Episode 1: Preparation

Ten years ago video blogs, or “vlogs” became the latest Internet trend, boosted by the launching of YouTube. Back then, the founders of Perfect Duluth Day each had their own separate websites where they showcased videos, which they often cross-posted on PDD. The “Making Beer with Barrett and Paul” series, featuring Barrett Chase and Paul Lundgren, is one example of those early, low-fi productions.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press wrote about the subject in a May 16, 2005 article. The excerpt below is the part that relates to Duluth:

Scott Lunt, creator of “Le Garage,” said he got into vlogging because “I’m not a really good writer, and I never felt super comfortable with it.” With the digital camcorder and laptop computer he carries everywhere, however, he can film and fine-tune visual nuggets of northern-Midwest life to amuse his subscribers. “I just like the happy accidents of a bunch of raw footage that would be boring without a little editing and music.”

Barrett Chase, author of “The Product,” is proof that vloggers don’t need fancy, expensive recording equipment to make an impact on the Web. He creates his vlog fodder using a compact, low-cost digital-still camera of the sort that also records low-resolution video onto its flash-storage card in 10- to 15-minute spurts.

That gear recently was enough to create a multichapter masterpiece, “Making Beer w/Barrett and Paul,” filmed with a pal. And one recent dawn, when Barrett, a postal worker, had finished a night shift and couldn’t fall asleep, he wandered nearby Superior, Wis., and captured the eerie “detritus of the night before. On the video, it looks how it felt (at the time), bleak and just strange.”

Perhaps that Superior video will resurface at a later date, but now, without further ado, we present the complete “Making Beer with Barrett and Paul” series, recently made available via YouTube instead of the old 2005 downloadable media file format.

Episode 2: Starting Over

Episode 3: Fermenting

Episode 4: Bottling

Episode 5: Tasting