Tuesday, February 22, 2011

February Meeting Recap

Thanks to everyone who made the trip up to Guthrie for last week's Red Earth Brewers monthly meeting. And a big thanks to Rick's Fine Chocolates and Coffees for hosting our motley crew.  We had some great discussions, learned a few things (the tasting lineup will be much more organized in the future) and got to taste a lot of great stouts.  Here's a brief recap:

1.  From Tony's super dry-hopped American stout to Wes' crazy sour cranberry stout to Scott's insanely imperial oil slick stout, there was an amzingly wide variety of beers brought to the meeting.  Congratulations to Tony Tielli, who took first place in the stout tasting competition.  His winning recipe (in all its fancy metric measurement glory) is below.  Also, congratulations to Ross Harper and Daniel ??? (sorry I didn't catch your last name--please email me at redearthbrewers (at) gmail.com so I can update it with your correct name) who took 2nd and 3rd place respectively.

Come to the Dark Side.
2.  On another voting matter, we finalized the official club logo.  As you may recall, we sent out our 13 original entries to an electronic vote.  We then took the top 5 and voted at last week's meeting for our favorite.  When all the votes were tallied using a 3-2-1 voting system (3 points for a first place vote, 2 for second and 1 point for third), the top three were:

1st place with 27.6% of the vote

2nd with 24.2%
 
3rd with 19.5%
As we've said before, we'll probably still keep using different logos for different purposes from time to time.  But the bottlecap logo above will be our "official" club logo.  Big thanks and congratulations to Red Earth Brewer and graphic designer extrordinaire John Mitchell for the winning entry.

3.  Our next meeting, pending the weather and burn ban status, will be an outdoor social activity and bonfire at the Piedmont home of Scott Cragg.  No specific beer to brew, but please bring some of your favorite homebrews or craft beers to share.  More info and directions will be sent out shortly.

4.  Our April meeting (April 21st, location TBA) will be a SMASH beer.  For those who don't know (like myself until a few weeks ago), SMASH is short for Single MAlt, Single Hop.  In other words, you're only allowed to use one type of grain or extract (that means no mini-mashes) and one hop variety.  Beyond that, the only limit is your own imagination.  It'll be a great way for everyone to really get to learn what flavor qualities a specific grain, hop or yeast brings to the table.  And to make things more interesting, we may have a little competition where everybody can play "name that ingredient" and see who can identify the different things that went into everybody's beers.

5.  If you're not already doing so, please be sure that you're following us on Facebook and Twitter.  That's where we post most of our updates along with some other fun or interesting things we find. 

Thanks again to everybody who made it out to last week's meeting.  I can't wait for the next one.  Happy brewing!

Tony's American Stout
BJCP Category 13E
Target OG : 1.080
Target FG : 1.022
ABV 7.69%
Batch Size: 6 Gallons (at the end of the boil)
Calculated at 70% efficiency.
75% (6.44kg) Pale Ale Malt
9%   (800g)   Chocolate Malt
5%   (480g)   Roasted Barley
5%   (400g)   Crystal 40L
2%   (160g)   Crystal 80L
4%   (350g)   White Table Sugar
33g  Magnum    (13.6%aa)  - 60 minutes
20g  Centennial (10.0%aa)  - 10 minutes
20g  Cascade    (5.5%aa)   - 10 minutes
30g  Centennial (10.0%aa)  -  1 minute
30g  Cascade    (5.5%aa)   -  1 minute
30g  Centennial  (10.0%aa)  - Dry Hop
20g  Cascade     (5.5%aa)   - Dry Hop
White Labs WLP007 Dry English Ale (repitched slurry from previous batch)
Ferment at 65F until complete, dry hop for 7 days following fermentation.