New event brewing for Downtown Fort Scott

The growing hobby of home brewing will be the focus of an event early next month in downtown Fort Scott.

A group of local home brewing enthusiasts have come together to put on a "Big Brew Day" event from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, May 3 at the Heritage Park Pavilion near the corner of First and Main streets.

The event will be part of the nationwide "Big Brew for National Homebrew Day" created by the American Homebrewers Association and held each year on the first Saturday in May.

The event will be geared toward people who have an interest in homebrewing and want to learn about the scientific process behind the hobby.

Experts will be on hand to demonstrate how the homebrewing process is done, including how to make wort, which is defined as a sweet infusion of ground malt or other grain before fermentation, used to produce beer and distilled malt liquors.

Chelle McClellan and her husband, Josh, who help run Main Street Gallery and Gifts, are hosting the event.

"We'll be brewing a couple different types of beers," Chelle said.

She said a demonstration will be provided on how to make Schwarzbier, a German dark lager beer, and the stages of homebrewing will be shown.

"My dad will I think brew a Pilsner beer, which is more of a light beer," she said. "He'll be doing all the steps."

Josh said demonstrations on an ale-style beer will also be given.

"It's a good event for people who are interested, definitely," he said.

The idea for the event originated with local homebrewers Bryan Holt and Dr. Steve Weilert, Chelle said.

"Then the city said we could use the pavilion and it escalated from there," she said.

The Fort Scott City Commission approved the event and use of the Heritage Park Pavilion at their April 1 meeting.

Holt said he's only been involved with the hobby for about six months but "has really enjoyed it." He currently makes homebrew using a kit, which provides all of the essential ingredients needed to make the quaff.

"I looked into it and bought a kit," he said. "It was a lot easier than I thought it would be; there's a lot of science that goes into it. Dr. Weilert looks at minerals in the water before he brews, and measures the pH throughout the mashing process, and makes sure to measure the amount of sugar in the wort at the end, which gives you an idea how much alcohol is in it when it's done fermenting."

Holt said beginning homebrewers can still make a good product without having a lot of knowledge of the process.

"You can not know anything and still turn out a drinkable beer," he said. "I try different things; I've done a brown ale. I've done a Belgian beer."

Holt said the hobby is not for people who expect to have brewed beer within a few days.

"The first brew I did took six weeks," he said. "It sat almost two weeks in a bottle."

Holt said the hobby has grown to include about two million people nationally.

"The interest level is out there (locally) but it's not concentrated; there's no one place to go," he said.

Chelle said her husband will be among other homebrewers who will demonstrate more complicated homebrew recipes.

"The guys will be picking and choosing grains to work with," she said.

Holt said he hopes there is enough local interest in the hobby to possibly result in the formation of a club devoted to homebrewing.

"I'd like to see if there's any interest in having a club locally to meet periodically where we can get together with other people who like to do this," he said. "I'm excited about that potential."

Holt said people can stop by to watch the process and talk with homebrewers, but perhaps unfortunately for some, samples will not be provided.

"Kansas law forbids serving fermented beverages outside of the home," he said.

In 1988, May 7 was announced before Congress as National Homebrew Day. The AHA created AHA Big Brew as an annual event to celebrate National Homebrew Day around the world, according to AHA's website, www.homebrewersassociation.org.

"The AHA does a home brewing contest every year," Holt said. "For this event, they put out two to three recipes they want everybody who does these events to brew one of these three. These are nationally award-winning recipes from their contest."

The event will be open to the public.