The January Meeting--The Start of a New Year

We gathered again at the Brewmaster on a cool January morning for our monthly meeting. The big item of discussion was the Brew Off. I won’t bore you with the details of the discussion; see the BABO article on page 4 for a recap and the results.

We moved on to the selection of the Hail to Ale club entry. The purpose was to select the best pale ale in the club to send to the club-only competition to be judged in Massachusetts. However, Harry is also using these events to encourage people to enter their beer as well as help members to improve their tasting and judging skills. Apparently, this contest was an IPA contest in the past; this year, the contest contained three subcategories: British Pale Ale, IPA, and American Pale Ale. Harry wanted to point out that one of the main characteristics of an IPA, besides its high hop levels, is that it is traditionally very pale whereas the pale ale style ranges from very pale to amber. AHA style guidelines, however, seem to fluctuate and don’t always agree with everyone’s opinion on what a style should be like.

It seemed that everyone enjoyed the judging and would like it to become a monthly event. John Pyles recommended a new book called Evaluating Beer which includes chapters by a variety of authors. We’ll look for a review from him soon.

Bob Jones has been selected to be a speaker for the second straight year at the annual AHA meeting. If you’ve made at least a couple of meetings recently, then you won’t be surprised to hear his topic: proper yeast pitching rates. He’s looking for volunteers to help him by building up starters in your future batches and comparing the attenuation rates with those from your past batches. If you’re interested, contact Bob.