Homebrew Workshop

Explore and create libations from around the world in this home brewing extravaganza! We will begin with a brief history lesson on the co-evolution of alcohol and humanity, including cultural and regional traditions of brewing, wine making, crafting liqueurs and more. Explore some of the most common fermented alcoholic beverages from around the world, including: Millet Tongba from Nepal, Merissa the Sudanese sorghum beer, Korean Rice Beer, Japanese Sake, English style cider, meads, and more, sampling along the way!  From there, we’ll move into the hands-on part of the class, where we will sample and learn to make hard cider, honey mead, and Korean Rice Beer. Throughout this workshop we will be talking about healthy relationship with alcohol, and how brewing your own can actually help cut back on consumption by bringing back the ceremony and sacredness into alcohol creation and enjoyment. 

In this workshop, participants will:

• Leave with a deeper understanding of various alcohols from around the world and their evolution, with an emphasis on the many different cultures and yeasts that make them uniquely what they are
• Have several recipes and brewing guidelines on a comprehensive handout (provided) 
• Gain hands on experience in brewing:
  • Hard Apple Cider
  • Korean Rice Beer
  • Honey Mead 
• Explore the sacredness and ceremony of home brewing and consumption
• Sample many of the delightful and delicious beverages we explore from around the world!

This class is for anyone who is interested in cultivating a deep and healthy relationship with alcohol and its many forms of  production.

Homebrew Workshop Details

This class will be held outdoors under a covered pavilion on Saturday April 15, 2023 from 1pm – 5pm in Barnardsville, NC. Consider bringing a snack, a notebook, and a folding chair or blanket to sit on.

This class is for anyone who is interested in cultivating a deep and healthy relationship with alcohol and its many forms of  production. Minimum age is 21.

About the Instructor Marissa Percoco

Marissa Percoco (she/they) wears many hats: first she is a devoted mother to her own four amazing (now mostly grown!) children and is also “Mamarissa” to many! Having grown up in the concrete labyrinth of the San Francisco Bay Area, Marissa escaped to the wilds in college and has never looked back! She is a naturalist by heart, and spent her children’s younger years adventuring and raising them as a single mom, exploring community & nature, traveling the backcountry on a shoe-string, from coast to coast, crawling through swamps, deserts, mountains, hot springs, islands & oceans. Learning plants, animals, stories and local ways of weaving into harmony with the environment is her passion. Marissa is also: a plant and land tender, activist, artist, delicious food maker, bee tender, crafter, bookworm, tiny home dweller, otter, plant spirit communicator, healer, trickster and so much more!  As of 2021, Marissa is also a breast cancer survivor, which is an ongoing and incredible journey of fear, pain, humility, connection and healing. Fermentation is a special love of Marissa’s, along with an obsession with strange & exotic plants! Viewing all flora as brethren, Marissa is never alone. Other loves include creating beauty, paddling, cooking, crafting, foraging, reading, playing games, and snuggling her kitties while watching things grow.

Marissa is deeply grateful for her family and community, the abundance of our planet, and for the opportunity each day to connect with the beauty and vibrance of nature. Sharing that connection is her life’s work. Serving as the Executive Director of The Firefly Gathering, as well as coordinating the Equity Fund for Earthskills Rendezvous, and teaching various classes throughout the southeast, all provide Marissa with ample opportunities to help shift the dominant paradigm. Now nesting on a little farmstead on the ancestral lands of the Aniyvwiya (Cherokee) people, now known as Barnardsville, NC, Marissa is deeply rooted in the earthskills movement, anti-oppression work, her garden, and the old Appalachian soil, committed to co-creating a new culture within which we, our children and all beings thrive.

Equitable Pricing Model $80 – $40

In order to make our workshops more accessible, we offer two price options for each class, with an additional Equity Discount for qualifying individuals. Please consider these options and select your price at checkout.

• Sponsor Price $80: For those who have enough to share, thank you for being a Sponsor. This is an opportunity to contribute towards the cost of the class for someone else.
• Standard Price $60: The Standard reflects one person’s share of what it costs to produce the class and cover basic expenses.
• Equity Discount $40: We offer an additional Equity Discount for those from the following communities who support reparations and/or an equitable redistribution of wealth and would not have access to this workshop without this discount:
  • Indigenous or Native American, Black, Latino/a/x
  • Other peoples of the global majority, or racialized communities
  • Ethnicities underrepresented in the Southeastern earthskills community

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