March Meeting
This month the good folks at Midwest Supplies hosted our meeting, as EastSide Neighborhood Services has tax preparation services happening. We are really asking members to step up and host “brew with a member days” for new members or for friends of the club who might be interested in getting into home brewing. From the surveys taken at the February meeting, Minneapolis residents are interested in getting the water tested, and will be coordinated for those interested to pitch in and get water tested. Folks are interested in doing a swap meet, which we will combine with another event in the coming months.

For our Education topic, we had Tom LaPitz from Community Hops and Eric Anderson from St Croix Valley Hops in to talk to us about growing hops at home. They covered everything from picking varieties to what kind of nutrients you need to have successful and bountiful hop growing seasons. It was a fantastic conversation and really a source of information to get ready for hop growing season. A big thank you to Tom and Eric for taking their time to talk to us about hops.

Sebastian, the manager at Midwest, was gracious to keep the registers open and gave us a 15% off discount. As well, he asked us to shop and let them know if there are items missing or that we want in store. Corporate has been making some cutbacks to inventory and the folks in store are just wanting to make sure that we customers are getting everything that we need when we stop in the stores.

New 2015 Initiative: Food Shelf Better Bottle Donations
Part of the NBA’s goal to participate in the community, in the past we have asked for non-perishable food items to donate to EastSide food shelves. The Executive Committee voted to create a donation system so that members could give cash or change instead of non-perishable food items, as food shelves can provide a lot more food for $1 than we can give them when we donate $1 worth of food. As well, this allows our members to give as they have the means, so we created the Food Shelf Better Bottle Donation program. We are encouraging members to put in donations in any amount.

2015 Single Hop Experiment – May 2nd
For the NBA 2015 Single Hop Experiment, our friends at Northgate Brewing have asked to help make wort for us! So we’ve decided that on May 2nd, which happens to be the American Hombrewers Association’s “Big Brew Day”, is going to be our day of single hop brewing. The fee for the wort is yet to be determined. The hop schedule is as follows. 70IBU’s worth of hops at 60min, 1oz at 15min, 1oz at 1min and 2oz of dry hops at 7 days. For yeast, pitch 2 packs of US-05 dry yeast. Please sign up if you are interested.

Barrel Fills
To help manage all of the barrel projects, a small group meets somewhat regularly to help make decisions on the emptying and filling of the barrels. At the March barrel committee meeting it was decided that three barrels would be emptied and filled. Below is a re-cap of what is going to happen.

Barrel Project 2.0
Brett/Rye Saison is coming out and we are replacing it with an extract petite saison.
Flanders is coming out way sooner than expected and we are filling it with, of course, more flanders red. Both empty and fills are taking place DeBoer Cellars June 6th.

Barrel Project 3.0
3.2 Imperial Red is ready to come out! On May 16th we are going to empty, and are going to fill it with 3.3 Double/Triple IPA. This is a simple, yet strong IPA ball parks ABV around 10%.

Fermentation Informational
On April 9th, the NBA will be headed to the Science Museum of Minnesota’s annual Fermentation Informational, where we will be talking hops. We will have many varieties for people to smell and even taste (if they dare!). Everyone should join us! You can find information about the event and purchasing tickets at the SMM’s Social Science page.

Minnesota Homebrew Fest
Saturday April 4th is the Minnesota Homebrewers Association’s Homebrew Festival at Northern Brewers’ warehouse facility in Roseville. The 5 single hop beers originally made for the Science Museums’ Fermentation Informational will be poured at this event! You can find out more details at the MNBrewers Fest page.

North East Farmers Market
Starting in May, the NBA will be at the North East Farmers Market the Saturday following the monthly meeting. People will be asked to sign up to represent the NBA at the farmers market.

Barrel Update
The Nordeast Brewers Alliance loves it’s barrels. So to help make sure that we are getting the best beer in and out of the barrels, a group consisting of executive committee members, barrel wranglers, and aficionados meets every so often to ensure quality, schedule emptying and re-filling, and plot the future path of our barrel program. In attendance this March of 2015 was Aaron De Boer (master barrel wrangler), Perrin Bishop-Wright (assistant barrel wrangler), Tim Stuemke, Aaron Hamann, and Bryce Larson. We sampled beer from all six of the barrels and came up with a number of conclusions and actions plans.

In summary, this is what you need to know. Saison and Flanders are being emptied and filled in May. Koval is being emptied and filled in May/June as well. Sign-up for the barrel fills will happen at the March 19th meeting @ 7pm at Midwest Supplies in St. Louis Park.

Barrel Project #1 – HOBO

Just flat out needs a lot more time.

Barrel Project #2 – Red Wine Barrels

Barrel 1 – Porter
HUGE pellicle, fairly clean beer, needs some top-off and needs a quite a bit more time.

Barrel 2 – Saison
HOLY PELLICLE BATMAN! Spicy, funky nose, with a wonderful fruit, mead like flavor. This beer needs to come out, and we are planning on the end of May. We are going to encourage new members/people who have never been in a barrel to join this one. To encourage people, we decided to go with a simple extract Saison recipe that can be found on BrewToad, NBA Barrel Project #2 – Barrel #2 – Petite Saison

Barrel 3 – Flanders Red
Well, this beer was one of the shockers of the evening. It’s ready. It’s complex, it’s tart, and it’s ready to come out! While some probably would say, “hey, let’s let it go and not rush it.” we are saying, it’s fantastic and ready to drink. “Who doesn’t want more Flanders?!” -Perrin

It’s going to come out in May, same day that the Saison will come out.

Barrel 4 – Dark Strong
It’s buttery. It’s ropey. This beer is a hot pedio mess. Back in the fall, we pitched a ton of brettanomyces, but questioned how much work it could have done because of the cold, condition of the beer, etc. Aaron De Boer is going to make another giant starter of brettanomyces to pitch in the coming weeks. We are going to let it sit until September and decide then if it’s lost cause or on the track to recovery. If the beer is lost, it was proposed that we acid wash it and then throw a lacto-heavy beer into it (Lambic, wink-wink).

Barrel Project #3 – The Koval Rye Whiskey Barrel
Currently, we have an Imperial Red Ale, which is flat out awesome and ready to come out. We are going to shoot for the end of May, first week of June to empty and re-fill the barrel. We decided to do a double/imperial/triple IPA. Perrin and Bryce are working on a recipe, which will be ready for the sign up.