Silicon Valley Sudzers Homebrew Club

On July 11, Sudzers members judged 21 homebrewed beers with alcohol content under 5% ABV. Judging was conducted in two categories: hop forward (self explanatory) and non hop forward (everything else). Surprisingly, there were only 7 entries for hop forward beers compared with 14 in the other category. Twenty three judges completed scores for all of the beers, the high and low scores were thrown out, and the remaining 21 scores were averaged.

The winners were:

Hop Forward
1. Jim W, Tiny Pliny
2. Adam C, Session IPA
3. Bill and Mikael, Session American Pale Ale

Non Hop Forward
1. Malcolm L, Breakfast Stout
2. Derek W, Continential Breakfast of Champions (honey oatmeal milk stout with cinnamon & toasted coconut)
3. Nick O, Kolsch

Malcolm’s Breakfast Stout got the highest overall score of any entry (37.4 on 50 point scale). Additional entrants were:

Hop Forward
Matt I, American Red
Tyler D, Session IPA
Justin V, Wheat IPA
Nic M, Session American Pale Ale

Non Hop Forward
Adam C, Chocolate Milk Stout
Justin V, Bavarian Hefe
Charles S, Scottish Ale
Tyler D, Belgian Wit
Jim W, J & J Pils
Pranab S, ESB
Matt I, Best Bitter
Carter K, Watermelon Wheat
Chris Q, English Brown Ale
Rich K, Scottish Ale
Duncan H, Belgian Wit

Thu 7/17: Thirsty Third Thursday meetup, 6:30 pm – ?, Harry’s Hofbrau
San Jose https://www.facebook.com/pages/Harrys-Hofbrau-San-Jose/143417649033860

Sat 7/19: MoreBeer Los Altos Summer Sale Brewing Demonstration,
approx. 9 am – 4 pm  – if you would like to help out, please contact
Nick at osbornen@yahoo.com.

Sun 7/20: First batch of 17th Annual Northern California Homebrewers
Festival (NCHF) tickets go on sale at www.nchfinfo.org at 10 am

We are allocating 60% of the all tickets (festival, dinner,
camping-only) and select cabins to the July 20 sale date; the
remainder go on sale on July 26
Ticket sales are capped at 2 per purchaser

Pricing for this year:
$45 Festival Tickets
$30 Camping-only Tickets
$50 Brewers Dinner Tickets

July 25-August 2 Silicon Valley Beer Week http://www.svbeerweek.com/

Sat 8/2: Sudzers brewing demonstration/collaboration with Dan Gordon
from Gordon Biersch at KraftBrew Fest 2014
(https://www.facebook.com/kraftbrew). Email moresimcoe@sudzers.org if
you would like to help out.

Sat 8/9: Brew Day at Robin and Derek’s house in San Jose to brew beers
for NCHF. Email moresimcoe@sudzers.org for address, and please let
Derek W know as soon as possible if you plan to bring equipment and
brew.

notes from the “off flavors” tasting part 2, 6/27/14. Thanks again to Tyler for serving as MC. Thanks Mikael for the pics.

The first part of this tasting was so enjoyable that barely half as many people showed up for round 2. Since there were fewer people, and since in the first round most of us found at least some of the samples imperceptible, we mixed the flavor with only two cans of Coors, and the bad flavors just jumped out this time. Maybe not a good thing.

The kit from Siebel comes with very little information about the flavors and what might have caused them. The slides shown were found on the net on some homebrewing site. If Tyler can remember where and we can get permission from the creator we’ll post the slides here.

The description in bold is what the kit says, the rest is my personal comment. Here’s part 2 in the order we tasted them:

