The Beginning

“This is good. I like this one. Hey, you’ve brewed beer before right– want to start homebrewing?”

Like all good brewing stories it starts with a beer. So why should this one be any different? While only one of us had helped friends brewing in the past, we both knew it would be super easy to start. We both like craft beer. We’d been drinking it for years. Let’s make this happen. I mean it’s just like baking a cake right? You just have to have a large pot, and homebrew story near by and time. Of course it’s that simple, or did we miss a step?

First Brew Day

“CHEERS! …this is sweet. …maybe a little too sweet.”

Unfortunately the beer we’re talking about wasn’t a success like we were hoping. Our first beer was from an extract kit and was suppose to be a delicious, robust porter. A 6% ABV beauty with bold, roasty-malt character and chocolate accents that would be the perfect winter warmer. However, the beer turned out to be none of the above. Instead we brewed a sweet, sappy, under attenuated (little alcohol) beer that ended up having about 2 or 3% alcohol… maybe.

Nonetheless, we weren’t deterred from our new passion of brewing beer. Instead we analyzed our mistakes, re-grouped and brewed many more batches. Each brew day granting us with more knowledge and experience. Taking us one step closer to our beer-making goal– delicious beer.

First Competition and Beyond

“This is good! I like this a lot. What do you think other will think of it?”

With encouragement from friends and family we quickly refined our process, gaining more experience and finding our stride. We had found our identity as brewers. Brewing mostly American style beers that appealed to many types of drinkers, we received positive feedback boosting our confidence among our peers to look elsewhere for reviews on our beers. Thus we decided to enter our first contest, Kansas City Bier Meisters’ 34th Annual Homebrew competition. We received a score of 36– which is a “very good” beer according to the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), for our Little Red Strawberry Blonde. Intrigued by what beer judges had to say about our “amazing” beer we entered into more competitions. Experiencing some judges results that had us eager to get back to the cauldron, others had a ironically “sobering” effect on us. Most importantly we took each scoresheet and applied the advice to our next beer.

Now winning a medal isn’t everything. We’d be lying if it wasn’t a goal to win at least one. This year we were fortunate enough to win TWO medals from four competitions. A silver medal in ZZ Hops’ Homebrew competition for a Hoppy Amber and then a gold medal in Topeka’s Hall of Foamers’ competition for our C&C Wood IPA. With a solid year of brewing coming to a close, we are excited to see what will come next for Wiz Brewing.

We hope that you continue to join us on our journey to make good beer.