2011 Newsletters

[Jim Blanchette]

Here are the minutes of the South Shore Brew Club monthly meeting on 10/11/2011 at Frank White’s house.

26 Members attending

Business

- Yearly dues are due. Please pay up.
- Francois’ cellar cleaning party this past weekend was a lot of fun.
- Holiday party: will be Dec. 2nd or 9th at Brian S’s. We will be placing more emphasis on the beer swap this year, as the past few years have been pretty weak. The beer swap is an opportunity to try others’ beers and has always been a major feature of the holiday party. We are trying to bring this back this year, so please try to bring some (6, 12 whatever) beers to swap. If you don’t have homebrews available to trade at that time then you could bring some good commercial beer to put into the swap.
- Pub crawl: there is an ongoing conversation on the forum. The overnight trip was ruled out due to limited member availability, so a day trip was decided upon. It will be a Boston Green Line crawl on Nov. 19th. Meet at 11:30 at Kinsale. More details are on the forum: http://southshorebrewclub.org/member_forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=372&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=10
- Kate the Great bottling: It will be this Sat. or next. An e-mail will go out. (Update: bottling is at Frank’s on 10/22 around 9:30. Bring clean 12 oz bottles if you have them).
- Wade agreed to do the yeast presentation. We will schedule him for the Feb or March meeting.
- Feb meeting would be on the 14th (Valentine’s Day) so it was voted to move it to the next day (Wed Feb 15th) to prevent any issues.
- The next club competition is the January meeting, and the style is Specialty Beer (BJCP style #23). This is a catch-all category in which the only way to be ‘out of style’ is to enter a beer which could fit in some other style category. BJCP guidelines: http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style23.php
- November meeting: Frank Chenette will present on recipe formulation. The meeting will be held at Frank’s.
- Wort’s CiderFest: it is this Sunday at Carlson Orchards. Sign up on-line to bring a dish or reserve some cider ($3/gallon).
- Cider Days in Colrain: This will be Nov. 5-6.
- Rick brought leftover prizes (beer) from the BrewOff. We will have a raffle for these at the end of the meeting.


Belgian Strong Ales (Golden and Dark) Presentation and Club Competition
By Bob Fontaine

Bob went over the BJCP style guidelines and handed out samples to calibrate our palates:

Golden: Duvel, Avery Salvation
Dark: St. Bernardus Abt 12, Rochefort 10. Bonus bottle: SSBC Rum Barrel Quad 2009

Competition:

There were 7 entries.

Results:

3rd: Jim Blanchette
2nd: Bill Tredo
1st: Jay Wilson

[Jim Blanchette]

Here are the minutes of the South Shore Brew Club monthly meeting on 11/8/2011 at Frank White’s house.

30 Members attending

Business

- Yearly dues are due. Please pay up.
- Holiday Party – Dec. 9th at Brian’s house, starting at 6PM. Sign up for sides/desserts on the forum calendar, Brian will be making beef tenderloin as usual. We need to invite any friends of the club. Also, please bring beers to swap.
- Pub crawl – Nov. 19th, starts at the Kinsale at Government Center. So far, 12 people are interested. Details are on the forum.
- Kate the Great SSBC 2010 group brew was bottled. Shares are now available, and can be picked up at Frank’s.
- Newport Storm collaboration party is on 11/11/11. They will be tasting the Newport Storm ’11 collaboration beer, plus beers from participating brewers. Tickets are $11, and it goes from 7-9 PM at the Coastal Extreme brewery.
- January meeting is the Specialty Beers competition. The only beers that are out of style are beers that can fit into some other style (including Belgian Specialty, which means pretty much any Belgian-style beer is out of style for this competition).
- Reminder: The February meeting was moved to Wednesday Feb. 15th to avoid a meeting on Valentine’s day.
- NERAX North is Thurs-Fri-Sat at the Tap in Haverhill. They have 45 firkins.
- Jim Bowser is trying to start a NERAX South in Plymouth. He is looking for club support/volunteers to do cleanup/setup/etc. to support this event.
- If anyone wants to learn about the cellaring of casks, NERAX is offering training in March where you will help setup for NERAX. Contact Jim Bowser for details.
- Modern Brewer is opening a new site in Weymouth. They will have bulk grain, hops, wine kits, etc. Jim Bowser may end up being the manager. They have plenty of room for meetings also. They will be looking for part-time employees. Jim will have more info.
- South Shore Brewoff – we need to get going on setting a date, registering it, etc.
- NHC – Is anyone going to the National Homebrewers Conference this year? Brian S. is interested.
- New members: Mike and Chris introduced themselves.


Recipe Formulation
By Frank Chenette

Frank went over various things to consider when trying to make your own recipe, and provided charts and other useful information on how to craft your own original recipe. The presentation can be found here.