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Recap – March Monthly Meeting and Things to Watch

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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

May 17th Club Meeting Notes

meeting recaps,
  • Introductions/misc. (5 min.)
    • Discount reminders (see previous postings)
  • Atendence: Aaron D, Tim, Andrew w, Brian, Matt C, Joe, Robin, Joe, Chad, Nick P,  Tom, Ryan, Nick, Nathan G, Eric, Justin, Nate, Kevin S,
  • Announcements/upcoming events/new business(15 min.)
    • Mid-month BAMF meet-up recap
    • Club Priorities
    • Signing of the by laws for all members – Read before the meeting
    • Summer BBQ – Where, When, Who (Nathan’s Place, June 30th)
    • Summer BBQ – 1st Semiannual NBA Club Competition – Recap of rules and regulations
      • 6 pack of bottles, best of show, prizes still unsure
    • NBA Sponsored Homebrew Competition – Big River Brew Fest
      • October in coordination wit the East side neighborhood services.
      • Last year was first big river beer fest, this will be the first time they have a homebrew contest.
      • We will limit the contest to beers only, no meads or ciders.
      • There is a lot of work to be done, all help is welcome.
      • A Committee has been started, and we’re looking for more members.  Email Nick P on the Google Groups to  join.
  • Northeast Farmer’s Market  – June 2nd!
    • NBA has secured a booth the first four Saturday’s in June (8:00am set up, 9:00am-1:00pm market open).
    • Our Primary purpose is to continue our membership drive and get our name out in the community.
    • We will be demonstrating brewing, educating anyone with questions, and letting people know about the cool stuff we’re doing.
    • We are responsible for bringing all the gear, setting up, tearing down, and exuding excellence for the entirety of the market.
    • We have a minimum of 3 people signed up for each weekend, but the more the merrier.  Post on the forum to sign up for a day, and what you can bring.
    • Nick and Steve will coordinate the team on how to conduct ourselves.
  • Upcoming local competitions
    • Minnesota State Fair is right around the corner…
    • Big River Brewfest
  • Group experiments update (5 min.)
    • Barrel-aging project update [Nick P]
      • General status update.
      • Barrel is full, and Nick sampled (1.007 – from 1.013) flavor is a lil funky, lil tart.  Good start to the project.  Now we play the waiting game.
  • Single Hope update/status–
    • The page lists all the chosen hops.  Money was collected for the group buy.
    • If you didn’t get in on the group buy, you are on your own to purchase ingredients.
    • Water (Ice Mountain Spring water) and hops are up to each individual for purchasing
  • Financial Report (5 min.)
    • See the non-profit bullets above.
    • 7 members joined at this meeting.
    • Keep bringing in your friends!
  • Education session (20 min.)
    • DIY – Nathan G – “Mash tun to Jockey Box” – Link coming from Instructables once it’s up
      Nathan showing off his work
      • Why would you do this? 
      • To cool hot wort (at farmers market) and/or to chill a keg for serving.
      • What’s involved?
      • Added Quick disconnects in top of mash tun to make it multi function
      • Copper coils (soft copper/refrigeration tubing)– 60’ wrapped coil around a soup can, then arount a coffee can, then brought it all together
      • Jockey box – copper wort chiller goes in mash tun, fill it with ice, and you run wort/beer through the tubing
      • The entire system is gravity fed, for wort cooling, the remaining pressure in the keg pushes out the beer when serving.
  • Total build cost: ~$ 160 for entire mash tun/jockey box conversion
  • ~$95 for just jockey box conversion

Break

  • What’s on tap?– Other New Business
    • Since there are so many projects going on, and our next two meetings are essentially events, breakout committee sessions are needed to advance individual projects.  The Google groups forum will be helpful for this.
    • Library – Nick starting a forum (spreadsheet coming on blog)
    • Next educational topics:
      •  June – BBQ! (Session beers [Matt P.])
      • July – SHE tasting
      • August – ??Electric set up?  Ryan?
      • September – Andrew N – Mash tun
      • Summer Social Events?
        • mid month happy hours, Pub crawls?  Nothing cemented, but events are encouraged.
        • Next BAMF date- TBD
  • General Q&A (15 min)
  • Group Tastings
    • Andrew W – Saison (16c)
    • Tyler B – Specialty beer (23) base is cream ale (6A)
    • Tim S – Belgian Spelcialty (16e?)
    • New Holland gave us a couple bottles of the Sour, and stopped by after our meeting to talk about it.