Congratulations to Justin for not only winning his category, but the overall Best of Show with his Schwarzbier at the Oaktoberfest competition sponsored by Mad Zymurgists. Cheers!
Category: The Sudzers Blog
October meeting notes
The membership felt that the November 1 meeting was too soon for the Belgian/IPA GigaYeast Challenge. We are going to judge the beers on the Third Thursday of November instead. Thursday November 15th – 7:00 P.M. at Nicks. For those of you that have not brewed yet you still have time. We still have yeast available so let Tyler know if you need some to participate. Ribbons will be presented to the top three places in each category.
October 17th – Third Thursday – Will be a hosted tour of Hermitage Brewing at 6:30 P.M. with pints to follow in the tap room
Fall Brew Day – It was suggested to do this on Black Friday after Thanksgiving or perhaps that Saturday – more to follow from Nick
Off Flavors Tasting – Also TBD in November
NCHF recap is posted on the website. The Sudzers were voted as having the best overall beers at the festival!
Next meeting will be Friday, November 1st. Mike Conant will deliver a presentation on water.
Sudzers present Homebrewing workshop at Belmont Library, Saturday, Oktober 12
Derek Wolfgram from Silicon Valley Sudzers and Andrew Carroll from the HeadQuarters homebrew club will be presenting a workshop on homebrewing as part of the Belmont Library’s Oktoberfest Celebration at 3 pm on Saturday, Oktober 12.
Feel free to download the slides from the presentation.
Cheers!
Sudzers President Tyler featured in Sunnyvale Sun article on Homebrewing
October 4 Sudzers meeting announcement
Hello Sudzers! Our regular September meeting will be held Friday Oct. 4 at 7 pm at Nick’s house. Need the address or directions? Email moresimcoe@sudzers.org
7:00 Social Time
7:15 Club Business
–NCHF recap
-October 17 Thirsty Third Thursday: 6:30 pm tour of Hermitage Brewing
followed by a visit to the HBC Tap Room (1627 S 7th Street in San
Jose)
–GigaYeast brewing challenge
-Members-only off flavor tasting – date?
-Fall Dark Matter Brew Day – date?
7:30 Homebrew evaluations. Reminder: Bring your recipe – club members
will have lots of questions! Sign your beer in on the whiteboard along
with your name and statistics (IBU, ABV, etc. – optional, but helpful
in determining tasting order)
After homebrew evaluations: more social time/informal commercial brew
sharing
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.
Reminder: the tasting for November 1 will only include beers brewed
with the GigaYeast Vermont IPA (aka Heady Topper yeast) and the brand
new GigaYeast Belgian strain. You may bring other beers to share, but
the formal tasting will be focused on the GigaYeast brewing
competition.
Sudzers voted as having best beers at Northern California Homebrewers Festival by other homebrew clubs
Once again, the Sudzers had an exceptional year at NCHF, particularly being voted as having the best beers of the festival by the other clubs in attendance. The instructions said that voters should choose not the club with the best single beer, or the club with the most beers, but the club with, on average, the highest quality beers. (We may also have had the most beers of any club besides Chico Homebrew Club, with 22 items available at the
Sudzers booth.) We will get a super fancy certificate in the weeks ahead in recognition of our awesome beers.
The highlights of our beer selection were Jim W’s Citrarillo IPA, the club’s Dark Matter Imperial Stout, Doug W’s Flanders Red (no relation to the barrel in the basement), Joe D’s
Pumpkin Pie Ale, and Derek W’s cask-conditioned Flanders Cream Ale, but every single beer was well-received. And of course, the keg of Russian River Hop 2 It was a hit as well.
The giant Sudzers tent came in very handy for the torrential downpour on Saturday afternoon… we had a nice space for people to hang out, and enjoy some snacks and brews.
The food at the Sudzers booth was incredible – tons of tasty smoked meats, pineapple pulled pork, sausages, veggie chili (someone picked out all the meat!), chicken
coconut curry, lasagna, celery and apple salad, slaw, brownies, chocolate chip cookies (with M&Ms, pretzels and potato chips inside).
There were the usual hiccups – we had to rearrange several booths on Friday afternoon to make room for our giant tent, since there were a record number of clubs in attendance, and the field was set up more narrowly than it should have been. All of our beer and serving equipment were not quite ready (or even at the Fest yet) when things
kicked off, but eventually we got it all up and running. There were also some adventures… Marc Andre had a very long, very refreshing nap… Nick got locked in a cabin restroom for an hour before being rescued (really!) You’ve got to have some stories to tell, right?
Thanks to all who participated in making the event a success – there ended up being about 30 of us from Sudzers – one of the strongest showings of any of the 40+ participating clubs.
We’re still looking for more pictures to post. If any attendees have any pictures to share,
please email Derek W.
Sudzers GigaYeast Brewing Challenge
It’s official! Dust off your brewing equipment as the Sudzers are doing their first GigaYeast brewing challenge. We are doing two categories: IPAs and Belgians.
The stipulation is that you must use the IPA and/or Belgian yeast strains that were distributed at our last meeting from GigaYeast. GigaYeast is fine with us propagating the strains for use in the contest. The Belgian yeast is not even commercially available so we will be the first to test drive the yeast.
Several of us are going to help propagate the strains for use in the contest. We will bring the strains to the meeting in October or can coordinate pick-ups in advance. I already have 12 samples of the Super Secret Belgian Yeast ready for you to use. Email me to coordinate pick-ups of the strain in Sunnyvale, Justin to coordinate East Bay, and Rueben for San Jose pick-ups.
For the November meeting we will focus on tasting only the Belgian and IPA contest entries (of course you will be free to bring other beers for social hour). We are hoping Loren from Gigayeast or the founder will be able to help judge the competition. If they are not able to join us we will ask you to bring a couple of bottles so we can provide them to Gigayeast.
Ribbons will be awarded for the top three places in each category.
Brew On.
Tyler
