Come learn how to spot spruce tips, forage them, and use them in your brewing. We’ll explore the sensory side of spruce tips and taste them in beer. From mash, to boil, to dry hop additions, see how they can affect beer’s flavor.
Join us this Thursday for what should be a really fun meeting at Northern Brewer’s Minneapolis location. 6021 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55419
We will be joined by Ben from Mighty Axe Hops. He will be giving a presentation on their process and answering your hop related questions.
We will also be tasting around 10 beers brewed by members featuring only Mighty Axe Comet hops!
Come join us, its bound to be a great time. Cheers!
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.
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!
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!
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!
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!
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.Hi everybody! The monthly meeting is this Thursday at 7:00pm (come early!) at Midwest Supplies. They are graciously letting us hang out and use their space after the store closes down. Be sure to head over early and take a look at some of the offerings, including the GigaWort! Rumor has it there might be an additional discount for club members!
Education topic: Off flavor Tasting with Christopher Haas!
Bring some homebrew to share! If you aren’t a member, no worries, our meetings are open to everyone!
I hope everyone got their leaves raked this weekend, because:
Thursday, November 16, is our monthly meeting at ESNS, 7pm. Our education topic will be “off flavors.” Bring tasting glasses and some brew for what should be a great session.
Saturday, November 18, we will be at the grand re-opening of Northern Brewer Minneapolis. We will have the club system going for 20gal of a Winter Warmer, and hopefully the classroom system for 10gal of a Brown Ale. The club will also be sharing our beers with the home brewing community there. If you would like to share, here is the sign-up list.
You can also still register for the NBA Homebrew Competition! Make sure you are registered and have your entries at the drop-off locations by the 27th.
L
astly, the NBA is getting internet famous! Carl, Chris, and Aaron spent time with Chip for an episode of Chop N Brew, tasting a handful of beers featuring Weyermann® Barke® Vienna Malt. Check it, and share it with your social networks.
The August monthly meeting will be Thursday, August 17th, at EastSide Neighborhood Services at 7pm.
This month’s educational topic will be deep dive into Aroma Training!
We will also discuss upcoming events:
Bring a tasting glass and some homebrew to share, if you don’t have any homebrew ready, don’t sweat it, just bring a glass. If you feel compelled to bring beer grab something new or interesting from the commercially available options at your local purveyor.
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.
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.
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!
This month we will be meeting at our primary location, the main room at the East Side Neighborhood Services building, 7pm Thursday the 18th. Bring a tasting glass and some homebrew to share, if you don’t have any homebrew ready, don’t sweat it, just bring a glass. If you feel compelled to bring beer grab something new or interesting from the commercially available options at your local purveyor.
We will be recapping what we have done in the last month and what we have coming up for next month, Homebrew Con!
We started the month as we do with a Taproom Takeover at Urban Growler. Turn out was low but its still good to have people come out to support our local businesses.
Rahr and BSG invited us out to Rahr Malting facilities for a tour. We had a few beers at the Stube and then toured the campus. It was amazing to see acres of barley going through the malting processes.
