I, for one, am looking forward to warmer days and brewing outside again! How many more weeks did that groundhog say?

In the meantime, here are some highlights from this month’s club meeting:

• Membership renewal is due. Renewing (and new) members get a few bottles from the club solera. There will be a clean-up of the Google Group of inactive members coming in March/April, so please make sure your payment is in.
• Recent Events
  • Taproom Takeover at La Doña Cervecería — a good turnout with great beers!
  • Dickel Barrel Dark Sour transfer — keep an eye out for the new batch being shared at upcoming meetings and events!
• Upcoming Events
  • Taproom Takeover at Dangerous Man, Fat Pants, and Waldmann over the next couple months. Keep an eye on the Club Calendar for these social hours every First Thursday. All are welcome!
  • Club bike rides. Nick M is planning out some taproom rides potentially starting in April. Check out the thread in the Google Group emails to sign up!
  • Learn To Homebrew Day on Saturday, May 7. Nothing officially planned yet, but keep an eye out for likely a brew day with our friends at Midwest Supplies.
  • HomebrewCon in Pittsburgh on June 23-25. The NBA will surely have a contingent representing our great beers. Let’s meet up for a beer!
• Barrel update: We are refreshing the names/numbers of the barrels for better tracking. Surely they will continue making great beers. Keep an eye out for a couple coming due very soon for transfers:
  • #2 French Oak Lambic-style
  • #10 Rittenhouse Rye stout
• Upcoming Education: Every month we have an education and/or experiment topic including guest speakers, blind triangle tests, and hands-on equipment.
  • March: Irish Styles on St. Patrick’s Day. Please bring Irish-style homebrew to the meeting to go along with this education topic exploring a few styles!
  • April: Two Track Malting guest speaker and sample beers
• Beginner’s Corner: During the monthly meeting we make space for any questions that members may have — and no question is too simple!
  • Nick M asked what people are using for heat sources in fermentation chambers. A heat wrapper is not working well enough in his garage. The most popular answer from the club was a small ceramic heater. What do you use?
• New business: Anything new that needs to be addressed.
  • The club now has a Discord server for real-time chat between members! This is available to any current member.
  • The Craft Brewers Conference is in Minneapolis this year, May 2-5. This is for professional brewers and it is great to see our city getting some recognition!
  • The Northern Ale Stars put on their Terry Sarne Memorial Brew-Ha-Ha competition recently and a couple club members took home awards!
    • Aaron D won First and Third place in the Wild and Sour Beer category with NBA Flanders and NBA Kriek beers.
    • Jason B and Adrian S took home Second place in Light Belgian with a Turbid Saison collaboration from this past summer.
  • Jim I brought a few books from his library to share. We keep a spreadsheet available in the NBA Knowledge Base with myriad books for members to borrow from each other.

All are welcome to join the club! Please follow us on this blog, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for updates. The Club Calendar also shows our upcoming meetings and events. The club benefits everyone from new brewers starting a first batch to seasoned veterans looking to hone their skills and get feedback on new styles and techniques. Feel free to drop by a Taproom Takeover social hour or stop by a meeting any time to check us out first.

Cheers!

This month at the monthly meeting Lallemand Brewing will be dialing in to talk about their new Farmhouse hybrid Saison-style yeast. This non-diastatic hybrid was selected through advanced breeding techniques to remove the STA-1 gene to brew outstanding Saison beers.

Members of the club received sachets of this yeast from the 2021 NBA Homebrew Competition sponsorship by our friends at Lallemand, so join the meeting and taste the difference in these batches.

Brewers of all levels are welcome to join the club! Check out a meeting or Taproom Takeover before joining. Watch the Club Calendar and Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter for updates about our meetings and events. Cheers!

Happy New Year, friends and folks! 2022 will be a great year for the NBA and we are starting off with a bunch of great topics. Let’s jump in and recap the recent goings-on!

The Winter Party held a couple things going on:

• Officer Elections
  • President Aaron D was re-elected for another term in that role. The club will surely continue to flourish under his leadership.
  • Director of Operations Steve M stepped down from re-election for his role. We greatly appreciate the work he has done in this position and will surely benefit from other projects and events where he will provide his expert insight.
  • Jim I was elected to the Director of Operations role. He has some ideas for the membership and event committees under the purview of this position.
• Club High Gravity Competition
  • The meeting also included the informal competition for beers ≥8% brewed in 2021. Congratulations to Matt J for winning with his Coffee Stout.
  • Honorable mentions to Jim I for his DIPA and Al S for his Bitter Stout.
  • All five entries were solid beers!

