I am so lucky! I am so lucky to have a co-worker who is as into beer and homebrewing as I am because otherwise I wouldn’t have known about this event. My co-worker, Kurt, is a member of Pacific Gravity Homebrew Club who hosted Monster Brew at Tustin Brewing Company this last Saturday. “What is this Monster Brew?” you ask, well it’s an event where you can pay $30 for 5 gallons of wort brewed right before your eyes at Tustin Brewing Company in Tustin, CA. The event was from 6am (so early!) to roughly 1pm and during that time the head brewer and Pacific Gravity member, Jon Porter, spearheaded the brewing of a Saison beer with club members helping and observing the large-scale brew process.

I woke-up around 5:30am and managed to drag my sleepy groggy self to Tustin Brew Co. with Sean and beer cookies in tow. I had been up until 1-1:30am the previous night making the damn cookies because …well… I tend to want to over-achieve with my baked goods, especially if I am bringing them to a group of people who I have never met.

Entering the already-crowded brewpub, I delivered the cookies and a rye red homebrew bottle to Kurt to try and chatted with the Pacific Gravity homebrew club members. The morning went really well, we met a bunch of homebrewers and bounced experiences and ideas off each other. While some people were planning to add citrus and oak to their wort when the bring it home, and we plan to add our Mexican Key Lime leaves from our citrus tree. Sean and I are always met with funny faces when we describe our ideas for homebrews, but mostly we had curiosity and interest from the homebrewers on Saturday. It was a very accepting and easy-going afternoon, above all.

During the event, there was free pours of beers from Tustin and Smog City (Jon Porter’s new brewery in the works) which was nice but it’s really early for me to drink beer so I didn’t have all that much. The brewing process was fun to watch, and the club members seemed to be enjoying themselves. Of course, when it comes to cleaning the mash tunne, everyone scatters.

I had a lot of fun and I can’t wait to see how the wort turns out! I hope to see Pacific Gravity members again, they were all lovely people as per my expectations. Thanks for the wonderful Saturday morning.