Category Archives: barrel project

December 2018 Update

barrel project, education, events, meeting recaps, upcoming meetings

Happy New Year, everyone! It has been another busy month with the club and here is a recap of some of the events we have been up to and the happenings planned for early 2019.

Recent Activities

NBA Homebrew Competition

This month was another successful homebrew competition put on by the club. With 174 entries judged and 84 participants, judges, and stewards, it was a few weeks of coordination culminating with a busy weekend of sorting and judging many fine beers!

Congratulations to all the winners! Results can be found on the competition site. Keep an eye out for the next competition the same time next year!

  • Sunday judging
  • Best In Show flight

Four Roses Bourbon Barrel Fill

With two new barrels added to the collection, we decided break them in with an Imperial Stout — and a big one at that with 1.140 target starting gravity! To get that high, the brewers in the club had long days to boil down the wort to that gravity, ranging from 2.5-4.5 hours for just the boil!

The email thread in the Google Group was quite active with discussion around best practices, problems people were having, and the results of brewing and fermentation. At the club meeting there was good discussion about what worked well (regular aeration the first several days, huge yeast starters, degassing regularly) and what we can do next time we try to make something this big. We are looking forward to seeing what this motor oil of a beer turns into over the next months in the barrel!

  • Two new barrels getting in place
  • Pitch-black beer going in

Monthly Education Topic: Baltic Porter

The education topic at the regular monthly meeting was about Baltic Porter with discussion lead by Bill H. An uncommon style at best, this topic was pushed back a few times until we could find enough commercial styles to bring and a few members could brew their own.

A high gravity, cool fermented version of Imperial Stout, these were a new style to many members and a hit with the club. I would not be surprised if more local homebrew competitions start getting more submissions for this style based on this new interest!

Upcoming Events

  • January Taproom Takeover at Wabasha Brewing on Thursday, January 3. Come join the social hour and learn about the club. Everyone is welcome!
  • Club brew day in January for an upcoming Saison experiment. We will be brewing 25+ gallons to split into a few fermenters. All are welcome to join!
  • Winter party in January for the club high-gravity competition, annual membership renewal, officer voting (Vice President, Communication Director, Finance Director), and a group collaborative brew. More details to come on the location and sign-up.
  • Off-site meetings: Since we are unable to use our normal home at East Side Neighborhood Services for the first few months of the year, we will be off-site in January, February, and March. Check the Club Calendar for details.
    • January: Northern Brewer Minneapolis with Ben from Mighty Axe hops as the guest speaker and the Comet hops experiment. After-party at Wild Mind.
    • February: Midwest Supplies (St. Louis Park) for a demo on electric brewing equipment. After-party at Steel Toe.
    • March: Northern Brewer Minneapolis for the Saison experiment from the January club brew day. After-party at Wild Mind.

For announcements of the monthly Taproom Takeover, monthly recap of recent events, and announcements for upcoming events, keep an eye on this space and our social media sites on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Come join us and chat about beer and brewing!

Cheers!

Recap – April Monthly Meeting

barrel project, education, events, meeting recaps

April Meeting Recap

The April meeting had a great educational  session lead by Bad Weather’s Christian Breitbarth. We covered yeast washing, over-building starting, building a yeast bank, and most importantly, how to create and work in sterile environments.

Thanks member Jason Berg, there are great notes in the club forum. Make sure to check it our!

We also covered the introduction of the club yeast bank. This new benefit for members will being kicking off over the next few weeks, and will also be accompanied by some club wort canning days. The wort canning days will be club members have the opportunity to can starter wort, decreasing the time it takes to grow yeast for brew days. Watch the forum for updates from Paul for the yeast bank and Carl for the first wort canning day.

Committee Updates

The barrels continue to be a great benefit to club members. There have been brew days to brew the Belgian Dark Strong that will be going into the Buffalo Trace barrel. These brew days have given us a chance to use the new 30 gallon mash tun and boil kettle, as well as step up the brewing water chemistry and mash pH game from previous education sessions. The committee also gave an update on the Lambic and George Dickel transfers.

Upcoming Events

Big Brew Day, May 5th

The Nordeast Brewers Alliance will be at Northern Brewer Minneapolis for Big Brew Day. We will be brewing, possibly grilling, and serving samples from club members. So make sure you grab your gear to brew on site (great chance to try BIAB if you haven’t) and if you want to share one of your brews on the club jockey box, make to sign up on the registration form that was posted to the group. There are also slots to share at other events there!

Midwest Homebrew Club Fair, May 12th

Our friends at Midwest Brewing Supply will be holding a homebrew club fair for local clubs from 10am-4pm. Think of it like ‘Homebrew Con Lite’. Its an opportunity for us to show off to potential members and other clubs. They will also be giving away malt from Able Seedhouse. The beer made with that malt will be entered into a competition, details to come. Everybody is welcome, come hang out, drink beer, and promote the club!

Recap – March Monthly Meeting and Things to Watch

barrel project, events, meeting recaps, upcoming meetings, , , ,

 

March Meeting Recap

The NBA held our March meeting at Midwest Brewing Supplies, and we covered some great topics!

To start, we had an update on the barrel program. Members received a detailed round up of the barrels, and what empties/fills will be coming up, plus the opportunity to expand the program! If you are not (yet) a member of the NBA, the barrel program is one of the shining benefits of being a member. Here’s a couple quick highlights:

There will be an upcoming empty and fill of the George Dickel Barrel that has been the happy home to a Russian Imperial Stout.