For club business, there are a few things going on:

• Merchandise
  • Stacking taster glasses are available at $4/one, $7/two, $12/four
  • Jim I is researching a site that sells branded hoodies, shirts, etc.; keep an eye out
• January, February, and March meetings this year will be held at ESNS as they are not running their tax prep course this year. Keep an eye on the Club Calendar for upcoming meeting and event locations.
• 2022 membership renewal is due in January for all members. Please submit $20 through PayPal to nba.treasury@gmail.com with your name and email or visit the Join or Renew Today page on the website.
  • Check with a member of the leadership committee for your 2022 membership card.
  • Members renewing (or joining!) by January 31 will also receive bottles from the first pull from the club solera — a straight pale sour and peach pale sour. I assure you they are wonderful bottles. Pick-up or coordination is required by the February meeting.
• There are a couple relatively minor changes to the club by-laws
  • Members joining between July 1 and October 31 receive a 50% discount ($10 instead of $20 for 2022). Members joining between November 1 and December 31 will pay the full annual membership fee good through the following calendar year. These changes are effective 01/01/2022.
  • Check out the Club By-Laws page on the website for full, official details.
• Nick M is coordinating club bike rides throughout 2022. Members can check out the thread in the Google Group email for more details. Expect 3-4 rides during the summer and one in the fall for an Oktoberfest tour. The rides will focus on enjoying the beer and biking slowly.
• HomebrewCon 2022 is scheduled for June 23-35 in Pittsburgh. If there is enough interest, there will be an NBA AirBNB to save on lodging and transportation.
• A few barrel transfers are planned for the next few months:
  • The George Dickel barrel Dark Sour will be transferred and refilled in early February.
  • One of the French Oak Lambic-style barrels will follow around February/March.
  • The Rittenhouse Rye Stout will be swapped around March/April.
  • Members should keep an eye out for emails to sign up for these barrels over the next couple months.
• Over the next couple months we have a couple great education topics planned:
  • In February we will have a guest speaker from Lallemand to talk about their yeast.
  • The March meeting lands on St. Patrick’s Day, so we should talk about Irish beer styles. We are looking for a volunteer to facilitate this meeting and for members to brew Irish dry stout, Irish red, and export stout to drink during the meeting.

All are welcome to join the club! Please follow us on this blog, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for updates. The Club Calendar also shows our upcoming meetings and events. The club benefits everyone from new brewers starting a first batch to seasoned veterans looking to hone their skills and get feedback on new styles and techniques. Feel free to drop by a Taproom Takeover social hour or stop by a meeting any time to check us out first.

Cheers!

This month the education topic at the club meeting will be on the NBA Solera Program. This is part of the overall NBA Barrel Program and run by the Leadership Committee. The overall goal is to create a consistent and regular source of distinct and wonderful sour beer sponsored by the club for the members to enjoy.

There is a bit of planning and maintenance in this program, so come by the meeting on Thursday, January 20 7-9pm at East Side Neighborhood Services to learn more — and have a sample of the first pull from this barrel!

Looking back, February 2020 turned out to be a poor time for a post about all the in-person events that we do. Now in Summer 2021, we are getting events back on the calendar, so that article is important again. From taproom visits to education deep-dives and social events, the club has a lot going on throughout the year.

There are two great times to meet up with us to learn more or join the club:

• First Thursday: Taproom Takeover social hour. Watch the club calendar to see where we will be. Find the table with a bunch of brewers wearing our logo and say hello!
• Third Thursday: Monthly meeting and education/experimentation topic. Back at East Side Neighborhood Services in Northeast Minneapolis starting with the July meeting, come share some homebrew if you have it — or at least bring tasting glasses to sample offerings from others.

We welcome everyone regardless of experience or skill to join the club and take part in whatever events are most interesting. Check out the club calendar to see where we will be and feel free to contact us if you have any questions. Updates are also available on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 

The education topic for May’s meeting covered Traditional Farmhouse Brewing and novel Farmhouse yeasts, including Kveik.  The presentation largely covered what is written in the book “Historical Brewing Techniques: The Lost Art of Farmhouse Brewing” by Lars Marius Garshol.  We discussed the history and methods of historical farmhouse brewing, along with contemporary brewers that continue to use the same traditional equipment, ingredients and techniques to brew interesting beers.  We also dug into the unique ingredients used in these beers, including juniper, farmhouse yeast known as “Kveik”, and smoked malts.

