Bubblings From the Fermenter
Mark Tumarkin
Dave Barry said "There is a very fine line between 'hobby' and 'mental illness." With homebrewers, it is a very thin line, and one that a lot of us crossed a ways back. We welcomed two brand new brewers, Mike Hand and JP Houchen, to the club this month. Mike's dad, Dave, also joined at the meeting. Mike and JP were asking for advice and help in brewing their very first batch of beer (which is now in the fermenter). Wayne and I were trying to point them in the right direction at the Pub one Saturday evening without giving them way too much info for them to remember or use. Think back to your first batch; did you have someone to help or were you out there on your own?
Most of us have come a long way since that first batch, but the quest to brew great beer is never-ending. We are always learning something new, getting that cool new brewing toy, trying something different, honing or changing favorite recipes. We've all learned a lot about brewing along the way. We each have our own ways of doing things, techniques that we've developed ourselves or learned from reading and watching others. Some of these are basic, some more advanced.
What I'd like to ask you, and have you think about, is what do you think are the most critical things to brewing better beer? What are the Best Practices, so to speak? I've got my own thoughts: the first three things are good sanitation. Number four is pitch lots of yeast. The list goes on: full-wort boils, controlling fermentation temps, use excessive amounts of hops (without believing that it's excessive), etc. What would you add or emphasize?
What are the things that have the most impact in our quest to brew better beer? Think about it, and let's start compiling our list; not only to help new brewers but also because it's good for us all to examine and think about our own brewing techniques, systems, and procedures. Or maybe it's just that I crossed that fine line between hobby and mental illness long ago; as Pat Babcock puts it, "Beer is my obsession, and I'm late for therapy."
And speaking of obsession, we had 10 cases of Monster Mash beer at the April meeting. Bradley wanted to lock the doors and not let anyone leave till it had all been consumed. Small thinking is not one of Bradley's problems! I think our comparative hops experiment was a success. The overwhelming favorite seemed to be the Centennials. Although each of the other varieties also had their supporters. Fred said "Oh yeah, I can always recognize the Fuggles, that's the one I don't like." Bottom line is we saw the impact that different hop varieties can have on the same basic beer.
We made up five-packs with one of each beer for the members to take home (Dr. Bob kept insisting on a six-pack so I filled his out with an empty bottle. It seemed to make him happy, go figure.) This left us with a good bit of beer to drink at upcoming meetings/parties. We will also enter the beers in the upcoming Sunshine Challenge to get some unbiased opinions of the brews. If you are a paid up member and didn't get your five-pack, please let me know soon.
The meeting at Fred's was unusually well attended; I guess the promise of free beer to take home pretty well guarantees people will show up. We didn't trash Fred's house too badly (thanks for having us Fred!). We even managed to discuss a little club business. We will be trying to book the bus for the Tampa Road Trip/Pub Crawl for either the second or third Saturday in July, either the 8th or the 15th, depending upon availability of the tour bus. So keep those dates open. Bradley is working on getting the artwork done for pint and tasting glasses with the Hogtown logo. Hopefully, they'll be ready by the next meeting. And speaking of logo stuff, we've still got lots of Hogtown t-shirts left. Let me know if you want any. We talked about having a camp-out in July but consensus seemed to be that it would be too buggy, better to wait for the fall.
We also had a tasting of some Am. Pale Ales, mostly from the Northeast. Thanks to my daughter Laurel, for bringing these down with her from NY. Erin also brought some interesting beers back from her recent trip to Texas. With all of these, the Monster Mash beers, Dr. Bob's rice beer, Robert's Geuze and Scottish IPA, there was no shortage of good beer to drink. We also sampled George Perrin's Wee Heavy, the only entry into this month's Scotch Ale style contest so George wins by default. However, everyone thought that George had nailed the style and would have won regardless of the number of entries. (Bradley thought it was way better than last month's over-the-hill German wheat.)
The next meeting will be at Dr. Bob's lab. That should also draw a good turnout. Next month's style contest will be Am. Wheats. Hope there will be a better number of entries for that one. Instead of a style presentation/tasting, we will have another session of doctored beers to educate our palates and help us better recognize the flavors and tastes (both good and bad) that we are likely to encounter in beer. Just a quick rundown of the upcoming months' style contests: June will be Am Pale Ale, July is Open (any style), and August will be Brown Ales. These are popular categories and we should have lots of entries. So get those fermenters bubbling.