Retirement Home(brewing)
How old is too old to learn to brew? Well, if you live at the Aspen Ridge Retirement Community (the Ridge) in Bend, Oregon there is no such thing as too old. Aspen Ridge Life Engagement Coordinator Sandie Nowell was challenged to “think outside the box” to provide residents with lifelong learning opportunities to expand their minds and experiences beyond what most would consider “normal.” Sandie responded, half in jest, “OK, well how about we brew beer? Because everyone in Bend brews beer.”
Management loved the idea, so in February 2012, Sandie posted an ad on craigslist for someone to teach them how to brew. Local Bendite, Ali Sandiford, who had been homebrewing for 7 years, answered the ad and soon started the Aspen Ridge brewing project. The interested residents met with Ali, talked, and tasted a few beers to see what they wanted to brew, then purchased the ingredients at the local brewing supply store. They began brewing 5-gallon (19-L) batches from extract, with some occasional specialty grain batches. When Ali moved to Portland four months after the project started, the Ridge brewers suddenly found themselves on their own.
Not deterred by losing their instructor, the brewers at the Ridge appointed Joe Reeves — the youngest brewer at 74 — Brewmaster, and with each batch their confidence grew. They got wild and crazy, adding flavors and special ingredients into the secondary fermenter such as chocolate, coconut, mint and cherries to their porters and stouts, sour or sweet cherries to their cream ales and hefeweizen, and of course lots of hops to their IPAs.
In 2012, the Aspen Ridge brewers entered their stout in the Central Oregon Homebrewers Organization (COHO) “Spring Fling” competition, but won only slight nods of approval. Not discouraged, they continued to work to perfect their techniques, resulting in two first place medals and one third at the 2012 Deschutes County Fair. The following year they took “Best of Show,” along with a slew of other medals.
Each of their brews gets a unique name such as Machine Gun Maggie, Dublin Dew, Hopped Up Hippie and Coconut Bra, to name a few. Once the beers are named, resident-artist Roy Eskilden creates some really wild hand-drawn labels for their bottles.
Aspen Ridge management and the resident brewers take their brewing very seriously. They have two lagering refrigerators, a separate temperature-controlled fermentation room, a kegging system, and an in-house pub. Currently they brew 10-gallon (38-L) extract batches twice a month and are working on purchasing an all-grain system in order to brew 15-gallon (57-L) batches. That may seem like a lot of beer for a retirement community, but their beer is well received by the residents in the pub and at special events like their Oktoberfest and St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.
COHO Vice President, Tim Koester, who teaches homebrewing at Central Oregon Community College, dropped in at Aspen Ridge on a brew day last fall after reading an article about Aspen Ridge’s brewing in the local paper. As an organization, COHO has a commitment to community outreach, and he thought the club could possibly lend some practical and technical assistance. When Sandie learned COHO wanted to help the residents hone their craft, she was thrilled and a deal was struck to allow the club to use the Ridge’s meeting room in exchange for the coaching. COHO now meet at Aspen Ridge with several of the residents participating in the club meetings and the COHO members enjoying the interaction with the residents.
