February 2017 Summary
Greetings MaSHers and friends!
It was nice to see you all at the meeting. Thank you Jim for an excellent presentation Overview of Water and Brewing with some simple tips and tricks we can all easily implement. Electronic format of Jim’s handout is up on the Knowledge page. I certainly learned some things that I’ll be changing around in my process, primarily using the additives more correctly.
Congrats to Rick for winning the mid-quarter popular vote brew with his Belgian golden. It was delicious and certain to get even better with some age.
Quarterly Style dropoff for Q1 2017 is March 11th, the Saturday before the next meeting which is March 15th. The style of the quarter is lagers. I’m looking forward to seeing all the different entries and what people chose to brew. The flexibility with such a broad category makes things interesting.
We are starting a tasting group for anyone interested. Please note that there is an assumption you intend, at some point, to take the BJCP exam. It’s not required to join us in the group but it would be great to have more judges in the club. Plus as a judge you learn a lot about beer styles and brewing, you get to go to great events and hang out with even greater people. The first meeting is potentially next week on Wed if everyone can make it, otherwise it will be the following week on March 8th. Location will likely change based on who is hosting and each session will be led by at least one of the club judges. Hunting for and purchasing the beers for the group is required. At the end receipts are reviewed and money donated by participants to even out any spending on the brews. Things are pretty reasonably priced until you get to sours and barrel aged.
For anyone considering brewing with something other than hops Hoppy Bear farms is a good source of herbs and spices. They sent the club a sample of hops and yarrow a couple years ago and I used the yarrow in a batch of blonde ale. It came out very nice. Recently they sent the club a 10% discount code if anyone is interested. They use all organic growing methods. Additionally they’ve used a number of herbs and spices in brews and provide the result information on their site. Please use promo code club17 and receive a 10% discount on your orders.
2017 Marin County Fair – Save the dates! Judging will be on June 10 & 11. I hope a large number of club members can make it to help. You don’t need to judge, stewarding and helping with organization is also very helpful. On top of the pleasure of helping the club earn a few bucks and run a great event you’ll get tickets to the fair as well just for helping out. For those interested in helping sort the deadline for dropoff is May 27th so we’ll be sorting things shortly after that. Maybe that weekend but if not certainly during the week after.
Bob Casey has a free refrigerator available to the first person to respond wanting it. A post is up on facebook as well. Let me know at marinmashers@gmail.com and I will put you in touch with Bob.
Upcoming Events, these are also on the Events page calendar on the site:
2017 Napa Homebrewers Classic! This great event is just around the corner. Best of Show judging and the big fundraising event is March 4th. Full details are on the events page.
Also upcoming is the World Cup of Beer! Registration is open with entries due March 9th. This is another great competition to enter and to help with if you can. I volunteered the club and our judges to help with preliminary judging. More details on that as we get closer to the event, and if we’re asked to judge, as well as a call to any novice judges that would like to help.
Annual Dues are due for those that haven't yet paid. Check out that sweet orange button at the bottom of the page for just this purpose.
Bottom's Up,
Damien
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