Next meeting

With Christmas quickly approaching, it's the time of year when no one has time for much of anything other than putting up decorations and spending way too much money on gifts, so we will not have a meeting in December. We will, however, have a meeting/belated Christmas party at some point in January at The Hop Shack in Bucyrus.

Have a safe and happy holiday season, everyone!

Club Brew

I finished reading up on the reiteration mash technique and have the processes under control for our Barley Wine Club Brew. We need to finalize the recipe and find a date when we can all get together and brew. After reviewing the reiteration mashing technique with everyone, I'd like to propose a few small changes to simplify the process a bit. I'll see everyone at the next meeting.

Next meeting will be on Monday, 10/19...

...pending John's attendance. He, Rod and Chad all paid to participate in the Seibel Kit and as of yet none of them have tried any of samples. There are 10 samples left and as we learned at the last meeting, 10 samples will consume an entire meeting. Bring a 6'er of your favorite yellow fizzy beer.

The start time is negotiable considering that it's a work day. I'd like too shoot for around 6 or 6:30 pm. If you are planning to attend but are unable to make it by 6:30 please add a comment here or shoot me an email at kyle.klaiber@gmail.com.

This meeting will be at my house. I think you all know how to get here but if not, just let me know.

Another topic for discussion will be the location of the November meeting. Is a trip to someplace like Elevator, CBC, Barley's or The Pub an option?

Next meeting?

Any objections to having the next meeting (date to be determined) on a Monday evening?

Anyone else willing to host a meeting at their house please speak up. Or if you want to have a few meetings at restaurants again, please speak up.

My main goal is attendance and participation, I don't care where the meetings are.

August meeting

The August meeting will be on Friday, 8/28 at Kyle & Emily's house with a start time of around 6:30.

Next Meeting

There will be a poll posted regarding the next meeting date. With summer here it's sometimes difficult to get everyone's schedules to work out, but we should always shoot for the best attendance that we can. Choose ALL of the dates listed in the poll on which you will be able to attend. The date with the most votes will be the next meeting date. If you have suggestions for a date that is not in the poll, please email me with it and I will include that as an option as well.

The focus for the next meeting will be completing the Siebel tasting kit. The samples are perishable and need to be used. We can continue the BJCP category review at the following meeting with categories 11 and 12.

On tap for the 7/17 meeting...

...will be a Berliner Weisse and a Brown Porter.

I'll try to bottle some off for those who are unable to make the meeting. Speaking of which, let me know if you will be attending. John, Tony and Ned will not be. If anyone else can't make it I'm not opposed to pushing the meeting back 2 weeks to 7/31, but I'll need to know asap so that I can contact everyone.

July meeting reminder

Our July meeting is on Friday, 7/17 at Kyle and Emily's. We will get started around 6 pm and some agenda items are as follows:

Sensory kit tasting - we only got through 4 of the samples on 6/20, so bring some yellow fizzy beer and we'll go through some more of them. Kyle, Emily, John, Brett, Lowell, Aaron and Rod have paid for the sensory kit so far. If anyone else wants to participate in this tasting, please bring $20 to do so. As a notice, all future club purchases such as this will require payment up front before any purchase is to be made.

Review of BJCP categories 9 and 10. Feel free to bring homebrewed or commercial examples of any of the following styles within these categories.

If anyone needs my address, please email me.

I am a homebrewer

Some of the people at homebrewtalk.com put this together and I think that it turned out pretty well:

http://drop.io/homebrewer/asset/homebrewer-7-6-h-264-800kbps-mov

Pics from 6/20

Anheuser-Busch program on MSNBC

Just an FYI:

There was a program about Anheuser-Busch that aired on June 18, 2009. For those who missed it, here's the link.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/25348737/




and what another blogger's reaction

http://drinksnews.blogspot.com/2008/07/cnbc-presents-american-originals.html

Final preparations for 6/20

I heard back from AB today and I finally have an update regarding where to go at their facility:

"The address of the brewery is 700 Schrock Rd., Columbus, OH 43229 and the entrance you will use is at the intersection of Schrock Rd. and Busch Blvd. Once you pull into the entrance, turn right and head to the gate. At the gate, state that you're here for the Marion Homebrewers Tour and they'll let you in. You can park anywhere in the parking lot and I'll meet you in front of the small building on the North side of the lot. Please have all of the participants wear close-toed shoes and bring a ball cap for head covering. I'll provide safety glasses and earplugs. "

Closed-toed shoes and a ball cap. I will bring some hairnets from my work in case some don't want to wear a ball cap, but this is a food/beverage manufacturing plant - there are certain rules that have to be obeyed. This means no sandals, flip flops or any other footwear that does not entirely cover your feet. He didn't state this, but it is also best practice to remove all jewelry (watches, rings with stones, earrings, bracelets) with the exception of a plain wedding band, and to move anything you may have on your person into your pockets (cell phone on your belt, etc.).

