There is a strange sense of enjoyment while standing around a boiling brew kettle during the hottest time of the year. At least the boil-off rate is lower than during the winter! Let’s take a tour of what we have been up to the past month and what is coming up!
Recent Activities
HomebrewCon 2019: The NBA was able to represent well at the annual HomebrewCon events this year! With a presentation about our barrel program and brewing oat beers, we made quite an impact and look forward to joining again next year!
Barrel program panel (Photo by Chino D)
Hoppy Hour at Midwest Supplies with Mighty Axe Hops: Our friend Eric from Mighty Axe Hops was putting on an event at Midwest Supplies, so we redirected our Taproom Takeover night to join the festivities. It was a great night where members commented on learning more about hops in just that night than in years prior. We have a field trip scheduled for August to go visit the farm, so read on below for more about that!
Education Topic – DIY Electric Brewing: The monthly meeting had an education topic from Nick M about his DIY electric brew system and some best practices for building a system at home. There are a bunch of other tinkerers in the club who had great insight. The club email group has a great number of threads on these topics!
2019 Summer Party
We got lucky for our annual summer party that it was just rain and not the oppressive heat from days prior. It was a great day for grilling, a big potluck brew with 70# grain, 3 boxes of Kix, a ton of hops, and a bunch of ginger. Club members took home a few gallons each and will surely be sharing the different fermentation options at upcoming meetings.
The day also included the low-gravity competition (<5% ABV) where attendees selected a favorite beer or cider from the entries. Andy G won the top award with his Kitchen Session IPA with Galaxy hops (buy him a beer and ask about the story behind the name sometime) and second place went to Matt G for his Summer Sipper with Cascade hops. Everything was great with the next official party coming up in January with the high-gravity (>8% ABV) competition, officer elections, and more bottle sharing.
Milling 70# of grain 
Adding the unmilled adjunct 
A tough dough-in! (Chino D) 
Re-circulation is key at this scale! 
A full spider! (Aaron D) 
Great selections again this year! 
Favorite: Kitchen Session IPA (Galaxy) from Andy G 
Second: Summer Sipper (Cascade) from Matt G
Upcoming Events
Taproom Takeover (and National IPA Day) at Barrel Theory: Making the trip to St Paul on Thursday, August 1 will be well worth the trip to grab some IPAs. Come join and chat about beer! Check out the club calendar!
Education Topic – Extract vs Brew-in-a-Bag: With a triangle test at the next monthly meeting on Thursday, August 15, we will be samping two different beers to see if we can identify an extract beer from a brew-in-a-bag that are otherwise treated the same. What do you think the differences could be?
Field Trip – Mighty Axe Hops Farm Tour: In mid-August we are trekking up to Foley, Minnesota, to visit one of our great partners and learn more about hops, the pelletizing process, and what they expect for this year’s harvest. That sounds like a lot of work outside, so a stop at Lupulin Brewing on the way back will help us recoup. The members-only email group will have more detail on this, so keep an eye out!
For announcements of the monthly Taproom Takeover, monthly recap of recent events, and announcements for upcoming events, keep an eye on this space, our club calendar, and our social media sites on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Come join us and chat about beer and brewing!
Cheers!