Steel Wheel Brewery hosted its final winter course with The Art of Homebrewing held in the brewery’s taproom on Friday, March 31, 2023.
Harold Kuret, Co-Owner of Steel Wheel, opened with a run down on the winter course series and an introduction to the evenings three hour course.
“We’ve been doing this winter course series since we opened the brewery, though we did have a hiatus over the COVID years but now we are back to the full program,” said Kuret. “We’ve done a lot of different courses over the years – from butchering to tie dye, watercolour and cannabis courses – we’ve really been all over the map. Tonight is the last one of the season and it’s an introduction to homebrewing, so we’re going to talk about equipment and we will go step-by-step through the brewing process known as all-grain brewing.
The presentation started with tips to find recipes, as well as computer software that provides detailed instructions, brewing style guides, automatic calculations and more.
Kuret jumped into the process of homebrewing starting from the beginning with raw ingredients and making his way down to the packaged product while being sure to provide alternatives and details about proper timing and sanitization along the way.
He also covered equipment requirements, mashing, lautering, boiling, cooling, wort and yeast before handing out a sample of wort (the sugary liquid extracted from the mashing process) and describing the next process.
Attendees had a chance to ask questions on a variety of subjects from creating sours, to the comparison of cost between bottles and cans, as well as, where to purchase materials.
The Winter Course Series was offered throughout the winter months and featured an array of interests and skill sets from the local area and by local experts.
Cindy Blair, Co-Owner of the brewery spoke about their drive for community and bringing people together.
“Our key values are community, education and equality, and so part of that is to bring people together to learn different things,” said Blair. “Every Friday night, we do a different course, and we find it makes the winter go faster for everybody and it brings in people to the brewery that maybe didn’t know we were here.”
Harold and Cindy were long-time homebrewers and started growing their own hops in 2015 and later opened their brewery in June of 2019. The family-owned brewery will be celebrating its five year anniversary this summer.