The AB tour starts at 9:00 am. The GB tour will start whenever we can get there, but I have let him know that it *should* be around 11:30.

If you are riding with me, I'm leaving my house by 8am. If you're not there by 8, you're on your own. Hopefully we can leave a bit before 8.

Now onto the brewing! :D It should be a great day for brewing with temperatures in the 80's. Although there's a 30-40% chance of rain and some possible scattered thunderstorms (as of right now), there should be room for everyone in the garage. It's looking like the end product of Saturday's brew day could end up being as much as 40 gallons of beer!!!

My wife and I are providing burgers and chips, John is bringing some sausages, Ned is bringing buns, and Lowell will bring some ice to keep surplus kegs cold for us in the garage while we brew - he may also be doing up some brats. Anyone want to volunteer to bring some other picnic fare such as potato/macaroni salad, baked beans, etc. (or any other favorite dishes for that matter)? Lunch will probably be ready between 2:30 and 3:00, after we get back and get a couple of batches mashed in.

Remember, we will begin tasting the Siebel Institute Sensory Training Kit on Saturday. Bring $20 to participate, and pickup a 6 pack of your favorite yellow fizzy beer to dilute the samples in. Everyone will get a 3 or 4 oz pour of each of the 8 samples that we will be tasting, which equals roughly 2 beers. If there is time, we will be reviewing BJCP categories 9 and 10, so feel free to bring some commercial styles of these if you would like.

I want to stress that if you plan on drinking you need to have a ride lined up or stop drinking early enough that you can drive home when you need to leave. Be responsible, and if someone suggests to you that you may want to slow down if you're going to be driving home, please listen. We're all grown ups - the beer is provided free by many people but none of them are responsible for you and your actions... only you are. (Man, that sounded like one of those "The More You Know" commercials lol)

Lastly, I posted a poll regarding the beers that will be on tap - you can vote for 2 beers. Please vote in the poll if you haven't done so already. Update - I'm going to try to get the Brown and the Rye carbed up and bottled off and have the IPA and the Mild on tap, that way we can have all 4. :D

p.s. - as a token of thanks, it might not be a bad idea for each of us to bring a couple of brews to give to the guys at AB and GB who were gracious enough to make these tours possible.

Let's talk brew day recipe

I want to brew a light German style beer for our brew day. I've also been experimenting with toasting my own grains, so I'd like to incorporate that into this beer. Please critique and add input.
11 gallons:

16# Pils
2 # Vienna
1 # Vienna lightly toasted (275* for 30 min)

1 oz. Northern Brewer @ 60
.5 oz Hells/Hers @ 15
.5 Willamette @ 5

Pitch w/ 2 packets Nottingham and ferment low @ 60 for two weeks.

Looking forward to our brew day together.

Questions, comments....fire away.

Tours are full.

Here is the final list. If you or your spouse is not on this list that's because I didn't hear back from you. If your spouse wants to come but isn't on the list, please let me know and I'll get with AB and see if we can add 1 or 2 but he had prevously told me 15. Adding people to the GB tour will not be an issue.

Two new club members will be joining us on the tours - Bill and Jason (and his wife). Welcome, Bill and Jason!

Kyle/Emily
Lowell
John/Jeni
Brett/Beth
Ned
Tony/Alice
Rod
Chad/Eva
Jason & wife
Aaron

Equipment needed for 6/20

Both John and Aaron will be bringing kegs of beer with them to the group brew day on 6/20. I only have one 5# CO2 tank, so we will need a way to push beer out of their kegs. If anyone has a CO2 tank that they can bring with either a dual manifold or a single manifold and a splitter it would be greatly appreciated.

FWIW, I will be brewing my annual IIPA, Hopacles '09, on 6/20. If you've never seen 30 oz of hops go into a 5g batch of beer before, you won't want to miss it. :D

John, you really need to add a post here now and then, I don't want to be the only MALTZ member that contributes to the blog! :) If anyone else has something that they want to contribute regularly, please let me know and I'll add you to the list of authorized posters to the blog.

Sensory Training kit update

The good news is that the kit is in. The bad news is that they recommend using all of the perishable samples within 60 days (I think 90 will probably be safe), so we'll need to complete the kit over the next 3 gatherings (6/20, 7/17 and the following meeting).