Along with the education topic, we shared 6 different regional “styles” of farmhouse beer brewed by four members of the club.  These included a raw “Kornøl”, boiled Heimabrygg, and smoked “Stjørdalsøl” from different regions of Norway, and a Swedish Gotlandsdricke.  All four used common juniper, and were fermented with different Kveik strains and cultures.  A Lithuanian “Kaimiškas” ale and a “Minnesota Farmhouse Ale” (using red cedar in place of common juniper) were also brewed to accompany the presentation.  Tasting the beers generated a lot of discussion, but all were delicious and distinctive. The Minnesota Farmhouse Ale brewed by Brady was a real standout!

The smoked malts used in the Gotlandsdricke and Stjørdalsøl were donated by Sugar Creek Malt for our club’s education topic and example beers.  Based in Indiana, this maltster stands apart from others by producing unique smoked malts.  The malts used for these beers are smoked on a wood-fired Nordic-style Såinnhus kiln.  These malts helped create a beer with a depth of flavor that is similar to the historical beers they were intended to recreate. Skål!

All the recipes for the beers we brewed can be found on the Brewfather library @nordeast.brewers.alliance

After more than a year of the club being separated during COVID with only access through video chats and email, our friends at Rahr Malting and BSG Handcraft were able to help with a virtual brew day in April 2021. We collaborated on a couple recipes — a pale ale featuring Leopold Bros. pale malt, Chinook hops, and US-05 American yeast and a Kolsch-style with Rahr North Star Pils malt, Mt. Hood hops, and German K97 yeast — and bagged them up for club members to pick up in five-gallon kits.

Many members logged into a video chat during brew day so we could brew together… apart. It was an interesting experience with friends over in the corner during a normally solo brew day, but the company was great on one of the first nice weekends of the year.

Photo by Aaron D

With a variety of brewing kits, it was fun to travel through virtual brewery tours to see what others are doing. Some of the best knowledge I have picked up since joining the BSG club has been at group brew days and brewing with other people. It is amazing how obvious some techniques are once they are seen in-person from another brewer.

Photos by Aaron D, Tyler B, Nick M, and Jason B

The beers, of course, came out great! With these great ingredients comes great beer. Aaron D. reported that his Leopold Chinook Pale Ale was the best beer of that style he has brewed. Although most brewers with the Kolsch-style kit got higher efficiency than expected, that could mean the beer is just kicked up a notch to a Blonde Ale or Session Pale. Regardless, beer is beer.

Photos by Mike C (shaker pint, Leopole Chinook pale ale) and Jason B (tulip, Kolsch-style)

At a recent meeting, the monthly education topic focused on the different products available for cleaning our equipment and brew spaces. Jump in to see what we found for best practices and what works best in different situations.

Our club focuses on a different education or experimentation topic at our meetings on the Third Thursday of each month. We have some interesting topics coming up in 2021, including:

• Explore a Style: Maibock
• Historical Farmhouse Beers: Kviek and Beyond
• CO2 capture (Theory and Practice)

Our goal is to be inclusive of all levels of brewer from someone on their first batches or award-winning brewers with decades of experience. All are welcome to join and learn.

Over the past six months I am sure everyone has felt that we are living in sour times, so this year the NBA homebrew competition is embracing that fully. We are putting on an event smaller than previous years and will focus exclusively on sour, wild, and funky beers. This includes European (Berliner, Flanders, Oud Bruin, Lambic, Geuze), American (Brett, Mixed Ferm, Wild), Historical (Gose, Lichtenhainer), and Local styles (Catharina) following BJCP style guidelines.

Account registration is NOW OPEN with entry registration and drop-off/shipping capped at 50 entries due in November. All judging will be done through remote video chat, so THREE BOTTLES OF EACH ENTRY are required. Check out the competition website for full details. Register early and get your entries submitted!

SourTimesNBA.com

If you have a taste for these styles, we are looking for judging volunteers for this BJCP-certified event. Pick-up will be made available in the Minneapolis area in early December.

Please reach out with any questions about entries or to help judge!

Cheers!

The barrel program for sour and whiskey-aged beers is a core tenet of the NBA club. With some changes over the past months to our barrel line-up, the history and goals have been updated on the Barrel Program page. Come check out what we are up to.

Membership is open to everyone, which includes access to the barrel program.

Cheers!