Summary of 2/22/08 JAB Meeting

 

Location: Eric's House

 

Attendees:

Another full meeting, with another new member! (See below)

 

1.      Dues & Membership:

a.      Dues: Many members paid up the $15 for the year! We now have some $$ to spend! Jim to keep track of money and delinquent dues.

b.      New Members: one new member joined this month. Mike Lebben from Victoria. Mike was properly initiated with some of Jon’s Tomatillo Fizz! Welcome Mike!

2.      Club Promotion:

a.      Brian mentioned that Green Olive catering would be willing to host our group.

b.      Dave mentioned golf course in Waconia would host as well.

c.       If we decide to hold meetings at a bar/restaurant/business, we’ll need to make sure they are ok with us bringing our own beer in for sampling.

d.      Jim brought samples of flyers to put in local businesses and cards for each member to hand out at their own discretion. The flyers looked very nice and we should try to get those in as many places as we can. Jim will have more printed up. (On a side note, I saw the flyers and cards up at Legacy Liquors this weekend and they looked nice.)

e.      We also talked about the size of the club. How big is too big? Right now we are at about 20 (?) members. Starting to get full to host at people’s houses, but summer will be easier as we can be outside. At this point, we want the club to continue to grow. Bill noted that he attended the most recent MN Homebrewer’s meeting and thought we had as many, if not more attendees than they, a much larger club, did.

3.      Competitions:

a.      Make sure to submit your previous awards won to J.D. for inclusion on the club website’s award page.

b.      Results since last meeting:

·        Kent got 3rd in Robust/Baltic Porter category for his Blamo Porter at Upper Mississippi Mashout. Good job Kent!

·        Dave got 3rd in Smoke, Wood Aged & Specialty Beer category for his Bourbon Barrel Stout at Great Northern Brew Ha-Ha.

·        J.D’s Creamy Dark scored a 32.7 at the March AHA Club Only competition. Not bad for a national contest. J.D. posted comments on the message board. Good job J.D!

c.       Upcoming entry deadlines:

·        March 1: Drunk Monk (IL), $7 per entry, AHA sponsored, all BJCP categories, special Belgian categories.

·        March 2: IBU Open (IA), $6 & 2 bottles per entry, AHA sponsored, all BJCP categories

·        March 9: March Mashness (St. Cloud), $6 & 2 bottles per entry, AHA sponsored, all BJCP categories, Midwest Supplies is a drop off point

·        March 21: AHA Club Only Porters. Group decided to submit Jim’s Baltic Porter. Jim will need to submit his entry by the deadline.

4.      Group Brews:

a.      April – IPA, open recipe

b.      June – Blonde Ale, BYO recipe

c.       We decided we should give a couple of awards for our group brews, such as best overall, best name, hoppiest IPA, and perhaps have a “traveling trophy” that gets awarded at each meeting. Need to decide at March meeting what the “awards” will be for the April IPA’s!

5.      Club Glasses

a.      Kent brought the new JAB glasses. They turned out very nice! I think everybody managed to pay for them as well! I think there were some left over to use as prizes or for new members. Thanks for organizing the purchase Kent – good job!

6.      Technical Topic: Cleaning & Sanitizing Products

a.      Eric subbed for Chris and presented some interesting facts about the most common cleaning and sanitizing products. If anyone would like to see the notes, or has questions, contact Eric or Chris.

b.      Next month’s topic: Caramel Malts

7.      Defective beer tasting:

a.      This was, um…, quite interesting. Some beers had obvious flaws, others did not. Some we thought were contamination, some not. Here’s a round up:

·        Mike L’s Honey Amber: a water issue?

·        Bill’s Blonde Ale: too thin, badly crushed grain or bad sparge

·        Brian’s Irish Red: oxidation – age, astringency/tannins – boiled too long, too high

·        Bill’s Cream Ale: DMS/vegetal, too much for the style

·        Eric’s Belgian Cherry – astringent, dry

·        Kent’s Amber Ale – beer ok, but too hoppy for style

·        Jon’s MN Green IPA – band-aid aroma/flavor, brett infection?

·        Jon’s Date beer with sauerkraut – lactobacillus

·        Jon’s Date beer with red wine vinegar – this wasn’t that bad!

·        Eric’s Port Barrel Belgian, not too bad, but not much Port notes

·        Mike’s 1st ever beer – oxidized, old ingredients. The oxidation actually seemed to improve the beer.

·        Jon’s Belgian Cherry (I stopped taking notes about here….)

·        Jon’s Wheat IPA

·        Eric’s California Common

8.      Good beer tasting: After all those “defective” beers, the crowd was ready for some good stuff. Here’s some of what we had, I may have missed a few.

·        Eric’s Oatmeal Stout

·        Kent’s Scwarzbier

·        Dave’s Doppelbock

·        Tyranena IPA

·        Bell’s Two Hearted Ale

·        Dave’s Bourbon Barrel Stout

·        Sorry if I missed any others

9.      Another great meeting – thanks to Eric and Sara Jo for hosting and for ordering the pizza!

10.  Next meeting: March 14 at Eric’s house, 6:30 p.m.

 

Apologies in advance for any errors or omissions. Let me know if anything needs to be corrected or added - Dave