Not my Typical Weekend

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delayed post. It was a crazy weekend! Highlights included volunteering at the Brown Elephant, bottling beer, running 20 miles (and proceeding to eat everything in sight), and hanging out with Jess. Since there's so much to share (plus photos!) I'll split it into two posts.

Going with the theme of gifting an “experience” rather than stuff, I got John beer making classes for his birthday. Four weeks ago we went to BevArt and started to brew our very own beer. It's an IPA, if you're wondering. That class was about two hours long: the first being an introduction to brewing (sanitation is key!) and the second being actual brewing. The guy at my elbow was our super knowledgeable instructor. He's currently brewing an African beer using bananas.

One of the perks of taking the class is that we were able to use BevArt’s equipment and let everything ferment there. So you can try out brewing without buying all of the equipment or making a mess in your apartment. They also offer wine making classes if that’s more of your style.

Saturday afternoon we bottled our beer, which took less than an hour. They even quick-carbonated some of it so we were able to taste it! Looks like somebody approves :)

We now have 47 bottles of IPA sitting in a corner and patiently waiting 2 weeks for the secondary fermentation to complete. We almost bought a kit to start brewing at home, but they were super busy. John will probably go back in a few weeks to purchase everything and ask all sorts of questions. We’re thinking about making a Christmas Ale since my absolute favorite beer is Great Lakes Brewing Co’s Christmas Ale. Fortunately it's available in Chicago starting around Thanksgiving.

Afterwards, I made the game time decision to run 20 miles to prepare for the Chicago Marathon....

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