The meeting this month was at my basement bar, and actually seemed to be a smaller and quieter group than usual. Present were Jason and Dan from Enki Brewing, who both talked a bit about the current status of the brewery and their test batches of beer. Both are now proud owners of shiny new JAB membership cards! We also had a couple other new members show up, so welcome to all of you! Some old-school members (Kramer, Rick) were able to make it--always good to have some old blood to balance all the new.
Keeping in touch with JAB: we have a facebook group (different from the facebook page) so you can ask questions or post comments and ideas. If I haven't invited you yet, you can request to be added from that page and I'll send you an invite.
We talked a bit about upcoming events (check the website or JAB Facebook Group for more details.)
1) We have a Big Brew scheduled at Excelsior Brewing: it looks like they want us to bring a couple of homebrew set-ups and do this at the brewery. Bryce will give us more info soon. If anyone wants to be involved, post on the Facebook group or shoot me an e-mail.
2) Next month's meeting is at my place and is our Belgian Brew Off. So bring your Belgian homebrews, and if you don't have one, bring something actually Belgian to share with us! We will hopefully have a few prizes and what-not.
3) In June we will be distributing the yeast assignments for the experimental brew (September meeting.) No details posted on that yet, but we plan to have one base recipe (all-grain and extract versions) with every person getting a different yeast to really showcase the different yeast characters. I'd like us to have a lot of entries and see if we can get it published in BYO or Zymurgy.
4) We are nearing completion on the first JAB barrel ale! We need folks to start signing up for making portions of the next beer so we can fill the barrel right away after emptying the current beer. Our upcoming batch will be a lambic. e-mail me or post on JAB FB group if you want to take part in this one. We need to get going quick! I have my materials and hope to brew in the next 2 weeks.
Gera gave a short talk on BJCP style judging, with fancy hand outs and everything. I'm glad this was a smaller group, since the noise level was better than usual! Thanks for the talk Gera! I really want to keep our educational aspect of meetings, so I appreciate the work and effort that our members put into these presentations. If anyone has any ideas for a quick talk, please don't hesitate to contact me about it!
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| Sorry Gera, the other pics were too blurry! |
We had a bunch of good homebrews to try this month, with Gera taking home the Mash Paddle for her Cocoa Cardamom Mild. We had an amazing Simcoe IPA from Garret that was a big hit amongst the hop-heads in the group. Mark also had a very well balanced IPA. Kramer wiped the cobwebs from some 2007 Beet Meade and some 2011 Tart Cherry for us. I dug out a 2007 bretty version of his Cherry from my cellar and we tried them side by side with interesting results. I knew I was saving that for something! Joe discovered a new category of English Bitter: The Way Bitter Bitter. Gary sampled one of the more interesting beers I've had: a pale ale with Sriracha hot sauce. We promptly named this beer Hot Cock Sauce, and so it shall remain named for all eternity. Sorry Gary. Oh, and Alex had a peach and tea beer that was very interesting--but I'd up the sweetness on it next time. Last, but not least, Scott brought a keg of smoked Scottish ale that was very easy on the palate! We also had a few nice commercial beers like a growler of Town Hall's Twisted Trace barleywine. Less commercial beers this month, but we also had my 6 taps free to sample and we had plenty to for us to drink!
Overall, a very laid back and fun meeting. Perhaps the calm before the storm, because next month is Belgian Brew Off!!!
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