Category: Meeting notes

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.

A lot is going on in the world right now. Like most clubs, we are still meeting digitally for the time being, which does limit what we can do in terms of giving each other feedback. We are also competing for attention and mind-share with other, arguably more important, events.

Regardless of that, we are still here. We are still meeting each month. We are still offering each other advice and support. Small sub-groups have started to meet in socially-distant ways.

If you brew and you live in New Haven or Fairfield Counties, and you would like to know more about us and what we do, please reach out. We’re here now, and we’ll still be here when we can meet in person again.

Just because we could not meet in person doesn’t mean we couldn’t meet at all. Club hero Andy Cox got us set up on Zoom for a night of talk and sharing a few beers. Huge thanks to Andy. We soldier on.

Not pictured: a brief appearance from Tom Fenton, all the way from Bangkok! Our first inter-continental meeting!

Last time, it was kind of a joke.

Everybody had the flu in January. Had to cancel the meeting. Called it a “pandemic”. Ha ha.

This time, it’s real, I guess. And, while it’s not the Zombie Apocalypse, it’s bad enough.

The Governor and the CDC and every mom in America says, “Stay home!” So we’re staying home.

No meeting in March.

We’ll catch up in April. Until then, keep brewing and stay healthy.

On Feb 19, the Underground Brewers gathered around the long tables in the Veracious Brewing tap room to perform a most solemn duty: to select the 3 beers which would move on to the next round of the CT Inter-Club Championship Competition. Since we hold the cup for the current year, the pressure was on to select 3 beers with excellent chances of winning.

There were 12 to choose from: 4 singles, 2 dubbels, 3 tripels, and 3 quads. (At least 2 other singles were known to exist but failed to arrive on the evening in question. We’ll never know if one of those could have bested the 12 on the table.)

The judges took their duties seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they were shaving half-points this way and that when assigning scores to the entries. There was some agreement, some disagreement, and some heated discussion.

In the end, 3 entries were duly chosen. The styles and the brewers’ identities should remain somewhat under wraps until the competition finals in late March. But you might be able to guess at some of them by perusing the tasting notes below.

With that task out of the way, the group went on to judge ANOTHER 8 or 10 homebrews. (And a few commercial beers. And some excellent Veracious beer left for us by Mark and Tess.) I won’t even try to decipher the scribe’s handwriting on these beers. You are free to check out the notes yourself.

Overall, a wonderful evening. As always, the club owes and enormous debt of gratitude to Mark and Tess, Maltose Express, and Veracious Brewing, for hosting and supporting us the way they do.

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On the afternoon of Feb 16, 12 eager judges sat for one of the first BJCP Cider Judge tasting exams at Veracious Brewing in Monroe.

Our very own Andy Tipler was the driving force for this event, handling most of planning for the exam and for the several study sessions beforehand. James Link was the official Organizer, running the exam itself and interfacing with the BJCP. Eric Sforza was the cellarmaster, preparing and pouring a number of doctored ciders for us. Steve Victor and Mark Tambascio were our proctors.

Examinees included Underground Brewers new and old – some second generation – plus others from as far away as Boston and Syracuse.

For 2+ hours, we tasted and wrote and wrote some more, filling out our scoresheets as best we could. Each cider was subjected to rigorous analysis, each flaw dissected.

Now we wait, probably for 4 or 5 months, to find out if we passed.

Huge thanks to Andy, Jim, Eric, Steve, and Mark for making this possible. Thanks also to the Szamatulskis for the use of the Veracious tap room and to Ron Sansone of Spoke & Spy Ciderworks who provided tutoring, endless study samples, and encouragement.