Underground Brewers of Connecticut

For our March meeting, we were able to return to our roots, in more ways than one.

We did meet in February. In person. A wonderful evening at Spacecat Brewing. There was Spacecat beer and there was homebrew and there was face-to-face talk. An excellent time. Many thanks to the Spacecat folks for being such generous hosts.

Where are the meeting notes? Well, we were so rusty after 2 years of Zooming that we totally fell down on the blind judging and note-taking. Not completely unexpected that we’d screw up a little. We’ve been out of practice a long time.

For March, our gracious host was Phil Markowski, in the Area Two building at Two Roads. And this is one way we went back to our roots. Phil joined the Underground Brewers in 1985, when our founder, Pat Baker, was still in charge and Phil was just a homebrewer. He is a direct link to our earlier self.

Phil gave us an extensive tour of Area Two, including the barrel rooms, the pilot brewhouse, the distillery, the classroom area that Sacred Heart University uses, and the coolship. He patiently answered a zillion questions and sampled our homebrew. Thank you, Phil!

After the tour came the judging. Real judging. Blind judging. With notes and scores. Just like the old days. Back to our roots for real. (And Phil had stories about how judging was done back in 1985, before the whole BJCP thing had gotten worked out.)

Somewhere in the pictures below, you see one of an ancient guy who really needs to rethink his facial hair pouring homebrew into teeny glasses. It’s what we do. It’s what we’ve always done. It felt good.

Judging notes:

• Munich Helles (Paul H): Green apple aroma, too sweet, somewhat astringent, stale? 4/3/10/3/4 = 24
• IPL (Andy C): Needs more malt in aroma and a little more bitterness in the finsh. But very drinkable. 8/3/12/4/7 = 34
• Best Bitter (Pierre and Steve): Dank, light-struck?, too dry – impacts drinkability. 7/2/10/3/4 = 26
• Weissbier (Caysey): Excellent example of the style. Extremely drinkable. 10/3/15/5/8 = 41
• Rye Farmhouse (Justin): Complex and fruity. Chewy and viscous. Delicious. 10/3/14/4/7 = 38
• New World Cider (Steve): Nice fruit presentation, fantastic tannic finish, incredibly drinkable. 4/6/18/8 = 36
• American Porter (Paul H): Complex malty aroma, but too sweet. Needs more hop bitterness. Creamy. Drinkable. 11/3/13/4/7 = 38
• American Wild with Tropical Fruit (Andy T): Voluptuous aroma, some Cheerios in the flavor. Fun and flavorful. 10/3/12/5/7 = 37
• Blueberry Cyser (Paul B): Aroma a bit hot and phenolic, flavor is perfectly balanced across all axes, delicious and drinkable. 7/6/18/7 = 38

After a few months of real, face-to-face meetings, omicron came and sent us back to Zoom-land for our January meeting. It was great seeing everyone faces. But we really wish that it had been in person.

And we really talked about brewing! Much discussion about fast lagering, kveik, and the possibility of building a club centrifuge for clearing lagers.

As of this writing, CT’s covid numbers are going in the right direction. So we have every intention of meeting face-to-face in February!

The Underground Brewers were formed 46.5 years ago with the express purpose of tasting each other’s homebrew and offering suggestions for improvement. That much is well-documented. Less well-documented is when the first friendly competition between members arose. But, people being people, we can confidently assume that it happened sometime within the first few months.

The annual in-house competition, complete with trash talk and deeded bragging rights, was well-established by the time I joined the club 19 years ago. It already had a name and a history. The name was in questionable taste even then and did not survive into our more-PC era. So now we just call it “the in-house competition”.

A decidedly non-PC trophy was also involved at that time. Subsequent efforts to replace it with a much more appropriate trophy – the brewing spoon used by the late Von Bair when making his many award-winning brews – have been less successful. Everyone loves the spoon, but the other … um … thing continues to live on. It has been censored in the winner’s photo.

(Don’t worry, folks. That thing really will disappear at some point. We aren’t complete cretins, and the spoon really is better.)

This year marks another break from the competition’s history. For the first time, we gave out two awards, one for beer and one for mead/cider. To some extent, this just recognizes the fact that we are making a lot more mead and cider than we used to. But it is also recognition that it’s really hard to judge one against the other on a Best-Of-Show table.

The competition was small this year, no doubt due to covid worries. But it was no less enthusiastic. Nor was there any shortage of fantastic brews in the running. One thing that has not changed at all in 46.5 years: we make damn good homebrew.

I had intended to write up the tasting notes. I may still scan them and attach the images. But I had my covid booster today and I lack the will to decipher the handwriting. Suffice to say that there wasn’t a bad brew in the mix.

Matt Jordan took Beer BOS with a Munich Helles which was grainy and clean and perfectly to style. Heaven in a bottle. But Mara Henek’s Saison – dry and spicy with just a hint of Brett – was so close behind it that we took a VERY long time to choose between the two. Two outstanding brews.

Andy Cox took home the Mead/Cider trophy with a New World Cider to die for. Nearly white in color and crystal clear, backsweetened just enough to take the edge off the acids, with an apple aftertaste that lasted forever.

Special thanks to the great folks at Reverie Brewing in Newtown for hosting us in their wonderful new event space at very short notice!

Congrats to our two winners! Start brewing for next year’s competition!

