Brew like it's spring

Boyd said, "if you brew like it's spring - it'll be spring by bottling time" and so it went! Boyd and I went to brew a Maibock (spring) beer at Vine Park Brewery in St Paul on a snowy, cold day and by the time the beer was ready to bottle (2 weeks later) it was a beautiful spring day! If you haven't heard of Vine Park I would seriously encourage you to check it out. I love that I can brew my own beer and reuse all my beer bottles and Vine Park makes the process totally fool proof. They have all the ingredients and keep the brewing instruments clean and sterile. And, our beer always comes out tasting excellent!

I enjoy brewing so much that I planned it as an activity for my parents during their visit from California. The bottling part is like a party, with beer, snacks and (with my dad) ukulele music! We sang all the drinking songs we knew and then moved on to any song we could think of that mentioned drinking. It was a great time! We also shared our beer with the people at Vine Park who were at the brewing stage. It's a pay it forward thing - hopefully they share when they are on the bottling side.

After bottling we took a walk in the neighborhood to enjoy the spring weather and then moved on to The Happy Gnome for a fancy, yummy dinner.

For an appetizer we had the elk tart:

To finish off we had (Boyd's favorite) the banana creme brule. Mmmmm.

The take away message?: We have tons of Maibock beer - drop by for a chat and we'll share one with you. :)