1. Geraniol: Floral/Rose like — an unpleasant fruitiness. Despite the similar name this chemical is only a minor part of the geranium aroma.
2. Indole: Farm/barnyard — “barnyard” is the polite language. In plain Anglo-Saxon, it smells like shit. Yes, literally. According to the slide only 50% of people perceive the “fecal” aroma, I’m one of that half. One whiff and I didn’t even consider drinking any.
3. Isoamyl acetate: Banana esters / peardrop — as with the apple and spice flavors last time, wrong for a lager but not unpleasant
4. Grainy: Husk like / Nut like — tannic, astringency on the back of the tongue.
5. Isovaleric: Cheesy / old hops / sweaty socks — another seriously nasty one. As the pitcher was passed toward me the first few tasters were already complaining. Cheesy as in spoiled cheese that you should have thrown out a long time ago.
6. Lactic: Sour / Sour milk — sour milk, nothing else to say
7. Caprylic: Soapy, fatty, goaty — yecch. To me, pretty much the sour milk flavor again.
8. Papery: Cardboard, oxidized — exactly; wet cardboard.
9. Vanilla: Custard powder — familiar vanilla flavor
10. Bitter: Hoppy / Bitter — bitterness past hoppy and into puckery and astringent.
11. Infection: Sour / buttery — the sample must be fake butter flavor, it smelled EXACTLY like microwave popcorn.
12. (extra). Untainted Coors light – To fool the participants — I said out loud that there was an aftertaste I didn’t like, and I’ll stand by that.
13. Hefeweizen: Spicey + buttery esters — the sample is specifically CLOVE, strong and unmistakable. Too strong to be pleasant although I like Bavarian banana/clove hefeweizens.

Sudzers Chief Communications Officer Derek’s latest column from the Los Altos Town Crier:

Secret no more: Word spreads about Clandestine Brewery

Join Derek Wolfgram, Doug Weitz, and Andy Carroll as they follow-up on the basic homebrewing program offered earlier in the year.  Sponsored by the Sudzers and Palo Alto City Library.  Read what Palo Alto Online has to say about this popular series.

Thursday, June 19
Lucie Stern Community Center Community Room, 1305 Middlefield Rd.
7 – 8:30 pm
Registration required.
Must be 21 years of age and older to attend.

The slide deck from the presentation is available for download.

Sudzers Chief Communications Officer Derek W’s June column

The Silicon Valley Sudzers played a key role in last year’s Silicon Valley beer Week, conducting a brewing demonstration in the middle of the KraftBrew Fest in downtown San Jose. This year, the Sudzers will also participate in the Fest, with a special collaboration with Gordon Biersch Brewery – stay tuned for details. For more information on SV Beer Week, please see the press release below.

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact Information:

April 18, 2014 Jennifer Anderson

408.200.1317

jennifer@svbeerweek.com

Introducing the Second Annual Silicon Valley Beer Week, the regions ultimate beer-lovers event. Taking place July 25-August 2, 2014. With the success of our first year in 2013, we invite venues who are passionate about the spirit and progression of craft beer to be a part of this event.

San Jose, CA: Silicon Valley Beer Week takes place July 25–August 2, 2014 and highlights all venues, restaurants, and breweries that are passionate about craft beer. The week will kick off with an exclusive opening party in San Jose, then feature seven days of hosted events all over Silicon Valley. The popular Kraftbrew Summer Fest, held on Post Street in Downtown San Jose, will be the closing event taking place on Saturday, August 2, 2014.

Silicon Valley Beer Week is a celebration of all the vibrant brewing and culinary traditions that Silicon Valley has to offers. Whether you’re a high end restaurant, or a 50+-tap pub, we welcome you to be apart of this celebration and invite beer lovers of all types to experience your venue.

La Pastaia’s Director of Food and Beverage, Morgan Slade writes:

SVBW was not only well organized, but proved to be great fun! We are well known for our wine list, but the event allowed us to show off our beer selection as well by bringing in new customers and starting a fresh dialogue. We are looking forward to the next one so that we can expand on our event offerings.

Morgan Riccilli Slade

Director of Food & Beverage

The Hotel De Anza

Along with the elegant La Pastaia participating, we had a variety of venues participate such as Original Gravity, Scott’s Seafood, Steins Beer Garden, Birk’s Restaurant, Martin’s West GP, and Refuge. During the week, venues throughout the valley hosted events that featured craft beer such as tap takeovers, tasting events, food pairing, new release nights and other themed-events. Venues will have a chance to promote their event on the official Silicon Valley Beer Week website and program guide that will be distributed on July 23 in Metro Newspaper. Silicon Valley Beer Week is presented by Metro Silicon Valley and Giant Creative.