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We had our annual cider pressing on Nov 7. This is the event where we gather to buy fresh-pressed juice from heirloom cider apples, hand selected by Dan Beardsley at Beardsley Cider Mill in Shelton to make the best hard cider. As usual with homebrewer events, we tend to bring samples from last year’s pressing and have a bit of a party.

Like the last few years, this event was co-hosted with our sister club, Brew Haven. Combining the clubs makes the event much more fun.

Enormous thanks to Dan and the Beardsley crew for allowing us into their pressing room, and also to the organizers who did all the logistical heavy lifting. I know that Eric Sforza handled that for our club. Thanks, Eric!

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Photo credit: Matt Jordan (Thanks, Matt!)

For our October meeting, we returned to our roots. Our safe space. Our raison d’être.

We met in person (all vaxed, in a huge space with plenty of room and airflow) and we judged homebrew.

It felt good.

Why are we so judgy? Put simply, you cannot improve as a brewer if you don’t get good feedback. Blind judging gives brewers constructive criticism on the beer at hand. It also gives general advice for improving all homebrews. And finally, it trains the brewer’s palate, so the brewer can make informed decisions at home in the future.

It’s what we are. It’s what we do. We’ve been doing it for almost 50 years now. The past 18 months, when we could not do this, has been tough on the club. It’s good to be back.

Our venue was the back room at the wonderful New England Brewing Company (https://newenglandbrewing.com/). Greg Radawich was our host, providing us with the space and answering endless questions about NEBCo’s barrel program. Huge thanks to Greg and NEBCo for being so generous.

We also had a visit from Andy Orefice, one of the leaders of our sister club, Brew Haven, who brought us up to date on our upcoming co-hosted events, the cider pressing and the holiday party. You can tell which one he is in the pictures because he’s wearing a jacket and tie. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a jacket and tie at an Underground Brewers meeting before.

We had 6 homebrews to judge, beer and cider. From the scores below, you can see that the pandemic has not blunted our abilities to make great homebrew. Unfortunately, we seem to be out of practice on the note-taking part. I find no names attached to the brews in the tasting notes. So the brewers will have to remain anonymous this time. We’ll get back on this horse.

• Kolsch: A bit dark and full-bodied, some phenols. 7/2/10/2/5 = 26
• Czech Pils: Slightly cloudy, clean and hoppy. 9/2/12/4/6 = 33
• Weissbier: A bit thin and bitter, great nose. 9/3/11/4/6 = 33
• New World Cider: Somewhat sweet, tons of Brett. 6/6/15/6 = 33
• New World Cider: Hazy, refreshing clean apple flavor. 5/7/19/7 = 38
• Porter: Banana nose, a bit too sweet. 6/3/10/3/5 = 27

The annual club picnic used to be an important event in the club calendar. It sort of fell away in popularity long before COVID hit us. So this year, we have to thank Pierre Margraff and his wonderful fiancé, Kim, for being brave enough to host a picnic for us on Sept 11.

On the day, we had a very good turnout with all the nicest club members in attendance. The weather wasn’t too hot and it wasn’t too cold and it didn’t rain either. We had lots of good food and beer and the conversations weren’t bad either.

Many thanks to Pierre and Kim for their very gracious hospitality and to all those who participated in making this such an enjoyable event.

Hopefully, we can have another club picnic again next year.

Vaccination rates are up. Masks are no longer required for groups of vaccinated people. Bars and breweries are returning to full capacity.

In short, we can meet in person again!

Our first regular, in-person meeting will be on the 3rd Wednesday of July. We will do our normal stuff: judge each other’s homebrew, talk about brewing, enjoy each other’s company. Get on the mailing list to find out where.

And now that we are doing things again, we need volunteers to coordinate those things. Several slots are currently open. Head on over to the Facebook group to find out what we need done.

The Underground Brewers hold onto the Connecticut Club Trophy with a win by Matt Jordan! His Munich Helles took Best Of Show in the CT Club Competition in March. The club keeps the hardware and Matt wins a carload of awesome prizes.

Huge thanks to Brew Haven for running a successful competition despite myriad COVID-related restrictions and difficulties. Thanks also to NEBCo for hosting and to all the judges.

Looking forward to next year. Can we make it a three-peat?

It’s been a long time since our last post. Not because we haven’t been active. Just because, without our usual monthly in-person meetings, it’s hard to keep to a regular publishing schedule.

Since our last post, six months ago, we’ve had a number of safe in-person get-togethers. Most have been informal meet-ups, outdoors at local breweries. I, for one, was delighted to see familiar faces in real life. We also participated, with Brew Haven, in our annual bottle share while picking up apple juice at Beardsley’s Cider Mill. And a number of us have co-brewed at each others’ homes. We may not be having our regular meetings, but we are finding safe ways to carry on.

Winter brings special challenges since it makes outdoor activities more difficult. Co-brews are still happening, of course. But we will have to find a safe way to choose our 3 entries for the CT Club Competition without, you know, freezing to death. Meet-ups at breweries should resume once the weather gets warmer.

Now that vaccines exist and we have a rough idea of the schedule for administering them, we know that we won’t be able to resume all of our normal club activities until the fall. That’s a bit long to just keep “muddling through”, as we’ve been doing. So we plan to embark on a schedule of more formal zoom-based activities over the next 8 to 10 months. Brew Haven has been doing this rather successfully and we hope to learn from their example.

In short, we’re still here, still brewing, still getting together (if less formally). Watch this space for new developments as we regain momentum in the new year.