Bay Area Brew Club: Presidio Brewing Club

For those looking for a Bay Area homebrew club, I think I’ve found the answer: Presidio Brewing Club.  I can’t say much about these guys, and gal, yet since I don’t really know any more than what is available on their web-site.  But I can give you a little back story about how I found them.

If you are reading this, then you may have seen my past posts about my recent foray into homebrewing.  This first batch was brewed in the absence of any experienced help, really without any help except Jeff’s excellent stirring assistance on wort day, but I expect that it will probably suffer as a result.  I think a great solution to this problem would be a homebrew club.

My vision was this: 

The club meets once a month and contains about 4 - 10 members, maybe more if there is a lot of enthusiasm, but then we’d probably have to break into different chapters since this will probably work best if each chapter is relatively small.   

We would meet at people’s homes most of the time because part of the point would be to see other people’s brewing equipment first hand, ask them questions about it, and figure out how we might want to adapt our own set-ups.  Also, unless we meet at BYOB restaurants, no commercial establishment is likely to let us drink our own brews on-site…unless of course we befriend the owners.  I think there is some potential for guest-hosted meetings at breweries around town, with the head brewers trying the beers from the club members and critiquing them.  How awesome would that be?

Everyone would bring a few bottles of their last homebrew to share with the other members.  This way you could taste what other people have made, learn what styles are possible to make at home, gather new ideas for beers, and get critiques of your own beers from other people who know beer. 

The path to Presidio Brewing:

I’m still not sure how closely PBC hews to the description I outlined above, since I haven’t been to any of their events yet, but I have high hopes.

I had posted on the Aleuminati that I was looking for a homebrew club.  I got no news of clubs, but some helpful suggestions from Rob at Pffif!, including seeking help from the guys at Brewcraft.   This is where I get my brewing ingredients and a fair amount of my equipment, so I figured I’d put the question to them next time I was out there. 

This past weekend rolled around and I decided it was time to get rolling on batch #2, an amber ale.  When I arrived at Brewcraft, Andre and Tucker were there, and immediately had an answer for me on the homebrewing club question: PBC.  What surprised me though is that the PBC is relatively new.  How have we not had a club like this before?  And is this the only club in the city?

I’ll keep you posted and let you know how it goes once I’ve been to one of their events…