Sampling of the kit was not planned for 6/20, but it appears that there will be very good attendance, so we'll start the sampling then. Siebel recommends that each sample be introduced to approximately 1 liter of relatively neutral beer and then poured for sampling. That's a bit less than 3 beers per sample to get the proper dilution, so everyone bring a 6 pack of their favorite cheapo BMC (Budweiser/Miller/Coors) swill on 6/20 to mix with the samples! :D

Please bring $20 (no checks, grain or hops accepted :D) with you on 6/20 to cover the cost of the kit.

As a follow up, some of you still need to confirm attendance for the tours and the brewing sessions on 6/20. I have a potential club member from the Marysville area who would like to attend the tours, but I have told him that I need to make sure that there is an open spot first. If I do not hear from some of you by the end of next week I will contact you individually. If I do not hear back from you then I will assume that you will not be attending either the tours or the brew session.

Please update your status for 6/20 by leaving a comment here or by emailing me at kyle.klaiber@gmail.com.

Who's brewing what on 6/20?

Before we dig into who's brewing what, I want to remind anyone that is planning on riding down to the tours with me that I'm leaving my house at 8am at the latest. If you're not there then you'll need to drive yourself down. So far there are 3 riding down with me and I still have room for 3 more.

Let's get a list together of who's brewing on 6/20 and what they will be brewing. Let me know if you will be brewing and what you plan on brewing and I will update this entry accordingly. So far I know that the following people will be *brewing* on 6/20:

John - 10g German Ale
Chad James -
Kyle - 5g Hopacles '09, 5g or 10g English IPA
Lowell - 5g or 10g Brown Porter, 5g Rauchbier

Anyone is welcome to brew. Extract, PM, AG - it doesn't matter. Here are the things that I have and/or can provide some access to during the brew day:

Marion city water (I've never had any water issues with my beers)
2 Digital Thermometers
3 digital timers
refractometer
3/8" & 5/8" ID tubing
3/16" ID tubing (beer line)
2 picnic taps (in case anyone wants to bring kegged beer to share)
Misc. brewing equipment (auto siphons, funnels, mash paddle, etc.)
5.5g kettle for heating strike/sparge water
Iodophor
Digital scale (reads to 100th of an oz or in grams)

If you need something that you do not see above, please bring it along with you. If you *ARE* going to brew, you will need to provide your own ingredients (grain, yeast, hops, extract, fining agent, etc.), propane, burner, boil kettle, MLT/HLT and primary fermenters (carboys, buckets).

Sensory Training Kit

The Sensory Training kit has been ordered and should arrive early next week. The total cost for the kit (including shipping) is $195.60, as they only ship it next day air in an effor to keep the contents cool ($35.60 for shipping). Let's call it $20 per person (or $30 per couple) for those that want to participate in sampling the kit and whatever is contributed over the $195.60 will go into the club fund for future events.

We will sample a couple of these off flavors in our July meeting at Kyle's house on 7/17 starting at 6:30 pm. If you need the address, please email me at kyle.klaiber@gmail.com.

In addition to starting the sensory evaluation kit, we will be reviewing the following BJCP styles:

9 - Scottish and Irish Ale
9A - Scottish Light 60
9B - Scottish Heavy 70
9C - Scottish Export 80
9D - Irish Red Ale
9E - Strong Scotch Ale

10 - American Ale
10A - American Pale Ale
10B - American Amber Ale
10C - American Brown Ale

As always, spouses are welcome to attend and if you would like to bring someone new, please contact Kyle or Emily before doing so. With 4 young children you can never be too careful.

Food dishes and commercial/homebrewed examples of the styles that we will be reviewing are also welcome. Follow the links above to the BJCP style guidelines for names of commercial examples of beers in these styles.

Tour/Brew Update #2

AB tour is set to start at 9am on 6/20, and the GB tour is set for 11:30.

So far I have the following as attendees, please let me know if this list needs to be adjusted, as I will need to give them a definite headcount before the tours.

Kyle/Emily
Lowell
John
Brett/Beth
Ned
Tony/Alice
Bill
Rod
Chad
Jason & wife
Aaron

I will be ordering the tasting kit today. We can take 1 or 2 flavors per meeting and set aside some time to discuss them, or if anyone else has ideas regarding this please speak up!

Email notifications for updates

If you would like to receive an email notification when a new entry has been added to the MALTZ Homebrew site, please let me know in the comments section here, or shoot me an email at kyle.klaiber@gmail.com.

You don't have to sign up for a blog to leave comments. If you have a gmail account, or any other OpenID account with sites like AOL, Facebook, Microsoft, MySpace and Yahoo, you can use it to log in and leave comments.

Please check back here once a week or so for updates if you do not wish to be notified via email, or you might miss something!

AB/GB tour updates

I heard back from both AB and GB and the tours are a go for 6/20. The AB guy still needs to get back to me regarding a start time, but it will either be at 9 AM or at 10 AM. He said that the tour typically lasts 2 hours, depending on how many questions there are.

