Category: Meeting notes

We continued our run of “virgin hosts” in October with a meeting at Robert Burger’s home in Branford. Bob may be on the far eastern fringe of our club footprint, but he has the cutest kids on the planet and he serves candied bacon at meetings. In other words, we’ll be back. Often.

An unusual number of newbies attended, mostly invited by Nurse. Once upon a time, newbies would be new brewers who had done a couple of extract-based kits on the stovetop. That’s certainly where I was when I joined the group. Now, they arrive as all-grain brewers with lots of experience and excellent brews to judge. The tasting notes which follow bear this out.

Bob, himself, showed us all up with an outstanding raspberry Berliner weisse made via acid malt and sour mash. Just a fantastic beer. We forgave him for making the rest of us look bad only because he sent us home with samples from his keg.

Handy Andy was close behind with a straight Berliner and a dark mild, both just fantastic beers. The mild, in particular, drew many envious comments. How do you get this much flavor in a small beer?

Candied bacon, raspberry sour, dark mild, and newbies: all in all, a fantastic meeting!

The September meeting was held at Mara’s house in Bridgeport, her first time hosting our motley crew. Awesome meeting: an excellent spread, some newbie members, and some fantastic brews to judge. We’ll definitely have to go back there.

Before the meeting proper, we got a tour of the brewery. Jealously factor: extreme. Induction heating units, automated keg washer, and, best of all, a homemade glycol-chilled, stainless steel fermenter. Outrageous.

Chatter during the meeting was uncharacteristically brewing-related and geeky. Even the newest members seem to possess extremely detailed knowledge about micro-organism strains, enzyme levels, hop varieties, and all kinds of other things we oldsters never knew. I’m not saying we used to just dump and stir back in the day. But I’ll admit that these kids are intimidating.

Not least because their beers are so damn good. Herewith, the tasting notes:

The July meeting at Dan Mages’ house featured a special guest presentation by Mary Izett, ably supported by Chris Cuzme, who drove all the way up from Brooklyn to be with us.

Many of you know Mary and Chris as brewers, judges, and competition organizers from the NYC area. The ran the NYC region of the National Homebrew Competition First Round this year. In fact, they did it so well that I wrote a long post about how enjoyable it was. (I would post a link to the article here if I wasn’t just a WordPress numnutz. You can search for it in the archives.) They host and produce the Fuhmentaboudit! podcast. Chris was, until recently, the head brewer at the 508 gastropub. Chris and Mary recently formed Cuzett Libations to gypsy brew all kinds of fermented liquids.

More to the point, Mary just published a book: Speed Brewing: Techniques and Recipes for Fast-Fermenting Beers, Ciders, Meads, and More. This isn’t just about brewing beer faster, although that’s part of it. The book also explores a number of other fermented beverages — kombucha, kefir, sodas, teas, short meads, etc. — all of which can be brewed very quickly and drunk fresh in a week or two. These are all low-alcohol beverages and mostly quite thirst-quenching. Very tempting as we head into the hot part of summer.

Mary spoke about the book and the motivations behind it, giving us insight into what kinds of beverages work well and why you might want to brew them. She brought samples of 3 different recipes: a fermented jasmine tea, a short mead, and a cider. All of them had been brewed within the last 2 – 3 weeks and none had more than 5% abv. All were delicious and flavorful. Based on these samples, I am guessing that this book will be a big hit.

Chris also shared with us Cuzett Libations’ “Revenge Of The Emu”, a heavily-hopped Kolsch-like beer. That was also extremely yummy.

So a huge Yahoos thank you to Mary and Chris for the long trip, the excellent talk, and the delicious samples!

Of course, we also did our regular Yahoos thing and judged some homebrew. Tasting notes are below. Colin was the clear winner for the evening, clocking a 42 for a cider and a 40 for an American Strong.

As usual, the June meeting was our in-house club competition, The Chief Paleface And Ale Competition. And, as usual, John Watson took Best Of Show. But he had some serious competition this year, with outstanding entries by a number of brewers. Mara’s Brett Saison and Dan’s Dry-Hopped Strong Saison were right behind John’s Helles. It was very close.

Judging requires a full stomach. So we enjoyed a pot-luck dinner along with all the outstanding homebrews. Yahoos sure can cook. An excellent night all around.

Well, not quite. We got some sad news that night. It was member Dan Cole’s last Yahoos meeting. He’s leaving our fair state for a new job in Virginia. Dan, we wish you well, but we’ll miss you!

Tasting notes below. Sorry, I know they are a mess. I indicated brewers’ names and which moved on to the BOS round as best I could.

It finally happened. I finally managed to attend a meeting hosted by Dan “Top Chef” Cole. Those of you who missed it really missed out. As always, Dan’s cooking was outstanding: steamed mussels, porchetta, tomato bisque — we chowed down like starving hyenas. Thank you, Dan!

Fewer homebrews to judge than at the last several meetings. But almost all were excellent. We actually got into a heated discussion about giving scores over 40 and how often that should happen. If any beer deserves a score that high, it is Mara’s Brett Saison — citrusy, spicy, super dry, Brett not overwhelming, very refreshing. Perfect complement to the mussels and porchetta. (So, of course, we had to chow down again.)

