Author: Sudzers

Great to see everyone at our June meeting!  We had 24 attendees for last Friday’s meeting.

Business Discussed:

·         Happy birthday to Nick!

·         Welcome new Sudzers member Marcus! 

·         Bus Trip Preparations – tickets are still available! Visit http://sudzersbustrip2012.eventbrite.com/ to get your tickets ASAP!  The bus trip is this Saturday, June 9!  We still need to sell 4 tickets!

·         Thirsty Thursday – June 21 – Harry’s Hofbrau, unless something more interesting comes up!

·         July Meeting – moved to July 13 due to the July 4^th holiday.  Style will be IPA, so we should have a small turnout! 😉 

Next on the Agenda was the first annual British Beer Competition.  We had 7 entries!

The judging criteria (not BJCP) was based on :

·          4.5% alcohol by volume or less (low alcohol not low taste)
·          flavorful enough to be interesting
·          balanced enough for multiple pints
·          conducive to conversation

The winners, in reverse order were: 

7 – Santiago – spring brew day what if summer ale
6 – Bobby – Sam smith oatmeal stout clone
5 – Derek – pecan nut brown
4 – Raghu #1 – small English  brown ale
3 – Charles –  arrogant bastard style
2 – Raghu #2, English session ale
1 – Keith, ESB

Congratulations Keith!  And thanks to all the brewers who participated.  Start thinking about what you can do next year!

Home brew presentation (not entered in the British Beer Cup):
Vern – IPA with toasted oatmeal and barley

Hope you all had a great time!  See you July 13 with tales of great beers from NHC in Seattle!

On May 12, 2012, the Sudzers gathered at Santiago’s house in Redwood City for the 8th Annual Spring Club Brew Day. Santiago had recently completed building a 10 gallon system into his patio, where luckily there had previously been plumbing and a natural gas hookup for laundry. But seriously, what’s more important? Laundry, or a sweet homebrew setup?

Santiago led the maiden brew on his new 10 gallon system with the recipe from What If Summer Ale from Radical Brewing:

Recipe (5 gallon base) :
Fermentables:
6.0 Lb  Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt
2.0 Lb Pilsener Malt
1.0 Lb Malted wheat
1.0 Lb piloncillo
Hops & other additions:
60 min Fuggles
5 min Goldings
5 min coriander
5 min candied ginger

In addition, former club president and “Master of the Vorlauf” Doug brought his system over to make 5 gallons of lovely saison.

Santiago & Linda generously provided a lot of tasty food, including many delicious grilled meats.

And generally, a good time was had by all.

Your club president and humble narrator was suffering from a bout of laryngitis that day, but, as always enjoyed seeing other people’s brew setups, sharing some tasty brews and food, and enjoying good Sudzers company.

One other item of note from the 12th: Derek drove up to San Leandro pre-brew-in to pick up 5 gallon whiskey barrels for Tyler, Santiago, and himself from the full pallet that Adam had ordered from Balcones Distilling in Texas. Hopefully there will be many fine barrel aged brews to be sampled at future meetings – my 11.1% ABV, 107 IBU Go Go Barleywine has been in the barrel for just over two weeks now. I’m anticipating about a three month aging, which, because of the increased surface contact, is the equivalent of over a year’s aging in a 55 gallon barrel.

Cheers!

To purchase tickets, please visit:
http://sudzersbustrip2012.eventbrite.com/

Hello Sudzers!  Just a quick reminder our June meeting is this Friday at 7pm at Nick’s house.

If you haven’t already bought tickets for the June 9 East Bay bus trip, please bring cash, checks, doubloons, etc. to get your tickets Friday night!  This will be the last meeting before the bus trip!

Agenda for this month’s meeting includes:

7:00 Social Time
7:15 Club Business

• Bus Trip final preparation
• “Most British” competition for the Sudzers mini cup (Nick, can we do a blind tasting similar to how we did the mystery hop beers last summer?)
• June Thirsty Thursday location – Harry’s? Tied House? Wicked Chicken? (Keith & Michelle & Derek & I will be in Seattle for NHC)
• July Meeting – Date Change due to Holiday
• Presentation of Homebrews –  Style of the Month (besides British session beers): Light Hybrids (Cream Ale, Blonde, Kolsch, American Wheat or Rye)

For the first annual British Beer Cup, we will be using the following judging criteria (thanks Raghu!):

a. Flavorful and Balanced – Malt AND Hops – both in harmony (not just overly bitter) with fermentation derived esters (Fruity notes etc)
b. Attractive in a glass – not muddy and leaving nice lace.
c. Sessionable – Can you see yourself finishing a pint and ordering another (finishing dry, not too bitter, not too sweet etc.) Would this go with a good hunk of rustic bread, some Cheddar and pickled onion 🙂

To steal from Lew Bryson’s session beer project

•  4.5% alcohol by volume or less (low alcohol not low taste)
•  flavorful enough to be interesting
•  balanced enough for multiple pints
•  conducive to conversation

We’ve got a handful of entries so far, please bring your homebrew if you think it fits!

Always welcome: homebrews from any style to share.  Don’t have any homebrew on hand right now? Feel free to bring other interesting brews you’ve picked up. Don’t have a beer to bring? Please bring some snacks to share.

See you on Friday!

The Silicon Valley Sudzers homebrew club has been around for nearly two decades, promoting the enjoyment of homebrewing and craft beer in the South Bay area.

We are in the process of redesigning our website to make it cleaner, easier to navigate and update, and to allow more members to contribute content easily.

For now, there’s not a huge amount here, but much more will be added over the next couple of months as we bring over content from the old site. In the meantime, the most important thing is our calendar of events, so you can see when you can meet the Sudzers at a club meeting, Thirsty Third Thursday meetup, club brew day, or other events.

We look forward to sharing a brew with you in person soon!

Cheers,
Derek, Sudzers President

Kelsey Williams of the Bay Area Craft Beer blog dropped by for a Sudzers meeting and wrote a nice article about her experience in “An Evening with the Silicon Valley Sudzers.” Read it here:

http://www.bayareacraftbeer.com/profiles/the-silicon-valley-sudzers/