don't stop trying to reach out. Sometimes it only takes one person to set off a feeding frenzy of people interested in something. I just don't think it'll be our younger citizens. HA! I talk like I'm old and experienced. Hell i'm only 30! Just observations from what I have noticed in my directionless wandering while enjoying life as much as my beer will let me! Cheers!

I don't know, I think that kids today (god that makes me sound old.....) are growing up in the micro-brew age. While economics certainly keep a lot of Meisterbrau moving through the liquor stores there are a whole lot of kids who are turning 21 who grew up with "real" beer in the house. Even if it's just Sam Adams Boston Lager or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale kids today are exposed to a much wider selection of beers beyond BMC. I know when I was a kid BMC were the good beers, imports were for snobs and pussies and cheap beer was for college kids. We had no idea what micro-brews were or what a pale ale was.

I am now fortunate enough to live in a fairly affluent part of the country but I don't believe it is THAT far from the rest of the world.

I went to Rutgers. I brewed beer in my apartment 1 block behind the student center on College Ave.

I say go for it.

I went to Trenton State...old school with a new name...

By the way, I also direct mailed about 60 flyers to all the Knights of Columbus, Veterans Clubs, Masonic Temples, etc. Not one call. I planned to do firehouses next but lost motivation.