Author: Sudzers

Sudzers are doing a brewing demonstration and providing refreshments again for the MoreBeer Los Altos summer sale on July 13. (Since the event occurred before the notes were finished, you can see an event recap with photos at http://www.sudzers.org/?p=846.)

This week’s Thirsty Third Thursday meetup will be held at Harry’s Hofbrau San Jose and will feature several Goose Island brews, July 18, 6:30 pm onward.

Northern California Homebrewers Festival registration opened Sunday, July 14. (The festival sold out in 95 minutes, a new record by far. At last count, over 20 Sudzers registered for the event, so we should be well represented!) The club is still looking for someone to take the lead on organizing booth decorations, food, and, most importantly, beer! We also need to identify an area to camp together in the upper campground for those not staying in cabins.

Silicon Valley Beer Week July 28-August 3 has over 100 events scheduled. The closing event for the week will be the KraftBrew Fest in San Jose from 1-7 pm on August 3. As part of this event, Sudzers will be doing a brewing demonstration on the grounds of the fest. Derek will bring his gear and brew a granola stout for NCHF – a honey oatmeal milk stout with cinnamon and toasted coconut. If you are interested in assisting with the club booth and attending the fest, please email Derek.

Chris Ringer will bring ribbons from the San Mateo County Fair to the next meeting for distribution. He entered several BBQ beers on behalf of the club, and his Angry Leprechaun Irish Red took first place in its category (along with his non-BBQ beers: Belgian Blond which also took a first, and his barrel aged barleywine which got an honorable mention). In addition, Santiago’s Abbey Wit’ Smoke Witbier took second place in its category, and Derek’s McSwinerson’s Scotch Ale took a 2nd as well.

Jim W. presented a dry hopping experiment conducting by adding a couple grams of six different hops to bottles of Corona Light for five days in order to explore the characteristics that each hop contributes in dry hopping: Northern Brewer, Columbus, Centennial, Simcoe, Citra, and Cascade. Of particular note was the intensity of flavor and aroma that Columbus contributed when added in the same quantities as the other hops. Thanks to Jim for all of his preparations in sharing this useful tasting experiment with the club!

A Sudzers San Francisco public transit pub crawl, led by Vern, has been scheduled for August 17. More details will be forthcoming. Two years ago, we did a similar event, travelling from Toronado to Magnolia to Rogue & La Trappe to the Public House to 21^st Amendment to Mad Dog in the Fog, and a good time was had by all.

After homebrew tasting was completed, Nick shared some eggs that he pickled in the famous Flanders Red Ale of “To the barrel” fame. Delicious – it works quite well as a pickling solution.

Homebrews sampled at the meeting included:

Anna and Fuad’s Honing Witbier with honey
Linda R’s Bitter Brit ESB
Nathan’s single hop Saaz Pale Ale
Nathan’s single hop Glacier Pale Ale
Justin’s Dubbel Step Belgian Dubbel
Joe’s J&J #3 Cider with strawberry
Joe’s J&J #5 Cider with blackberry
Rich’s Janet’s Brown Ale clone
Derek’s Rubicund Projectile Red Rye Ale
Tyler’s Tasting Challenge Porter (nobody guessed the secret ingredient – butternut squash!)
Paul S’s American IPA
Linda R’s Blind Curve American IPA

 

Congrats to the Sudzers for several ribbons in the Amador County Fair this weekend, including several of the beers brewed for the Sudzers BBQ Beer Competition.

Award	Brewer	Beer	Style
1st	Marcus Catano	Lunch Meat	7A – Northern German Altbier
3rd	Santiago Basso	Abbey Wit’ Smoke	16A – Witbier
2nd	Derek Wolfgram	McSwinerson’s	9E – Strong Scotch Ale
3rd	Chris Ringer	Angry Leprechaun	9D – Irish Red Ale
2nd	Jamie Beard and Adam Powell	Hadrian’s Ale	11C – Northern English Brown Ale

Nicely done, Marcus, Santiago, Derek, Chiris, and Jamie and Adam! Cheers!

For the second year in a row, the Sudzers provided a brewing demonstration, tasty grub, and homebrew on tap for the customers of the annual MoreBeer summer sale on July 14.

Nathan and Nicole brewed their seriously hoppy Summer IPA on the “death star” system, and Steve and Derek H. brought their equipment and brewed a west coast Belgian pale ale. Chris Q. manned the grill and served tasty sausages, grilled veggies, and other treats all afternoon. Robin contributed additional yummy snacks including the S’mores Golden Graham Rice Krispies treats. The famous Sudzers “computer server” system made an appearance to deliver Derek W’s Rubicund Projectile Red Rye Ale and Belma Ryewine, and Nick brought some reinforcement brews in the afternoon after those two tapped out. Several other club members stopped by to help out, lend encouragement, or talk with customers about the club and homebrewing in general.

