One Year Old Birthday Bash

Seeing a keg at a 21^st birthday party wouldn’t seem all that out of place – but when you homebrew you get unique opportunities. How about bringing a keg of homebrew to a 1 year old’s birthday party? When you have mobile keg abilities and homebrew available, a multitude of gatherings suddenly transform into homebrew tasting sessions and conversions to craft beer are made.

With an overcast and rainy day – homebrew helped bring everyone a little closer together. The decorations on the back porch for the party were extremely nice. The father had spent an hour arranging everything to look perfect and aesthetically pleasing. Suddenly I storm around the side of the house toting a large cooler with a keg and C02 tank sticking up. With some minor shuffling of decorations we were able to nicely tuck the cooler underneath the table with the picnic tap available for dispensing. A growler of “Run for your Life IPA” was unable to completely blend in, but I guess you can’t win them all.

I had cobbled together what I thought was a hilarious label for the kegged beer – High Octane Oaked Amber Ale – but I couldn’t get the paper to really stick to anything. A label wasn’t needed to get people to try Hacksaw Homebrew though! Many an adventurous spirit at the party had never had a homebrew and eagerly sampled with many questioning if I really had made it. One of my favorite parts of homebrewing is having people give you reviews of the beer. I take no shame if someone doesn’t like it for one reason or another, and often I’ll make mental notes and put those down for recipe tweak ideas.

The highlight for me at this particular party was when I overheard someone asking my wife…

 “So – you’re married to the brewer?”

When you hear something like that at my level of brewing – it really does make you proud to be a homebrewer!

--Ben