Beer Swap, Meads and More

The September meeting returned to Brewmaster in San Leandro, after a summer of picnics and pubs.

The meeting got under way with the first official beer swap. Four adventurous members brought homebrew to trade:

Roger St. Denis’ Beer Belly Bock went to Bruce Brazil

Bruce’s Hoppy Pale and English Brown went to Harry Graham and Bob Jones

Bob’s Porter and IPA went to Bruce and Harry

Harry’s Bitter (Stock Ale) went to Roger

We’ll hear reports about the quality of the traded items at the next meeting. The concept of homebrew swaps seems to be successful, and we look forward to more swaps in the future.

Michelle Hodges and Bob Jones gave more details on the December Holiday Dinner (which you can read about inside this newsletter).

The October pub crawl is on hold until significant interest is assured.

The November meeting will be moved up one week (to November 4th) because of Stern Grove. Stern Grove is more formally known as the California State Homebrewing Competition, not to be confused with the State Fair or anything. The event happens in Stern Grove, a nice park in San Francisco.

Bob handed out additional graphs on Hop Alpha Acid Utilization (which are included in this newsletter). If you would like larger or electronic copies of the graphs, contact Bob Jones or Ken Koupal.

The style of the month was mead and specialty beers. Loren Davidson and Dale Walker presented their mead yeast test. Details are included in a featured article. Briefly, 5 gallons of must (melomel) was split four ways, and four different yeasts were pitched. After fermenting under identical conditions, a vast difference in taste was achieved.

Other specialty beers tasted were Loren and Dale’s Blackberry Mead, Bruce’s 4-year old dry mead and 1-year old mead, Harry’s Scottish Ales and the last of the Barley Wine, Charlie’s 4-day old beer, and Bryan’s Dark Barley Wine.

John Pyles is organizing the Bay Area Brew Off (BABO) at Lyon’s Brewery in Dublin, 1/20/96.