Silicon Valley Sudzers Homebrew Club

On Tuesday, January 1 at 10 am, a few of us will be getting together at Slow Hand BBQ in Pleasant Hill to enjoy some outstanding BBQ and to create our own smoked malt, using Slow Hand’s smokers to smoke the grains along with the barbecue meats. The intent will be to produce homebrewed smoked beers to pair with Slow Hand BBQ at an event during SF Beer Week. If you’re interested in joining in the festivities and lending a hand with the smoking on Tuesday, please email Derek at derek dot wolfgram at gmail dot com. If you can’t come, but might be interested in creating a brew, please also let Derek know that. Read on to learn more…

Pete Slosberg introduces the concept:
“One of my good friends, Dan Frengs, used to be a beer sales guy for many years and then decided on a career change and entered the BBQ business.  I am a big proponent of Dan’s BBQ and I unequivocally can say that his BBQ is the best on the west coast.  He started out with a mobile smoker going to events, but now has a permanent restaurant in Pleasant Hill, next to Concord, called Slow Hand BBQ.  I had a craving so I was there this week.  We chatted about things including SF Beer Week for this coming February.  He would love to do something and get people exposed to his goodies. I suggested that he do the obvious, pairing BBQ with smoked beer, but with a twist.  Take smoked beer to the next level.  With his smoker and meats, create special smoked malts the reflect each of his meats, e.g. smoke some malt with the wood smoke, but also the aroma of the smoking BBQ ribs, then another for Brisket, then……. He would then have an event pairing his BBQ with each of the “special smoked” beers.

When Pete’s suggestion went out to the Sudzers, Derek, Chris R., and Tyler all expressed interested in producing beers using the barbecue smoked malts. Chris R. also contributed a significant amount of knowledge of smokers and how to produce the best results in smoking our own malts, even citing Modernist Cuisine in determining how to get the maximum impact based on temperature, wood choice, timing, and technique.

We’re all looking forward to tasting Slow Hand’s barbecue, as well as the accompanying smoked malts we will produce, Derek has tentatively recommended several styles for brewing to pair with the meats, each of which may have different proportions of smoked malts and other specialty grains (some of which we may also create by oven-roasting some of the smoked malts):

• Brisket Smoked Stout or Porter
• St. Louis Ribs Smoked Scotch Ale
• Baby Back Ribs Smoked Brown Ale or English Mild
• Pulled Pork Smoked Altbier, Amber Ale or California Common

Stay tuned for more information after phase 1 is completed on Tuesday. Happy New Year indeed!

In order to accomodate everyone’s schedules around the holidays, we are moving the January 2013 meeting back one week, so it will be 7:00 pm on January 11. No meeting January 4. Regular meetings will still normally be held the first Friday of the month.

Also, in order to facilitate more exciting club sponsored activities in 2013, annual dues will be increased to $25. Please bring cash with you to the meeting on January 11 if you are interested in being a paid member, which entitles you to a 10% discount at MoreBeer Los Altos, special treats like your own bottles of the 2012 club brew Dark Matter Russian Imperial Stout, and special member prices on club events.

Also, there are still just a few Sudzers t-shirts left if you have a little extra holiday gift cash laying around… $10 for the old skool green-on-black shirts, $20 for the new-fangled beige shirts with the integrated circuit design, and $25 for the new design on a ladies’ shirt.

Look forward to seeing some of you at Harry’s tomorrow for Bruery pint night on Thirsty Third Thursday, and many of you at the meeting on January 11.

Hoppy Holidays to you and yours!

Thanks to all for a fantastic party December 8 at Nick’s – we all enjoyed an impressive selection of food, great commercial brews, and some fine homebrews on the jockey box. We had (at least) 48 people in attendance, and a record 32 participants in the white elephant gift exchange. (Rumor has it that Santiago managed to bargain for the coveted three way manifold after the official fun and games were over.)