Especially from about 10:30 to 12:30, the store was completely mobbed – looked more like  mosh pit than a homebrew supply store. Fortunately, everyone was in great spirits and had a good time while they waited.

In addition to our club meeting Friday night, we also have a club brew
day planned Saturday at the MoreBeer store in Los Altos. Co-President
Nathan will be brewing up something special on the “death star”
system, and we need a few club members to help out with other aspects
of the day.

1. Food. The MoreBeer Summer Sale is one of the busiest days of the
year for the store, and we like to help the crew out by having food
and beer to make it fun for customers and maybe make waiting in line
less of an ordeal. Ideally, it would be great if someone could bring a
small grill and cook up some sausages, dogs, burgers, etc.

2. Beer. We will have the club jockey box set up, and it’s a great
opportunity to show off the creative and tasty brews Sudzers make. If
you have a keg or two to contribute, that would be great.

3. Brewing. Nathan will probably want a lieutenant brewer to help with
the death star. In addition, it’s always cool if someone brings their
own system to brew there and show off how it can be done without
having to drop $5 grand on a brew sculpture.

If you are available and willing to help with any of the above, please
email moresimcoe@sudzers.org.

Thanks much. Cheers. See you Friday and/or Saturday.

The latest “Cheers!” column from Sudzers Chief Communications Officer Derek Wolfgram in the Los Altos Town Crier: http://www.losaltosonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46683&Itemid=133

Hello Sudzers! Just a quick reminder that our next meeting is this Friday, July 12 at 7 pm at Nick’s house. Need the address or directions? Email moresimcoe@sudzers.org

7:00 Social Time

7:15 Club Business

Upcoming events:
MoreBeer summer sale brew day July 13 – Nathan
Thirsty Third Thursday July 18 – location TBD
SV Beer Week brewing demo at KraftBrew Fest August 3 – Derek
NCHF September 20-21 (registration opens July 14) – need a club coordinator

7:30 presentation by Jim Williams of his results from conducting the “Bud Light dry hopping experiment” described on the Bertus Brewery blog.

Homebrew evaluations will follow the presentation. Reminder: Bring your recipe – club members will have lots of questions!

Sign your beer in on the whiteboard along with your name and statistics (IBU, ABV, etc. – optional, but helpful in determining tasting order)

After homebrew evaluations: more social time/informal commercial brew sharing

Always welcome: homebrews from any style to share.  Don’t have any homebrew on hand right now? Feel free to bring other interesting brews you’ve picked up. Don’t have a beer to bring? Please bring some snacks to share.

See you Friday! Next upcoming club meeting – Friday, August 2

For our June Thirsty Third Thursday meet up, we will be joined by special guest Santa Clara Valley Brewing Company brew master extraordinaire Steve Donohue.

We will meet at O’Flaherty’s pub at 25 N San Pedro St in San Jose starting around 6:30 pm. There is a parking garage across the street – bring your ticket with you and the bar will validate parking.

If you haven’t been to O’Flaherty’s recently, you might be surprised that they feature 38 taps now. Next week, one of those taps will be SCVBC’s Electric Tower IPA, full of resiny & tropical hop goodness. Their current tap list is posted at http://oflahertyspub.com/drinks.html.

Sudzers Chief Communications Officer Derek Wolfgram has begun writing a monthly beer column called “Cheers!” for the Los Altos Town Crier. June’s column is “Beer meets grill: Summer pairings offer flavorful versatility.” The column includes three pairing recommendations: Knee Deep Citra Extra Pale Ale with Teriyaki Chicken & Pineapple Kabobs, Russian River Consecration with T-Bone Steak, and Trumer Pils with grilled hot dogs. Enjoy!

About 15 club members and friends enjoyed a beautiful day in San Francisco’s Mission District, visiting six beer destinations in about seven hours’ time, guided by Mission denizen and beer guru Pete Slosberg.

Before the pub crawl officially began, a few attendees stopped by Pete’s place to drop off his samples from the Sudzers BBQ Beer Competition. Pete shared three new brews from his Mavericks line of session beers, which are being produced by Half Moon Bay Brewing Company. Geared toward an active outdoor consumer, the brews are all 3.75% alcohol by volume and packaged in aluminum cans. All three brews were super-flavorful session beers: the Back in the Saddle Rye Pale Ale, Pace Setter Belgian-style Wit, and the Pit Stop Porter brewed with vanilla and TCHO cocoa beans.

