Homebrew classes

Dan_fash · Oct 28, 2014

Curious how things work in other parts of the county.

I know a lot of LHBS's have classes for beginners, and for all grain etc. I'm curious ir there is a home brew location where a patron could brew, ferment, and bottle, using store owned equipment. anyone ever heard of such a thing, or know what the legal issues would be with this?

ericbw · Oct 28, 2014

Some places have brew-on-premises, which is exactly edgy you're describing. It seems more popular or common with wine. It probably varies by state.

jekeane · Oct 28, 2014

I have heard of such places for beer and wine, I'm not sure how common they are though. I'm sure the legal issues vary state by state.

Yooper · Oct 28, 2014

Dan_fash said:
Curious how things work in other parts of the county.

I know a lot of LHBS's have classes for beginners, and for all grain etc. I'm curious ir there is a home brew location where a patron could brew, ferment, and bottle, using store owned equipment. anyone ever heard of such a thing, or know what the legal issues would be with this?

Sure, those are called "brew on premises" (BOPs).

In some states, they are pretty common. I believe that is how one of our moderators, Pappers, started brewing in the Chicago area some years ago.

In some BOPs, they even rack the beer for you, and you show up on bottling day to bottle.

bobeer · Oct 28, 2014

There's a place in town here that does exactly that. It's pricey though. It might be worth doing once to get your feet wet but I just assume go to a lhbs's national homebrew day brew off and learn that way from real homebrews that don't have all the fancy equipment. Then spend the $150, or whatever brew-on-premises costs, and put it towards your gear if homebrewing is something you really want to get into.

ericbw · Oct 29, 2014

The nice thing about it, from what I have seen of the wine-on-premises places I have been in, is that they have really big kitchen-type facilities, work tables, sinks, etc. It looks like they make it pretty easy to just do the fun parts.

Ntwkdsnr · Oct 29, 2014

I'm originally from NH. I know there were a couple of places that let you use their equipment and brew 5 gallon batches. You could ferment, bottle and then come back and pick up your fine brew. They offered classes and also sold all of the ingredients.