I can get 6 people in my truck in addition to my wife and I. Anyone who wants to meet at my house beforehand and then ride with me is welcome, just let me know.

The tour at Gordon Biersch in the Arena District will immediately follow the AB tour, then the REAL FUN begins! AG Brew session at my house. If you need the address, email me. I'm hoping that we will be able to get started at about 2pm.

I'm going to crush my grains beforehand so that we can hit the ground running when we get back from the tours and we should have wort heating to a boil around 90 minutes later. I still haven't decided what I will be brewing yet but I will try to get in at least 3 batches, and John will be brewing as well. This will be a great learning opportunity for those who are looking to make the move to all grain. If you are unable to make the tours, but would like to attend the brew session, get me a phone number and I will call you when we leave, that way you're not sitting and waiting in my driveway on the chance that the tours run a little long.

I will pick up some normal picnic fare (burgers, hot dogs) to grill up while the mash(es) are going. Please either bring a dish to share with the group, or pitch in for the burgers and dogs.

I plan on leaving GB immediately after the tour to get back to the house and brew. If you want to eat at GB (link on the right of the page) feel free to do so, just make sure that you have a way to get home or to my house. I realize that from 9am to 2 pm is a bit of a stretch, but with grain already crushed, I'll be cooking burgers and dogs within 30 minutes of getting back to the house.

As always, comment, email or call with questions.

6th Annual SODZ British Beerfest Competition

I was sent this information by the SODZ president and wanted to pass it along. I will not be able to attend, but wanted to pass the information along.

http://www.sodz.org/BBF%202009%20Flyer.htm

AB/GB tours and 6/20 brew day

***Summary - both tours and brew day on 6/20, meetings will continue on weekends***

Thanks to everyone who replied to let me know which dates did and didn't work for you regarding the tours. There was only 1 person who stated that they would not be able to make the tours on 6/20 and all other dates had multiple members who would not be able to make it, so I have sent off emails to my contacts at both Anheuser Busch and Gordon Biersch to see if we can get the tours scheduled for Saturday, 6/20.

I have requested that the AB tour start somewhere between 9 am and 10 am. Once I receive confirmation from AB regarding how long the tour will last, I will try to coordinate the GB tour to follow approximately 30 minutes later (that should give us plenty of time to get from Worthington to the Arena District).

I'm *guessing* that each tour will take approximately 1 hour, but I haven't had that information confirmed yet.

We will also be doing a group brew day at my house on 6/20 after the tours. We should be able to get back to my house and be started by 2pm or so at the latest, possibly earlier depending upon how long the tours last. This will be a great opportunity for some of you to observe all grain brewing, as there will be at least 3 batches going.

I realize that this makes for a long day, but please don't feel like you need to stay for everything. For those of you interested in seeing the AG process, you can come back to my house after the tours, hang out for 60-90 minutes and just about everything you need to see. Once the boil starts, it's not much different than what you're doing now (minus any extract and/or steeping) - add hops, fining agent, chill and pitch.

The consensus on meeting nights is to stay with weekend evenings, so that's what we will do. Having said that, I am booked so solid with my kids and softball that I will not be organizing any club activities between now and the tours on 6/20. If anyone else would like to take the lead and plan a meeting between now and then, please let me know.

Tentative 6/20 brew day

This is subject to change, but I'm going to try to get a group brew day at my house on 6/20. Since it's still 7+ weeks out I don't have an idea of what I'll be brewing yet. I typically start brewing around 9:00 am and I always do at least 2 batches, sometimes more.

Anyone else who wants to bring their equipment and brew a batch of their own is welcome to do so!

As this date approaches I'll pull some recipes together and probably do a brew to match up with a BJCP category review at a future meeting.

If you are interested in attending, please let me know by commenting on this post.

-Kyle

MALTZ notes for May 2009 - contact policy update

In addition to the Anheuser-Busch tour, I also have a tour of Gordon Biersch lined up as well. I should know for sure by Wednesday, but right now the plan is to do both tours on 6/6 starting at AB in the mid-morning, then going to GB.

If I'm able to finalize everything for them, the tours will replace our normal monthly meeting for May.

Feel free to email individuals, I just don't want to see the emails to every member continuing as they have. As we grow and get more members, all those emails are going to get way too confusing.

(...and yes, I see the unfortunate irony in sending out an email to everyone asking them to stop sending emails to everyone lol)

March Meeting

Our March '09 meeting will once again be held at Ralphie's (1833 Marion-Mt. Gilead Road in Marion) on Friday 3/27. We will be starting at 6pm this month and we will be reviewing BJCP styles 1 through 6.