Something we learned early on is that, while brewing is fun, it is also hard work. And it was going to take a lot more hard work to progress our recipes where we wanted them to be. Fortunately, there are a lot of people in the world that like beer. We totally capitalized on this by recruiting a lot of our hard-working friends.

When you can offer free homemade beer and the prospect of male bonding, the deck is stacked in your favor. In the early days of Monday Night, before we were kegging any beer, the bottling process took the most time. We would spend some time training friends to bottle and clean carboys, two of the most valuable functions.

It usually took a few weeks to get people up to speed on certain tasks (let's be honest, we don't have the brightest friends), and the one thing we would always stress the most is the importance of sanitation. True, there was probably some time wasted sanitizing and re-sanitizing things that didn't need sanitized in the first case (example: anything pre-boil). But that time wasted was worth not ruining the beer.

Looking to find some of your own free labor? Here's the key. You have to trick them into thinking they're doing it for THEM, not YOU. I'm obviously joking. People are either interested in what you are doing and willing to help out, or they aren't.

Regardless, we would never have been able to get as far as we've gotten in 3 years without the gracious help of friends. Cleaning carboys, then kegs, then stainless steel fermenters. The tasks have gotten a little more complex, but the need for free labor is the same, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.