Announcements

Membership Cards

We will start issuing membership cards to all paying members this year.  The goal of this is to allow the club to negotiate with local craft breweries and craft beer establishments for discounts for SBC members.  The cost of the membership cards is minimal.  Look for them in May or April.

Club 13 ounce tulips

These will be sold for 6 dollars per glass or 5 dollars per glass if more than one are purchased.  Unfortunately only 8 were brought to the meeting.  We will have more on hand at the March meeting as these are great glasses.

Events to share homebrew

1) California Homebrewers Festival at Vail Lake 5/2

We have 11 campsites, and officially we have a few spots left.  Rich Thorton is attending the CHA meeting on 2/21 and after that we should have an idea how much we can bend the official rules.

2) Bite at the Beach 5/16

This is a beer and food pairing event with some of the better restaurants in the South Bay.  Tom Dunbabin of King Harbor Brewing is coordinating the beer for Bite at the Beach, and he reach out to Pacific Gravity and Strand to represent homebrewing.  Brian (Pacific Gravities President) and Ryan were thinking we could have 4-6 beers on a theme, and have the rest of the available taps open to whatever beer (or mead and cider) people want to donate.  Last year tickets to bite at the beach were 100 dollars but donating beer earned a free admission.  Please let us know if you are interested so that we know what to plan for.

3) OLG Fiesta 4/17 – 4/19

Ryan’s church and daughter’s school has a spring fiesta that is a fund raiser for the school every year.  As it is a Catholic Church, there is a beer tent.  Ryan donated 10 gallons of beer last year, and it was gone the first night.  This year he is planning on a bigger homebrew presence, and working with local breweries to have craft beer on hand.  If you want to donate beer or come drink some beer and support the school it would be appreciated.

4) Others

AB1269? Allows us to pour beer with the profit going to charity or non-profit.  We are working to set up another event this year, maybe with some live bands, so stay tuned.

Club Bar

Strand Brewers Club has a very nice club bar.  It is fairly portable, we can configure it with 21 or 11 taps, it is all stainless, and it is fairly easy to use.  We use it at club parties, California homebrewers festival, and likely at this year’s Bite at the Beach.  Last year we replaced all the faucets and shanks and upgraded to stainless.  Hopefully this will provide the club many years of trouble free service.  We are looking for people to sponsor a tap for about 40 dollars and offset the club’s cost.  At the end of the February meeting we had 8 sponsored taps, thanks to everyone who sponsored a tap.  When we get to 9+ sponsors (to meet the minimum order) we are going to purchase nameplates from naptags.com to commemorate each sponsor faucet.  These nameplates will go on the bar and are $4.25 per nameplate.  Our goal is to have the nameplates on the bar for the homebrewers festival.

Club meetings

We have 3 Iron Brewers where anyone who wants to participate in the contest brews a beer with at least the 3 listed ingredients.  Beers are judged and the winner is awarded a rotating tophy, and bragging rights.  This is a great way to work on recipe formulation and creativity

March: Iron brewer (Cascade, Chocolate malt, Orange Peel)

July: Iron Brewer (Southern Cross Hops, Rye and Peaches)

October: Iron Brewer (Palisade Hops, Crystal Malt, Ginger)

Three single variable tastings (called SMASHish in the meeting description).  These meetings serve as a way to isolate a single variable in making beer and see its effect much faster than a single homebrewer can on their own.  These meetings will either be a case where everyone brews a common recipe altering one variable (like hops) or where a brewers makes multiple beers from a single wort.

May: Yeast: Ferment any wort with different yeasts to see the flavor difference the yeast imparts

August: Hops: anyone who wants to participate brewers a common recipe changing only the hops

November: Fermentation: Alter the fermentation environment of a wort to see its effect

Clone Competition

The Spetember competition to clone the Sierra Nevada beer.  Jason Rosenfeld will be on hand to judge and there will be prizes for the top 3 or so clone beers.  While Hop Hunter was the suggested beer to clone, there was discussion at the meeting on whether something else would be more interesting so for now, the beer is TBD.

Bob had announcements on the Bus trip to the AHA rally at Stone and Rives had announcements on the Belgian Beer Comp, then Bob led a commercial stout tasting of 5 great stouts.

Flying Dog Pearl Necklace Oyster Stout
High Water Brewing Campfire Stout
Stone Stochasticity Golden Stout
Young’s Double Chocolate Stout
Oskar Blues Ten Fiddy Imperial Stout

Happy New Years

It was great to see so many people after the holidatys, and see a few new faces too.  At the January meeting we covered meeting minutes from the officers meeting.

1 Southern California Homebrewers Festival

Bob Wilson is campsite coordinator and there is still space for additional attendees.  Despite the Vail Lake RV resort website saying tent camping is not allowed we have confirmed with their staff that tent camping will be allowed for the festival.

The Festival Bragging Rights Competition is stouts this year.  We will have a competition in April to see which beer should represent our club.

2 Club Bar

We are replacing the wood top for the full bar to finish all of last years upgrades.  We are still looking for tap sponsers to cover the cost of the stainless shanks and faucets we purchased for the bar.  Thanks to Jay Ankeney and Bob Wilson for sponsoring a tap already.  We will be purchasing name plates to commemorate each tap sponsor and will affix them to the bar.  The best option I have found for engraved nameplates is a website requiring a 35 dollar minimum purchase or 9 sponsors.  More on nameplates will be discussed at the February club meeting.

3 Pacific Brewers Cup

Rives Borland is the Lead Competition Coordinator for the PBC he had some announcements on the competition.  His near term goal is to fully staff the PBC organization team and finalize a date and location for the competition.  If you would like to help with the PBC please contact Rives or me.

4 SBC club tulips and other club gear

We have purchased 72 libbey Belgian 13 oz. tulips with the club logo.  These should be available at the February meeting for about 5 dollars a glass.  We also have women’s t-shirts and men’s workshirts and t-shirts at reasonable prices.  I’ll be keeping a list throughout the year, and if we don’t have the size or style you want, we can make additional purchases when we have a minimum order.

5 Meeting plan for the year

If you would like to run the commercial tasting if February, let me know.  It is an easy and fun way to earn 3 points toward homebrewer of the year.

Once meeting minutes were complete Jim Wilson provided an overview of the BJCP and we tasted 4 beers that were used in the recent BJCP taste exam.  One beer was an imperial IPA with significant amounts of diacetyl.  It was interesting to see how some club members detected significant amounts of this flaw and others did not.  If you are interested in learning more about the BJCP, becoming a BJCP beer judge contact Jim or any of the other BJCP judges in our club for advice.  there are two opportunities to take the BJCP taste exam this year.  Entering your homebrew in competitions is a good way to get feedback on your beer.

The club raffle featured some rare beers including a vertical of Bigfoot Barley wine, and 2004 Thomas Hardy’s and Fullers vintage Ales.