Friday, July 22, 2011

July meeting and tasting recap

Wow, what a fun meeting that was. A lot of new faces and a lot of good beer. Thanks to Tony and Jessica Tielli for hooking us up with a good meeting spot at their community clubhouse (we'll be back there next month). A few notes from the evening's festivities:

1. Every May, the American Homebrewers Association sponsors Big Brew Day, an event aimed at getting experienced homebrewers to invite their friends to brew with them and introduce new people to the hobby. So this month's tasting competition was for all those beers we brewed for Big Brew Day. No specific style guideline--the only requirement was that the beer had to be a tag-team effort between a Red Earth member and someone new to homebrewing.



A few of the entries ready to go

Let the tasting begin
And the winners are . . .

1st Place: Jason MacKinnon and Wes Glinsmann (American Wheat--recipe below)
2nd Place: Daniel Waterburg and Brandon Jones (American Pale Ale)
3rd Place: Chris and Jase (India Pale Ale)

The big winners
 Congrats to our winners and thanks to everyone who entered!

2. In addition to the contest entries, thanks to everyone who brought their homebrews to sample. We had everything from a 13 year old tripel to keg-hopped IPAs to chocolate coconut schwarzbier. I'm pleased to report that the beers keep getting better every month, so be sure you don't miss next month's meeting.

3. Speaking of which, next month's meeting should be very, very interesting. You may recall, our tasting next month is in the BJCP #23 category of "specialty/experimental/historical" beers. So basically the rules are there are no rules. Anything you can come up with--weird styles, crazy ingredients--that doesn't fit into another category is valid. So plan to be there for what promises to be a great tasting. The meeting info is:

Thursday, August 25
7:00 pm
17804 Silverhawk Way
Edmond, OK
(Southwest corner of 178th and Penn)

4. KRXO's Beerfest is scheduled for August 6th, and Red Earth Brewers will be there pouring some of our finest samples. If you would like to donate some beer for the cause or would like to volunteer to pour, please contact Gail at The Brew Shop for all the details. (One catch--if you plan to pour, you MUST have your homebrewer's license from the ABLE Commission. If you don't already have it, I encourage you to print off the form below and get it submitted ASAP. It's free, but it can take ABLE a few weeks to get it processed.)
Oklahoma Home Brew Permit Application

5. Red Earth Brewers is coming up on its 1st birthday, and we want to make sure that the club is giving Oklahoma homebrewers what they need. So if you haven't already done so, please take our quick survey and let us know what you think of a couple of important issues that will determine where we go from here.

6. The American Homebrewers' Association club-only competition for September is mead. So if you are a mead maker who would like to enter one of your meads for consideration, please contact Gail.

7. The future tasting schedule is as follows, so be thinking about what you want to bring to these meetings:

August: Specialty/Experimental/Historical Beers (BJCP #23)
October: Hefeweizen (BJCP #15 A, B, C and D)
December: Winter Warmer (no specific style guidelines, but any high alcohol beer--imperial stout, barleywine, old ale, etc.--for those cold winter nights)
Thanks again to everyone who came out on Thursday! I look forward to seeing even more folks in August.

(Below is Wes' and Jason's winning recipe, along with some more pictures from the evening.)

Wheatcha Doin? American Wheat
O.G. 1.053
IBU 15.3

7 lbs, 4 oz wheat liquid extract (put in half at beginning of boil, and the other half with 5-10 minutes left)
1 lb flaked wheat
8 oz crystal 10L
1/4 oz magnum hops (60 min)
1/4 oz cascade hops (5 min)
1/2 oz cascade hops (1 min)
White Labs California Ale (WLP001) yeast







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