September Recap

Post date: Oct 28, 2014 9:53:41 PM

All was quiet at the speakeasy...until about 7 o’clock when it filled with enthusiastic homebrewers who could hardly wait to sample the oktoberfest and tea-inspired beers to be featured that night. With 18 in attendance, including 5 newcomers, Wayne and Matt were the only one’s to bring a homebrewed oktoberfest, Wayne’s being a blended oktoberfest and Matt’s was an imperial oktoberfest. There was no shortage of oktoberfest’s however as we shared a few of the classic examples as listed in the BJCP including Ayinger Oktober Fest-Marzen, BBC and Sam Adams Octoberfest beers.

The tea experiment followed the brief oktoberfest sampling with quite a diverse array of beers. Dave and Brian made a brett-fermented saison with matcha green tea, Chris used jasmine in an IPA, Ryan also went with green tea but made a braggot, Matt brought back his black tea and blueberry beer and Jesse went all-out in true experiment fashion by bringing a control beer with 5 variations of using a blend of teas (you’ll have to ask him how he did it, but we voted #3 as the best).

Aside from oktoberfest and tea beers, there was a fantastic array of commercial and homebrewed beers to sample. Newcomer Wes brought a Munich IPA, Dave and Brian brought a smores beer (stout), Jeff and Brian shared a Saison aged on blackberries, Sean had a German hefeweizen, Bob brought “Ale”, Bill had an IPA and who could forget Tim’s Awesomesauce 2.0 and Ectoplasm . On the commercial side, Chris brought 2 bottles of beer that we couldn’t pronounce or spell even while looking at the bottle, Paul brought a Gandhi-bot and our gracious host Ryan generously shared his 4 homebrews, a cider, a “Bovarian” pale ale, a pale with San Diego yeast and a pale ale with S-05. Lastly, we cannot forget to Thank Ryan (and his wife Meredith) for snacks to help get us thru the night.

The October meeting is confirmed for Friday, the 24th in Meriden at a member’s home (there will be rum ham), look for the email invite. October’s style: Belgian Tripel.

Brew on!