Let’s talk about origins for a moment.  There’s a really nice home-brew club in Colorado Springs, Colorado called the Brew Brothers.  The history of that club and how it started is described nicely in the previous link!  The three guys pictured in the logo above were the founding members–me (James C (beermentor), Mike B, and Ray C … hence the name BC2 Brewers.  We started the first brew session at my house in Colorado Springs …

If I remember correctly, we actually started our discussions about brewing in 2002 but waited until 2003 to brew the first batch (we needed a good weather day!).  It was great fun — we started with partial mash brews (using malt extract).

This allowed us to start without a huge initial investment.  We had all brewed previously but we were all pretty rusty at it.  We didn’t have a lot of equipment at the time so the extract brewing was cheaper because we could use cookware we already owned.  As we got into it we obviously had to have some brews to sample (as well as a smoke).  You can tell in these pictures we were really enjoying ourselves!

The nice thing about brewing together is that everyone brings their own ideas, skills, and equipment.  There’s a lot of synergy in this type of activity!  We had three different recipes–I made a DoppelBock, Mike made a Porter, and Ray made an Oatmeal Stout.  Here are the labels I created to use on our bottles!

Another great thing about brewing together is the sharing of the brews!  Since we all made 5 gallon batches, we ended up with (typically) 2 cases and a spare 4 or 5 bottles.  We each gave the other two a couple of six packs each.  So you had a case of your beer and a case of the other two guys!  What a great experience and a wonderful origin to a great brewing tradition!  I will post more pics, recipes, and tales of the BC2 Brewers past …

Stay Tuned!

Beer Mentor