The day began with a layer of hearty fare for lunch at Giordano Brothers, purveyor of Pittsburgh-style sandwiches served with coleslaw and french fries right on the sandwiches, as well as an excellent tap list. We moved on to Gestalt Haus, home of the comfy couches, then Monk’s Kettle, where some of us learned what a deal the sampler flights are.

From Monk’s we headed to Cervecería de MateVeza by Dolores Park (with part of the group stopping by Tartine Bakery for some tasty baked snacks along the way), a very small production brewery with some interesting brews incorporating spices and other unique ingredients. They also serve fresh empanadas. While at MateVeza, a few of us did a double take as about 20 riders from the World Naked Bike Ride San Francisco zoomed by.

From MateVeza, we headed to Elixir, where a few in our party switched gears to take advantage of the make-your-own-bloody-mary bar, and others sampled some of Elixir’s house brews made by Sudwerk in Davis.

Our final stop (twice, as it turns out) was Dalva, where the beer selection was not only interesting but cheap – $3 happy hour pints of craft brews from Sonoma Springs, Moonlight Brewing, and several other notable breweries. After a round at Dalva, we adjourned to Taqueria Pancho Villa for some sustenance. However, as it turns out, our ride home was a little bit later than anticipated, and Dalva’s happy hour continued until 7 pm, so we headed back for one more round.

The weather was fantastic, the brews and the food were delicious, and our guide Pete never steered us wrong. Amazingly, because of the density of the Mission, we only walked a total of about a mile and a half to visit all of these places, and about half of that resulted from the walk over to MateVeza. A good time was had by all.

Club Business:

• The club’s 2nd Annual Pub Crawl with Pete Slosberg in the SF Mission on June 8 was discussed
• The Thirsty Third Thursday destination for June 20 was discussed – we will go somewhere with Santa Clara Valley Brewing Company Electric Tower IPA on tap, and will invite brewmaster Steve Donohue to join us – stay tuned for details
• The Sudzers will do a brewing demonstration for the MoreBeer Los Altos summer sale on July 13. Nathan is in charge and will send details.
• Derek is working to coordinate a Sudzers brewing demonstration at the Kraft Brew Fest on August 3 at the end of Silicon Valley Beer Week.
• Northern California Homebrewers Festival registration will open July 14 at 10 am. Visit www.nchfinfo.org for details
• The club is looking for future beer-related presentations by members or others you know. Mike C. will do a talk on water chemistry later this year. Tyler would be interested in having someone speak on TIG welding if anyone knows a good speaker on the topic. Contact Tyler if you would like to present or have an idea.

Marin Kasper from Shmaltz Brewing talked about the history of Shmaltz and presented several brews for the club’s enjoyment. Shmaltz was founded in 1996, and currently has two lines: the He’Brew beers, which are kosher-certified ales, and the Coney Island line, which currently includes all of Shmaltz’s lagers. Shmaltz produced 12,000 barrels last year and is on pace to produce a similar volume this year.

Beers sampled included the Genesis Dry-Hopped Session Ale, generously dry hopped with Cascade, Centennial, and club favorite Simcoe; the malty Messiah Nut Brown Ale; the relatively new but already best-selling Hop Manna IPA; the Rejewvenator Dubbel Doppel brewed with dates & figs as well as both ale & lager yeasts; and the flagship Bittersweet Lenny’s R.I.P.A. Marin even generously shared the recipe for the Bittersweet Lenny’s Details about all of the brews are available on the Shmaltz website.

Jim brought the Pliny the Younger clone brewed for the AHA Big Brew Day to share. He has already recapped the brew day quite nicely in a previous post. Because he did one massive dry hop addition instead of the four separate additions that Russian River does, he talked about agitating the keg twice a day to maximize the surface area contact with the beer. He also shared that he chose not to add sugar during fermentation as called for in the recipe since the target gravity was already exceeded. Gary at MoreBeer did add the sugar, and the main reported difference was a bit more alcohol harshness. Both beers finished at 1.015, so the addition of sugar did not dry the beer out further, just boosted the alcohol. Jim noted that substituting sugar for other fermentables results in a drier beer, but adding sugar on top of other fermentables does not seem to have the same effect.

Finally, first time visitor Derek H brought a growler of Sierra Nevada Beer Camp #94, the Sleight of Hand Double Black Belgian IPA. Derek participated in the development of this recipe as a beer camp attendee, and the beer will be bottled and distributed later this year. He drove straight from the brewery in Chico to the meeting, so we had an opportunity to try the beer super fresh. The brew was bittered with Simcoe, with flavor and aroma additions of both Nelson Sauvin and Sorachi Ace, and the La Chouffe yeast strain was utilized.