Kids learn to brew, bake at Brewbakers

With all the commercializing of children’s toys and parks, it sometimes seems like all activities come with an advertising scheme. Some parents sick of all the hype might find refuge at a brewery and pretzel shop in Huntington Beach.

At Brewbakers, 7242 Heil Ave., owner Dennis Midden organizes group parties for children who want to learn about the two things he loves to do: brew and bake. He hosts parties for kids to learn the basics of baking bread and making root beer.

On Tuesday, Lori Andreyka brought her daughter Cassie Andreyka and six friends to the shop for a party. Andreyka runs a private day- care center out of her home in Garden Grove, where she cares for the seven girls, including her daughter during the summer months.

As a change of pace from weekly trips to the movies and Soak City, Andreyka made reservations for a day of pretzel-making and root-beer brewing at Brewbakers.

Andreyka heard about Brewbakers from a friend and decided to check it out on the Web.

“I had to make the reservations a week in advance,” she said. “

First, the girls learned how to make root beer. Part of the lesson included taking the large metal barrel out to the front of the shop and rolling it around to really mix things up. And no one could mix without singing.

Midden led the girls in a few verses of “Roll Out the Barrels,” his anthem for mixing drinks at the brewery.

“Roll out the barrels,” he chanted. “We’ll have a barrel of fun.”

While they waited for the soda to settle, the girls washed their hands and dove into some pretzel dough. Most of the girls opted for shapes more unusual than the twist.

Cassie attempted to mold a fish with her dough, but what came out of the oven surprised her.

“It’s a whale,” Cassie said. The dough had risen so high and wide, many of the shapes came out as more of a blob than intended, but that did nothing to affect the taste.

After bottling their root beer, the girls tore into a fresh pizza and finished it off with their toasty warm pretzels.

“It was fun to shape them,” said Skyler Meader of Garden Grove. “They taste great.”

For $9, each child gets to make one pretzel, brew two bottles of root beer and eat at least one slice of pizza. Midden changed his pricing from group rates to individual pricing after several organizations kept asking for the breakdown in price per child.

Midden prefers the parties no smaller than six children, with a cap of 30 in one group because the small store can only hold so many.

It may not be a big-name pizza chain, but parents don’t seem to mind.

“They like an alternative to Chuck E. Cheese’s,” Midden said. “And the parents like us more because we have better beer.”

For the kids, though, the only beer they get starts with a root.

“We consider ourselves a family place, not just a bar.” Midden said. “We always have sodas.”