About This Course

This course includes 45+ minutes of video

Northern Virginia's Aslin Beer is known for a range of offbeat ales meant to evoke fun foods—especially those that stoke childhood nostalgia. In this video course, Aslin's Andrew Kelley walks us through their process—from inspiration to fermentation.

Kelley begins by talking inspiring culinary experiences, and then outlines their approach to emulating those flavors in the brewhouse and the cellar. Among other topics, he discusses:

  • finding that inspiration and deconstructing it
  • selecting ingredients, including various fruits, spices, and other adjuncts
  • deciding when in the process to use those ingredients
  • how "stressing the yeast" can lead to desirable outcomes
  • applying kettle-souring and IPA methods to food-inspired beers
  • water chemistry and mash choices
  • evaluating the results for fine-tuning

And much more, including two previously unpublished recipes.

Instructor

Kelley's early story is familiar—two homebrewing friends decided to launch a brewery and fired up a small nano system in 2015 to make beer as they figured out the business side. Not long after launch, they had what’s now a more common come-to-Jesus moment as they realized their initial plan to make standard styles with wide appeal was not going to satisfy them and that there was a market for the beers they loved to homebrew but which didn’t exist commercially in their region at the time—hazy IPAs, extremely flavor-forward beers, and the like. So they did what you might expect a couple of homebrewers to do—they changed course, started brewing daily (and often twice in a day), used their tiny scale and frequency of brewing to test methods and ingredients, and started building a name. Through a disciplined methodology of changing single variables and tasting the results, they were able to learn volumes about their ingredients and fine-tune their techniques to get the flavors they were searching for.

Andrew Kelley

Cofounder, Aslin Beer

Course curriculum

  • 01

    Welcome

    Show Content

    • Welcome to My Course
  • 02

    Translating Culinary Inspiration to Recipe Development

    Show Content

    • Finding Inspiration and Breaking It Down

    • The Inspiration for Brunchies: A Lemon Blueberry Ricotta Pancake Beer

    • Brewing with Fruit: Three Tips

    • Let's Play Matchmaker: Pairing Fruit with Beer Styles

    • Selecting Ingredients

    • The Subtle Art of Brewing with Coffee, with Tyler Lindquist of Alaskan Brewing

    • Brewing with Cacao and Other Dessert-Like Adjuncts, with Neil Fisher of WeldWerks
  • 03

    Brewing Culinary Inspired Beers

    Show Content

    • Stressing the Yeast

    • Kettle Sours

    • What Is a Kettle Sour?

    • Getting Great Results with Kettle Sours

    • Pairing Hops

    • Water Chemistry + Mashing

    • Adjuncts

    • Evaluating the Final Beer

    • Breaking Down Milkshake IPAs, with Peter Kiley of Monday Night Brewing
  • 04

    Thank You

    Show Content

    • Recipe: Aslin Brunchies

    • Recipe: Aslin El Frutero with Watermelon

    • Wrap Up

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