Trip to Peace Tree and tasting the First batch

 A professor once told me that the people that become great and make a big name for themselves, those outliers in our world like The Beatles, Steve Jobs and Donald Trump had to put in over 1,000 hrs into their craft to be at the status they're at. Well Sadly enough as a young home brewer I can't brew all day everyday, but I can do things to learn more about the craft. So to bring more knowledge to my growing bank of information I decided to take a trip over to a local brewery Peace Tree Brewery. So I grabbed my good friend Logan Woster hopped in my Ford Ranger and we were off to Knoxville.
We walked into the brewery and the taproom was true sign of what Peace Tree is about. It was cool and sleek and made you know you were into the right place. A friendly face met us behind the bar, John one of Peace Trees bartenders directed us to the brewery where Joe Kesteloot the Brewmaster was just beginning to transfer his new beer a Belgian Blonde from the brew kettle to Peace Trees new 40 barrel (1240 gal or 13,226 12 oz bottles of Beer). We finally introduce ourselves to Joe, a motley looking guy that epitomizes the look of a Brewmaster with a Peace Tree baseball cap and a goatee that easily would measure seven inches long. Joe began our informal tour of the brewery by showing us his mill that breaks the grains open and measures out 20 lbs of grain before transfers them into the lauter tun. He showed us the rest of the process from  the lauter tun to the kettle and onto the fermenter. He explained the problems they encountered with their bottling machine that uses CO2, electricity and air pressure all at once. The one thing I noticed was the passion that Joe had for brewing and for Peace Tree. We finished up trying a couple different beers on top and baught a growler to take home with us, both of us kind of stumbled out the taproom. It was an interesting experience that I can't explain in the short space that I have here but if you have a chance to go to Peace Tree do it. Their tap room is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

My first home brew

Now that we had tried some really good beer from Peace Tree. I decided it was time to try the beer that I had been waiting for in anticipation for a long time, MINE. My beer a Brown Ale had been conditioning in the bottles for about a week now and was ready to drink I popped the cap on my first bottle. I poured the bottle out into a glass it was a dark honey color, and sadly enough was fairly cloudy. It smelled somewhat sour and yeasty, not at all what I had hoped. The first sip of the beer was yeasty and ended very bitter, too bitter for what I had expected from the style.  Overall I was very disapointed, but after doing some more reading,  I found out I might not be completely SOL. One issue could be that my beer still hasnt conditioned enough. The yeast hasn't had enough time to settle so the beer tasted yeasty. I have obviously still been drinking my beer and have noticed the beer getting a little more palitable. I guess only time will tell on whether or not the beer will eventually taste better. But if all else I got an O.K beer with a good amount of alcohol.