Honing their ‘craft,’ adults blend bricks and beer at Lego-brewery event

Aaron Nelson is a self-described Lego nerd.

He can remember his first set he built as a child, a castle, and still builds Lego sets regularly.

As events coordinator for Remedy Brewing Co., Nelson is always looking for new ways to engage with patrons, so he has combined his Lego passion with his Remedy position to create Bricks & Beers, a monthly building competition with its next event Wednesday. 

The Bricks & Beers event is a partnership between Remedy, at 8th & Railroad Center, and Bricks & Minifigs, which sells and trades new and used Lego pieces and sets in a retail store on West 41st Street. Since September, Remedy has held a Bricks & Beers event on the last Wednesday of each month.

At Bricks & Beers, patrons can register starting at 6:30 p.m.. Each team, made up of two to four people, pays $20 to enter. For that, they receive two drink tokens, two Lego minifigures and a bag of Lego bricks. At 7 p.m., the theme for the night is announced, and teams can start building. 

“After we tell them the category, they rip into (the bags) and everybody turns into a 6-year-old all over again,” Nelson said.

Teams have one hour to build their creations based on the theme, with first-, second- and third-place prizes handed out at the end. Past prizes have included gift cards, Lego sets and gold Lego brick keychains. 

The themes for past events have varied in scale and complexity; last month’s was a “turkey escape,” where teams had to build a Lego car to help an unfortunate bird flee from a Thanksgiving meal. The theme of the first event was to build a spaceship. 

Nelson said he’s in awe of the creativity he has witnessed at the first few events. Teams are limited to building with the pieces they are provided, but that hasn’t stopped some teams from adding movement or, in one case, a real, non-Lego chicken nugget to their creations.

“The things that people have created are absolutely amazing,” Nelson said. “Some of the storytelling people have come up with with their creations is absolutely genius.”

Nelson is the connecting piece between Remedy and Bricks & Minifigs as he also works at the retail store part time sorting Lego bricks. Nelson said he was such a frequent patron when the store first opened that one of the employees jokingly asked if he wanted a job there. He was more than interested.

“I told them when I asked them about working there that I would love to sort Legos, and they were like, ‘You actually want to do that?’ And I was like, ‘Joke’s on you, you’re actually paying me for this, and I love doing it,’” he said. “It’s a lot of fun.”

Nelson builds Lego sets with his husband all the time. As he said, it’s a great way to get away from the stresses of the world. He also has had the same Christmas and birthday list since he was 7 — anything to do with Lego, Batman or sharks. 

“I’m a simple person; it doesn’t take a lot to make me happy,” he said. “I’m still a little kid at heart.” 

Bricks & Beers draws a wide age range, Nelson said, with families with young kids and the elderly all enjoying taking some time to play with Lego bricks. It brings a much-needed moment of fun to the lives of participants, he added.

“I think at some point in their childhood everybody has played with Legos,” he said. “For the adults that are coming, it’s just this thing of pure nostalgia. It’s a really great way to bring everybody together to forget everything that’s going on in their lives and the world and just have a nice night together, a moment of peace and fun.”