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.