Congratulations to the 2012 joint winners (tie vote) of the Homebrewer of the Year award – Keith McKay and Mike Conant. Their names will be engraved on the prestigious Sudzer Cup, which will be presented at the January meeting by our new co-Presidents. Congratulations to Tyler Dassow, Santiago Basso, and Nathan Howell, who were also nominated by their fellow homebrewers for the HBOTY award.

There was some discussion among a few of the HBOTY winners about planning for a collaborative brew in late spring early summer with all of the past winners collaborating together on a beer: Guy Cameron, Dan Rosbrugh, Pete Czerpak, Derek Wolfgram, Nathan Howell, and Keith and Mike. More on this later once we try to get everyone together…

With the incredible growth of the club in the past year and the workload that goes with that growth, we decided to experiment with some shared officer positions in 2013.

Your new club officers are:
Co-Presidents/CEOs: Nathan Howell & Tyler Dassow
VP/Chief Operating Officer: Santiago Basso
Treasurer/CFO: Nick Osborne
Co-Secretaries/Chief Communications Officers: Robin & Derek Wolfgram
Co-Chief Technology Officers: Keith McKay & Chris Ringer

An article on yesterday’s examiner.com featured the headline: “The South Bay’s premier homebrew club: Silicon Valley Sudzers.” San Jose Beer News reporter Andy Lee chatted with Sudzers president Derek Wolfgram about beer and brewing in the South Bay. Enjoy the article. Cheers!

Keith and Michelle hosted the 2012 Dark Matter Brew Day – this massive imperial stout has been brewed previously in 2006 and 2009, but the hope is that we will make this an annual event, allowing us to hold vertical tastings as the years go on.

Chief brewers for the day were Keith and Derek, who were joined by Sudzers Steve, Susie, Kathy, and Robin, as well as Keith’s friend Ryan.

Knowing that a massive brew done on an unfamiliar system would take some time, we started bright and early at 8:00 am building the improvised brew sculpture and beginning to heat the 20 gallons of water we would need for mashing 82 pounds of grain in the giant cooler mash tun borrowed from Dan from The Grain Trust. After some initial trouble getting the strike water to hold temperature as it ran into the cooler, we were eventually able to hit the target, and we ended up mashing at 154 degrees.

The cooler was completely maxed out, as you can see from the pictures. In fact, despite our best efforts, we were unable to get the last couple pounds of grain in, so we added them later to convert while we began running off the first of the wort. Because of the sheer pressure on the braided tubing in the mash tun, runoff was stop and go – we went through an ongoing ritual of continuing to stir the mash and blowing back into the runoff tube to create channels for the wort to travel. Eventually, removing a few gallons of mashed grains released the pressure and allowed runoff to proceed more smoothly.

As is typical with an epically long and busy brew day, more photos were captured during mash in, and relatively few as the day progressed. (Although we did pause to capture the moment before consuming one of the last remaining bottles of the 2009 Dark Matter!)

We added 1.5 pounds of DME that was on hand to help account for lower efficiency than estimated (about 60%, as compared to the 68% assumed in the recipe) as well as doing a two hour boil to reduce 22 gallons of 1.088 wort down to 18 gallons in the fermenters with an OG of 1.106. A massive amount of yeast was pitched (one pack dry Safale US 05, one vial White Labs WLP 001, and 1/4 of a US 05 yeast cake from an amber IPA Derek brewed last weekend in each of the four carboys containing 4.5 gallon batches) at about 5:30 last night, and by this morning there was already about an inch of krausen in the fermenters.

5 gallons of the stout will eventually go into a used Balcones Distillery bourbon barrel for aging, and the plan is to bottle condition all 18 gallons. Dues-paying club members will all receive at least one bottle some time next year, and the rest will be used for club events and future vertical tastings of this amazing club brew. Cheers!

This will be our 4th annual fall Club Brew Day, and the third that will feature the famous Dark Matter Imperial Stout.

Brew Day will last from 8 am until approximately 3:00 at Keith’s house in Milpitas. Email moresimcoe@sudzers.org for address/directions.

