Ipanema Beer Feast: My favorite beer was made by kids

Well, Tuesday the 13th brings on the Ipanema Beer Feast. I can't decide if I'm going as Astrud Gilberto, a beatnik or an interpretive bikini-wax artist. Either way, it'll be exciting to see what's happening with local craft brews. Mmm... beer also has a round-up of other upcoming local events.

And yeah, my favorite porter and wheat really was craft-made by kids. Okay, Mom and Dad helped too.

A few years back, one of my then-agency partners, Scott Sparks, came across a Virginia Business article on a shoestring nano-micro-brew operation in Williamsburg. Since Jamestown/APVA was a paying client we were helping, we had a perfect excuse to drop by. The brewmaster, Hugh Burns, was an ex-Stealth Fighter pilot who'd left flying and reengaged his biology degree to promote the metabolic and autolytic wonders of yeast. Hugh learned us about filtering or not filtering (much better) and bottle conditioning and other neat stuff that I forget. What I remember clearly was his answer to Who's your help? "My wife Nadia runs the business side and the kids help out with labeling and all kinds of stuff." Like I said, nano-micro-brew. And it was really good (the only "review" I could find online).

After talking about how he could better master his local market of retail and restaurants, they made Nadia his media buyer and Kinko's their production department for ads, table tents and tap-head promos. And we made his kids the marketing directors:





It's been ages since I've seen the Burns, but Google tells us that Willamsburg AleWerks bought their gear in 2006. The Barleyblog gives their range a taste. Here's hoping that Sean and Emily Burns have found something they enjoy as much as they did working with Mom & Dad.