Big Brew Day 2010

This year, we held the annual Big Brew Day under the tent at KAXE, Northern Community Radio.  Big Brew Day is a worldwide event, created and supported by the American Homebrewers Association.  Each year specific recipes are published on line, and homebrewers, friends, and clubs come together in their locations around the world and brew these on the first Saturday in May.

The Boreal Brewers want to educate the public about brewing, so our goal was a public exhibition of homebrewing.  We brewed all-grain and extract batches, staggering batch starts so people could arrive anywhere during the six hour event and have a chance to see many parts of the process.  We spent a little time on-air at KAXE, talking about the day’s event, and had a discussion about the enjoyment of homebrewing.  It was almost like the old days, when Steve Benson and Jerry Bourbonnais did a ten-year stint of live radio at KAXE on homebrewing, called “The Brewpot Show” in the 1990s.

The weather was cold and damp, so attendance was about fifty people, but many stayed quite a while and watched, ate hot bratwurst and purchased commercial beer from an on site bar from the Forest Lake.   Due to restrictions on serving homebrew, we did not offer samples.