Another heated discussion concerned the new style guidelines and how we will combine them into categories for SNERHC. There are simply too many new categories to give 3 ribbons for each. We can combine some based on our guesses about how many entries each will attract. Or we can use one of the “new styles sorted into old categories” lists out of the appendix of the new guidelines.

We came to no conclusions, and this topic will keep coming up. If you haven’t yet downloaded the new style guidelines, I urge you to do so now (http://www.bjcp.org). Start reading through them. They are long, and it’s not that many months until SNERHC. You’ll need to be familiar with them before you judge.

In that same vein, we need to choose a set of guidelines for the upcoming in-house competition on June 10. Check the announcements mailing list for the official ruling on that.

Tasting notes:

Dr. Pivo and Sue were gracious hosts, as they always are, and the April meeting was delightful. Everyone took the “Cider” theme to heart, bringing many varied ciders and cysers for judging. In fact, we had only 2 beers all night. We were saddened by the absence of Dan Beardsley, whose juice produced most of the ciders, due to a freak volleyball injury. But we carried on without him.

Tasting notes:

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The February meeting at Ernie’s house was a tremendous success. Besides the usual judging of homebrews and sharing of commercial beer, we had a special presentation by Doug Gladue. Doug reprised the talk on yeast he had given at the NHC last year. Extremely well-received. It generated a LOT of questions and discussion. Thank you, Doug.

Not a lot of homebrews were judged. Most were excellent. Except my Vienna lager, which was very green (only 8 days in the bottle) and soundly hammered.

After the judging was over, some of us overstayed our welcome, only leaving at the stroke of midnight. (No word on whether any glass slippers were found.) I managed to forget the scoresheets but Ernie took pics and sent them along. Thank you, Ernie.

The November meeting was held at Pivo’s house in New Haven. As usual, we had a number of truly excellent homebrews to judge. Very unusually, we also had a presentation on a beer style by Handy Andy.

The tasting notes are attached below. You’ll notice that all of the scores are above average. I don’t know if this means we are getting better as brewers or worse as judges. I’m hoping it’s the former. Either way, we didn’t taste a bad beer or cider all night.

Andy’s presentation on Gose was a huge success. So much so, we are planning more such presentations in the future. Andy has already posted his lecture slides to the Facebook group but I’m including my notes here just to show that I was paying attention.

We have a major problem!!

The October meeting, hosted by Steve Medd and his lovely wife at their home in Danbury, featured a ton of excellent homebrews. Really, truly excellent.

I finally found the time to scan in the tasting notes for posting here. And when I did, I realized that almost all of the scores are missing the brewer’s name. Oops.

If you recognize your beer here, let me know and I’ll identify you properly.

Sorry.

  

Just back from Dan and Alison Mages’ home and the September meeting. As usual, Dan went overboard on the food, with excellent cheese and bread and pickles and a wonderful tabouleh-like thing. Delicious.

Dan also showed off the swag he’s collected for SNERHC prizes. Completely over the top. SNERHC winners will be very happy. I can’t imagine how much time he must have spent wrangling this stuff out of the hop farms, brewers, equipment makers, and wholesalers he has persuaded to donate. Thank you, Dan!

The homebrews we judged were also over the top. Almost everything scored in the high 30s and some reached the low 40s. Absolutely outstanding brews. You shoulda been there.

Unfortunately, I’m an utter numbnutz when it comes to WordPress. I have no idea how to insert a table and fill it with the tasting notes. So I’m going to just give you the highlights here. Maybe someone who knows WordPress can fix this for me later.

• American Wheat with Mosaic hops, brewed by Pastry Dan, scored 37. Melon and juicy fruit aromas. Well-attenuated. Mouth-filling. Much more interesting than your standard American wheat. A very yummy, drinkable beer.
• Witbier, brewed by Pastry Dan, scored 30. Phenolic, grainy aroma. Lots of coriander in flavor. Dry finish. Bottle was a gusher which stirred up the yeast. Dan says other bottles have been better.
• Biere de table, brewed by Pastry Dan, scored 40. Second runnings of the wit. Clean, bright, fresh nose full of noble hops. Lemony flavor. Clean, quick finish. 3% abv. Very drinkable.
• Flanders Red with mulberries, brewed by Handy Andy, scored 42. Outstanding Flanders red base with a strong sour nose and balanced dry finish. Perfect acetic/lactic balance. Mulberries evident in aroma and flavor. Mmmmmmm.
• Belgian Dubbel, brewed by Ted (I think, notes unclear), scored 32. Clovey, phenolic nose. Malty sweetness. Hints of licorice. Lacks carbonation.
• American Stout, brewed by Colin, scored 35. Rich, dark, roasty, malty nose. Excellent malty sweetness up front. Could use a bit more hop bitterness in finish. Extremely flavorful.
• Imperial Stout with coffee and cacao, brewed by Handy Andy, scored 34. Strong aged alcohol nose with some coffee and cacao. Port wine character in flavor. More of an old ale than an RIS. Flavorful but not to style. Perhaps has passed its prime.
• Strawberry mead, brewed by Colin, scored 28. Aroma lacks honey florals, contains a bit of funk. Not much strawberry evident in aroma or flavor. Totally drinkable. Good first try at mead.

That’s all! I’m hoping Handy Andy has some photos we can post later.