June 2016 meeting recap

Post date: Sep 23, 2016 3:32:01 PM

Middlesex Malters

June 2016 Meeting Recap

June’s meeting of the Middlesex Malters was a good one. The meeting was at Mac650 on Main St in Middletown. Thanks to Bill for making sure all went well. Our hosts gave us the key and said to lock up when we were done. Attendance was light with about 10 members + a few extra friends at the end(my wife/ride home.) Once most members were there, we learned from the past meeting and decided to lock the door - much easier to not let stragglers in than kick them out.

Our June style of the month was… Cream Ale. We had 1 homebrewed cream ale from Tim, which was his non-hoppy version. There might be another version that’s hoppy out in the wild called Global Warming and I might have have ½ growler of it left in my fridge[edit-nope, not any more.]

Since we had no more homebrewed cream ales, we moved onto the our quarterly experiment. This quarter’s experiment was the same grain bill using Brian A’s recipe, but a single different hop for each one.

• • Bill - Mosaic: Bill used what’s been called the “slutty hop”, Mosaic. It really is a great hop and Bill’s smelled very nice.

  • Tim - Azzaca: Tim’s hop of choice was Azzaca and it was yet another nice beer.

  • Jesse - Australian Ella: I used a hop that Foundation uses for their Epiphany IPA.

  • Paul - Cascade: For me the surprise of the experiment. Cascade is relatively cheap, easily available, and been around for ever, so it tends to not be viewed as new or modern, but Paul’s Cascade IPA was very good with a nice, light spice to it.

  • Brian A - Equinox: Brian’s beers are always excellent and this was no exception.

The surprise for me with all of these was I expected way more aroma from all of them except Cascade. The other big surprise we realized when we were going through the entries was that no one picked what is arguably the hottest hop out there right now, Citra.

Speaking of Citra, we then opened up Jim’s excellent, excellent homebrewed Citra/Mosaic IPA. My personal favorite beer of the evening. Awesome job, Jim. And since we’re talking about Jim, we should note he did a stellar job of providing the group with some musical entertainment. He was in the zone.

We then sampled Al’s delicious ginger apple cider, which did seem like a nice mix of ginger ale and cider. I(Jesse) shared the crazy milk wine I made after trying Ron’s a few months ago. Jim then served his oaked porter. Bill pulled out his Wyeast 3203 De Bom apricot sour he’s been aging for about a year now. I sampled this last year and would say the De Bom yeast did most of the work within the first 30 days.

We then moved onto sample commercial beers.

All in all, we had a great time. There are rumors that the party continued afterwards at Krust and Eli’s. I hear through the grapevine that Ryan C at 3 pizza’s himself at Krust.

July Meeting

The July meeting will be a great one. It will be held at 159 Oak St, Meriden on July 22nd. Our style of the month will be a great summer beer with Kolsch. If you haven’t started, there’s still time to brew one this weekend as a Kosch will ferment out quickly, it’s just the lagering to clear it that takes time.

August Meeting

Brian H has graciously volunteered his home for our August meeting. We are still finalizing details and will have an update next month.

September Meeting

The September meeting style is sour beer, which is always a favorite. If you are still thinking of making something for it, there is a bit of time if you try something like De Bom(mentioned above) or kettle souring.

Other stuff

The Rest Of The Year

If you are ever wondering what’s coming up for the rest of the year, you can always check the club homepage at http://www.middlesexmalters.com/

2016 National Homebrewers Conference

Tim, Al & I had a fantastic time at 2016 National Homebrewers Conference/HomebrewCon in Baltimore. We all met up with various beer celebrities. I met Justin, Beevo, & Mike “Tasty” McDole from The Brewing Network again. Met John Blichmann, Denny Conn, Drew Beechum, Michael Tonsmire, Annie Johnson, James Spencer, and John Palmer. The seminars were very good. If you are a Homebrewers Association member, you can download/listen to them all here under the 2016 header. I highly recommend the Mashall Schott and Malcolm Frazer seminar.

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/resources/conference-seminars/

Next year’s conference will be held in Minneapolis in June.

BYO Bootcamp in Burlington, VT

My wife & I love taking long weekend trips to Vermont, but this year I found something special. BYO magazine is holding day-long seminars with noted beer “celebrities” in the beginning of November. I’ve signed up for “Advanced Hopping Techniques” by Sean Lawson. There are still some incredible seminars open with speakers like Michael Tonsmire and Chris White. If you’ve never been to Burlington or even Vermont, think about giving it a shot. Burlington is about a 4 hour drive from Central Connecticut. And the Alchemist Brewery opened up last weekend, so you can actually get some Heady Topper on the way to Burlington.

As always, relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew