This is a hands-on, beginner-friendly brewing class where you and a partner brew a full 5-gallon batch of craft beer, equivalent to approximately 48 bottles, using all of our professional equipment at no extra charge. After the first brewing session, your beer stays with us in our dedicated fermentation space, where our experienced team monitors and tends to it throughout the entire fermentation process. Once fermentation is complete, you schedule a convenient appointment to return for the bottling session, where you cap, label, and take home every bottle of the beer you brewed from scratch.
No prior brewing experience or technical knowledge is required. This class is specifically designed for curious beginners who have always wanted to try homebrewing but were not sure how or where to start. Our instructors guide you through every step of the process with clear explanations, real-time demonstrations, and plenty of opportunities for questions. You leave not just with a batch of excellent beer, but with a genuine, working understanding of how and why it was made the way it was.
What You Will Do in Session One: Brew Day
- Choose your beer style from a rotating selection that typically includes pale ales, IPAs, stouts, porters, lagers, wheat beers, Belgian styles, and seasonal specialties
- Mill and mash the grains, converting starches to fermentable sugars in the mash tun
- Lauter and sparge, separating the sweet wort from the spent grain
- Bring the wort to a full rolling boil and add hops at precise intervals according to the recipe schedule
- Cool the wort rapidly with our immersion chiller to yeast-pitching temperature
- Transfer the cooled wort to the fermenter, pitch the yeast, and seal everything up for fermentation
- Measure original gravity with a hydrometer and understand what the reading tells you about your beer's potential alcohol content
- Learn how sanitation works and why it is the single most important step in producing consistently good beer
What You Will Do in Session Two: Bottling Day
- Measure the final gravity and calculate the actual alcohol by volume of your finished beer
- Prepare the priming sugar solution that will provide natural carbonation in the bottle
- Thoroughly sanitize all bottles, caps, and transfer equipment
- Transfer, fill, and cap each bottle individually
- Apply your custom labels and carefully pack your batch to take home
What You Will Learn Throughout the Process:
- The complete all-grain brewing process from raw grain to finished, carbonated beer
- How each stage of brewing, including mashing, lautering, boiling, fermenting, and conditioning, shapes the final flavor, color, and character of the beer
- The role and interaction of the four core ingredients: malt, hops, yeast, and water
- How to read, interpret, and adapt a recipe to suit your own preferences and style
- Hydrometer use and basic gravity calculations for alcohol content
- How to evaluate your beer by sight, smell, and taste as it progresses
- The fundamentals of sanitation and contamination prevention
What Is Included in the Class Fee:
- Full use of all professional brewing equipment for both sessions
- Bottle caps, labels, and packaging for your finished batch
- Expert instruction and personalized guidance throughout the entire process
- Samples of other beers produced in the space to taste and compare while you work
Beer Styles Available:
Our rotating selection of available beer styles changes seasonally but typically includes a range of classic and contemporary options. Past offerings have included American Pale Ales, West Coast IPAs, New England-style Hazy IPAs, Dry Stouts, Milk Stouts, Oatmeal Porters, American Wheat Beers, Hefeweizens, Kölsch-style Ales, Belgian Witbiers, Amber Ales, Brown Ales, and select seasonal styles tied to the time of year. Your instructor can walk you through the current available options, their flavor profiles, and the key ingredients that define each one. This is itself a valuable lesson in the way ingredients, process, and recipe design combine to produce beer's extraordinary range of flavors and characters.
The Science Behind the Beer:
One of the most rewarding aspects of this class is developing a real understanding of what is actually happening at each stage of the brewing process. Brewing is fundamentally a craft that sits at the intersection of biology, chemistry, and culinary art. The conversion of starches to sugars in the mash is an enzymatic process. The boil is where alpha acids from hops are isomerized into bittering compounds and where undesirable volatile compounds are driven off. Fermentation is a metabolic process in which yeast consumes sugars and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide as byproducts. Understanding these basic mechanisms transforms brewing from a series of steps to follow into a genuine craft you can adapt, troubleshoot, and make your own.
Important Notes:
- The class fee covers one or two people brewing the same batch together. Solo participants are also welcome.
- Ingredient kits are priced separately and vary by beer style. Your instructor can advise on available options and current pricing at the time of your brew day.
- Fermentation typically takes three to four weeks. Your bottling appointment is scheduled after fermentation is confirmed complete by our team.
- Each batch yields approximately forty-eight bottles, though the exact yield depends on the style and any losses during transfer.
- All equipment is thoroughly cleaned and sanitized between each use. The space is professional, well-organized, and designed to make the experience as smooth and enjoyable as possible from start to finish.
- Please reach out to CourseHorse to discuss which beer style you would like to brew before your scheduled session. Having a style in mind in advance helps ensure the right ingredients are available and ready for your brew day.
- This class makes an excellent gift, a creative date, a birthday celebration, a team bonding outing, or simply a genuinely memorable way to spend a day learning a craft that humans have practiced for thousands of years across virtually every culture on earth.
