About one year ago, a close friend, Collin LaValle and I started our first batch of home-brew.  It was supposed to be a northwest red style ale.  We went through the process as best as we could, but the inevitable happened.  The yeast didn’t activate right away.  A couple days later it started to hit hard, and overflow the airlock.  It had literally blown the top off in the middle of the night.  The batch ended up tasting like soap.  Not good.  Our buddy, Joel couldn’t even stomach it and he’s had some of the worst hobo-grade sludge in the world.

I even worked up a brand for us.  Collin and I called it a nano brewery. During the branding process I tried to develop a strong brand that represented the idea of small batches and experimenting.  Of course… we weren’t even close to experimenting, we were learning first.  But the designer and beer lover in me couldn’t help but come up with an identity for our project.  Check out the brand book: work.chrisbodven.com  Here is what we came up with:

I even printed some labels:

A year later, I’m brewing on my own.  Collin moved away to Wisconsin, leaving the responsibility to me, for now. We brewed many great batches and I definitely look forward to brewing with Collin again in the future.  It’s been a few months since he and I brewed our last batch- bottled a Porter on August, 26th 2011 just before I left for Europe for a month.  Now that I’ve returned, moved and began to settle into my new place, I’ve been more excited to get back to brewing.  My first IPA- my favorite style of beer actually, will be the next batch.  I’ve heard IPAs are a little more difficult, but we’ll see how it turns out.  This next one is for you Collin!  Go Pack!

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