I’m attaching a copy of the (updated) recipe for your enjoyment and future use.

We have borrowed Dan R.’s giant cooler mash tun and 26 gallon brew kettle, so we will be doing one massive brew instead of two separate 10 gallon batches.

Everyone is encouraged to bring food and/or beer to share. You can RSVP at https://www.facebook.com/events/489051504467747/

Wow, what an unexpected surprise. Heretic night at Harry’s. Met brewer, Jamil, who explained about awesome Evil Cousin IPA. Brewed with Apollo and Columbus, but mega-dry hopped with Centennial, and yes…SIMCOE! Tons of it. Not just once or twice, but almost continuously over the brewing process. As he explains, leaves hops in suspension rather than settling to the bottom. He just checked over at BevMo and they have it refrigerated in bottles with “brewed-on” date. But he says you gotta get it while it’s fresh, effective hops can go from 100 down to 80 over a couple of months. Sudzers bus trip visited brewery shared with E.J. Phair in Pittsburg, but no one from Heretic was there. Jamil was nice enough, though, to leave enough cases of Evil Twin for everyone to take home a couple bottles. Was never impressed with it, but now I have a new respect for Heretic after tonight. Also tasted Torment, served in 8 oz tulip glasses. “Belgian candi sugar notes” is an understatement, very sweet. Not surprised with 10% alcohol.

On October 25, Sudzers Tyler and Marcus joined Widmer Brothers brewer Ben Dobler for a homebrewing demonstration in the Explore Your Craft event in San Francisco. In honor of our region and Widmer’s reputation for wheat beers, Tyler and Marcus developed a recipe called “Wine Country Wheat, ” a wheat wine with honey and grape juice. Tyler reports that the brew is currently fermenting away, and we all hope to try it soon!

The meeting was relatively light on business, but heavy on homebrews!

Sudzers who attended NCHF gave a report about how much fun we had and how well-received our beers were.

October Thirsty Third Thursday to be held at Harry’s Hofbrau San Jose on October 18

Fall brew day discussion – we will begin brewing Dark Matter Imperial Stout on an annual basis each fall. This year’s brew day to be held in November at Keith’s house, date TBD [date is now set for November 24]

Christmas party discussion – regular December meeting will be cancelled, but the club Christmas party will be held at Nick’s house, date TBD [date is now set for December 8]

At the Christmas party, in addition to the famous gift exchange, voting will occur for club officers and Homebrewer of the Year (who gets his or her name engraved on the prestigious Sudzer Cup).

There may be some vacant officer positions, so this is a good opportunity to step forward. If you are interested in running for any office (President/CEO, VP/COO, Treasurer/CFO, Chief Technology Officer, or Chief Communications Officer), please let Derek, Tyler, Nick, Keith or Robin know. Also, if you have anyone you think should be nominated for Homebrewer of the Year, please let one of the officers know.

And then there were homebrews! While attendance was down to about 25 Sudzers at this month’s meeting, we had 18 homebrews to evaluate. Tasting notes on all 18 were not captured, but the brews were, in no particular order:

Robert’s West Coast Session Trappist Ale
Rob’s Gluten Free Raspberry Beer
Rob’s Colonial Ale with pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, molasses, and spruce tips
Tyler’s Imperial Red
Mike’s Patriotic Plum Porter
Mike’s British Redcoat Bitter
Doug H’s German Alt
Derek’s Dubbel
Derek’s Belgian Golden Strong
Charles’ British Strong Ale
Charles’ Citra Pale Ale
Fuad’s American Wheat
Steve’s many-years-aged Belgian Sextuple
Keith’s Oaked Black English IPA
Keith’s German IPA
Steve and Keith’s Red Velvet Cake Ale 2.0
Linda’s Dubbel
Santiago’s Belgian Strong

Robert (as a first time attendee!) and Tyler got the most votes for “I’d buy a keg” on the club rating scale of dump/taster/pint/pitcher/keg.

November meeting will be Friday, November 2 at Nick’s house.

Cheers!