anna's adventures by ANNA HARTLEY
Ale -CHEMY Anna rolls up her shirt sleeves and puts her beer goggles on for this month’s adventure. IT’S MORE THAN 40°C inside without a hint of a breeze, and I’m standing over a cauldron of bubbling broth, wrestling with what looks like a giant, hot tea-bag. Sweat pours off me as I press and squeeze the precious juices out of the sopping, heavy mass, labouring to get every last drop. My arms tremble with the fatigue. I need a beer. And I’ll have to wait another eight weeks to get it. Brewing your own beer certainly isn’t the simplest or fastest way to quench a thirst, but there is something undeniably satisfying about the process. People have been brewing their own beer for thousands of years, but with the rise in popularity of craft beers in the last
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PRIMOLIFE | october 2015
decade or so, more and more recreational drinkers have become interested in the game. That’s where brew-on-premisesbreweries come in: helping novices create their own beers, while learning the tricks of the trade with plenty of guidance and supervision. So what’s the attraction? I ask Mike Gilmore, head brewer of Brew Unique, a Parisian micro-brewery that offers half-day courses in beer making. “It’s a movement,” he explains. “It’s part of the whole concept of consuming less, and consuming better.” What he doesn’t mention is the large novelty factor and the desire to try something new, which is exactly why I have
signed up for an afternoon of malty fun. “What shall we brew?” Mike asks cheerfully as my friends and I deposit our bags and pick out colour-coordinated aprons. There are eight of us brewing today, with two people per station. My boyfriend and I have chosen to make a simple Pale. Mike pulls out a blank brew ‘recipe’, which he can quickly modify according to our tastes. primolife.com.au