Coming in April will be the empty and fill of a red wine barrel containing a Lambic.

The other barrels will continue to age – keep an eye out for those updates.

Our educational topic this month was identifying off flavors, thanks to Chris Haas. This lead to an interesting discussion on some of the more common off flavors, how they can range in perception, what causes them, and how to avoid them.

Thanks to Chris, we were able to spike a Helles with the proper compounds to present these flavors without being masked by assertive malt/hop/yeast characteristics.

If you have not participated in an off flavor tasting session, I’d highly recommend it. Take oxidation, which is typically described as “cardboard” or “paper”. But those are actually the minority of the flavor impacts oxidation has on a beer. Tasting a control vs. the spiked variable for common off flavors can really provide a great educational foundation for opportunities to improve your brewing.

There was also a video from Aaron, Steve, and Tyler breaking in the club’s new 30 gallon mash tun, thanks to Northern Brewer. Remember how the barrel program is a great benefit that comes with being a member? The club brew system is another benefit, all members have access to the system, with two configurations: 15.5 gallon keggles, and 30 gallon kettles – allowing for batches anywhere from 5 to 25 gallons.

Need more benefits? At the March meeting we kicked off the plans start building a club yeast bank! Look for more info to come at the April and May meetings.

Also in March NBA members brewed for Experimental Brewing. Those batches should be ready for tasting in April, and there will be a full write up for you to conduct the same experiment.
Upcoming Events 
  1. April 5th, Taproom Takeover – Boom Island
  2. April 19th, Monthly Meeting at ESNS
  3. Education Topic: Yeast
  4. May 5th, Big Brew for National Homebrew Day – 12:00 PM, at Northern Brewer Minneapolis
  5. May 17th, Monthly Meeting at ESNS
  6. Education Topic: Explore a Style – Mild
  7. June 21st, Monthly Meeting at ESNS
  8. Education Topic: Beer Sorbet
Club Merch and Memberships Available
  • T-Shirts – $10
    Hats – $10
  • 2018 1 Year Membership – $20 or $25 with a TShirt
  • 2018 3 Year Membership – $50 with a TShirt
  • 2018 Work Shirt

Monthly Meeting – July 20th at ESNS

barrel project, education, events, upcoming meetings

Same Beer time, same Beer place:

After surviving HomeBrew Con last month, we are back to our normal schedule.

The July monthly meeting will be Thursday, July 20th, at EastSide Neighborhood Services at 7pm.

Guests:

We will have a couple out-of-town guests in attendance for this meeting. Ariel and Ben from the Brewminaries, a homebrew club out of New York City, will be joining us and sharing a few beers. We will also be sending them home with a few beers to share with their members back east.

We will cover a bunch of stuff this meeting:

HomeBrew Con retrospective; NBA party, social hour, club night.
Single Hop brew day and  tasting.
Barrel, we got a new one!
Educational topic; Wort Canning.

We look forward to seeing you!

March 2017

barrel project, events, meeting recaps, upcoming meetings
Recap

We held our March meeting at Northern Brewer Minneapolis. Thanks to Northern Brewer for hosting us, and thanks to everybody that came out. We had a full house and that is really great to see.

 

BSG and Rahr teamed up to teach us about the history of Rahr and how brewing malts get from barley in the fields, to the bins at our homebrew shops. We really appreciate them coming out and I want to give a big thanks to Chris and Ilya for presenting.

 

The Club business discussions covered several topics as we progress through 2017 and approach the National Homebrew’s Conference here in Minneapolis. Remember to get your swag; for the conference and our other upcoming events. We currently have t-shirts @ $10, hats @ $15 and brewer’s shirts @50.

Continue reading March 2017 →

January 2017 Recap

barrel project, events, homebrewing

A new year, new opportunities.

2017 promises to be a banner year for homebrew in Minnesota. With HomeBrewCon 2017 in Minneapolis and the events that surround it, we are sure to make our impact on the community at large, and the NBA looks to make an impact on the community locally.

In the past we have engaged the local community in the from of beer education, beer events and a general involvement perspective. In the past we have setup brewing demonstrations at farmers markets, education sessions, and provided samples at other events to help raise money for local organizations. We loved doing these event and are grateful to the organizations for the opportunity to partner with them.

Going forward we will be focusing on homebrewing events and organizations. We will still be involved in certain events in Nordeast, like the Big River Brewfest and partnering with breweries in the area. These events connect us directly with beer people and brewers. Ongoing, we will be increasing our  involvement with our local homebrew stores this year. We will have a presence at one of the local stores at least once a month to reach out to homebrewers specifically. We will be doing brew days, education sessions and general QandA for homebrewers, our people. For our membership we are will continue to put a focus on education and experiments. Along with club experiments, watch the google group for announcements on extended tests, collaborations, projects, and profiles.

Continue reading January 2017 Recap →

2017 is going to be great!

barrel project, events, upcoming meetings

Lets Party, and Drink Beer!
We kick off 2017 with our Winter Party (January 21st – Noon to 4pm – Northern Brewer Roseville) Check the google group for details.  At the party we are holding our High Gravity Beer Competition, Sign up link in the google group. We hope to see you there!

As a result of the party there is no regular monthly meeting in January.

Continue reading 2017 is going to be great! →

March Recap

barrel project, events, homebrewing, meeting recaps

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.

Continue reading March Recap →