|
Many thanks to all who attended the July meeting at Beth and Al D. this past Saturday. We had about 15 members and 1 guest Eric S. Eric is returning to Roanoke after many years and has been part of both the Richmond and James River homebrew clubs if I remember correctly. Bottom line is he's been brewing for 7-8 years and it sounds like he'll be a regular.
Kevin C. gave us a treasury report. We are still at 57, and Eric said he'd be 58. We have a balance of $695.44, less the APA samples and the 40s of that yellow stuff they call beer.
A brief recap from Kevin on Floyd Fandango sounded like it was another hit and a great opportunity to get some time with the brewers from the local brewpubs and breweries. Blacksburg Brew Do came up. The wesite is updated and it appears the format of the homebrew competition is the same. $5 per entry of 3 bottles. Up to three entries total. Only one per category, light, amber, dark, and specialty. A discussion about Microfestivus took place. About 17 Guild members have volunteered. Please e-mail Harry if you are interested in volunteering for judging, pouring, or working the Blue Ridge Hydroponics tent. The biggest task we have will be the competition of brewer's choice. I believe by the time we were done we agreed it'd be best to divide the volunteers into groups of 3-4 and each group take one section of the Microfestivus layout. Once each group has narrowed the field to the top 2-3 in the categories of light, amber and dark (the categories may change), the groups will merge and retaste the top choices to determine the best in each category. Something like that. After a short break, John M. presented us with the APA styles. If nothing else it was made very clear the style had a broad range of acceptable characters. Our first was the standard by which the BJCP judges everything else, Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale. This was a very balanced beer with minimal malt and hop character. From there the beers seemed to develop more hop character ending in the groups overall favorite the Firestone-Walker Pale Ale which had the most nose and hop flavor. A discussion insued about which beer would be used as a calabration beer for the APA competition. Due to the range of acceptable characteristics it was decided we probably wouldn't do a calabrating beer. However, we may put out the remaining bottles at the start of the meeting so people/judges could try them again to refresh their memories. Just a reminder we will be starting the judging at 4:30 and all beers should be at the September meetin by 4:15. After another short break, Kevin presented 6 more off flavors. As always we had some "good" off flavors and some bad. I think we all agreed that the High Life with the Gerinol (hop flavor) made for a wonderful beer actually. While the cheesy (stale hops) was tought to swallow, so to speak. We'll have the final 6 off flavors at the August meeting. We'll that's all for this meeting. We'll see some of you at Microfestivus. I believe John S. said August 28th for the meeting but I'll send another e-mail out to confirm that. Cheers!!
Future Meeting Dates:
Aug 28 John S.
Sept Bryan S. (APA Competition) Oct 23 Jeff F.
Nov Carrie and Justin C.
Dec Will L. (RIS Competition) |