Participating venues, events and other news will be announced on the official website, Facebook and Twitter:

SVBeerWeek.com

Facebook.com/svbeerweek

Twitter: @svbeerweek

Instagram: @svbeerweek

Venues wishing to list an event can do so at SVBeerWeek.com

For sponsorship opportunities: Jennifer Anderson 408 200-1317, jennifer@svbeerweek.com

Unfortunately, the online version does not include tasting samples, but Charles’ presentation on carbonation is available here

First time attendees Shirley, Paul, Jack, Angel, Lara, and Gerry were welcomed.

The June 19 Thirsty Third Thursday meetup will be held at Clandestine Brewing in San Jose. Clandestine is a new brewery opened by four local homebrewers, and initial reports about their beers are exceptional. They are not normally open on Thursday evenings, but are willing to open especially for the Sudzers on June 19 – let’s make it worth their while!

Also on the evening of June 19, Derek W and Doug W, along with Andy C from the Headquarters Homebrew Club, will present an Intermediate Homebrewing workshop, sponsored by Palo Alto City Library, at the Lucie Stern Community Center in Palo Alto.

Following the tasting on May 16 of the first twelve “off flavors” in the Siebel tasting kit, the club will taste the remaining twelve flavors on June 27. This event is limited to paid club members.

As a reminder, the July meeting will be moved from the first Friday to the second Friday to avoid the July 4 holiday. The July 11 meeting will be the judging for the club’s second Session Beers competition. Ribbons will be awarded for the top 3 beers in the hop-forward category, as well as the top 3 non-hop-forward beers. Beers must be 5% ABV or less to be eligible for entry.

Following the success of the brewing demonstration at last year’s KraftBrew Fest in San Jose, the Sudzers have been invited back as a partner in this year’s fest, which will be held August 2 at the Gordon Biersch production facility in Japantown. Dan Gordon has agreed to a collaboration with the Sudzers for this event – the club will brew an Oktoberfest lager to be served side by side with Gordon Biersch’s Oktoberfest at a tapping party in late September. Justin, Jim W, and Rich K volunteered to bring their equipment to brew on August 2.

Charles S provided an informative presentation on carbonation, including the science behind force carbonation and bottle conditioning. He provided a number of side by side samples of beers that he had carbonated both ways, including a Belgian brown ale, Biere de Garde, Tripel, and Belgian Blond. All of the beers were outstanding, but particularly for these Belgian styles the desirable flavor profiles were more pronounced in the bottle-conditioned versions. Charles’ presentation slides will be made available on the website.

Homebrew evaluations included:

Chris L’s ESB

Nic M’s Brown Ale

Nic M’s Black IPA

Mikael & Bill’s Red Bread Red Ale

Steve H & Derek H’s 3 Threads Coconut Porter

Derek H & Steve H’s Sleight of Hand Belgian Black IPA (a homebrew clone of the commercial Sierra Nevada Beer Camp Beer #94 developed by Derek H and his team)

Rich K’s Smoked Scotch Ale

Shirley T’s Presentable Chocolate Porter

Justin V’s Brett Belgian Stock Ale

Mike C’s Hoptos IPA

Tim T’s Farewell to Xilinx Rye IPA

Charles S’s Blazing World IPA

Adam C’s Barrel Aged Dubbel

Notes from the “off flavors” tasting 5/16/14.

Thanks to Tyler for organizing this and preparing the samples.
We obtained the kit from Siebel with 24 flavor samples. We tasted half of those in this session, and will do the other half sometime in June.
The kit is intended to produce each flavor at about 3x the typical threshhold of detection. This threshhold is going to vary from person to person, and I think for most of us there were some that we didn’t pick up at all. The flavors were added to Coors Light since it has so little flavor of its own to get in the way of detecting the test flavor.

Several of these flavors aren’t necessarily “off” depending on the style of beer, so it wasn’t purely a joke when some people described them as improving the Coors. Only a couple (Butyric and Earthy) were universally perceived and hated.

We’ll eventually put the slides from the presentation up on the website. These are some less technical notes and personal comments.

In the order we tasted them:

1.  Acetaldehyde – green apple flavor, described by some as the signature flavor of Budweiser.

2.  Acetic – at the test level perceptibly sour, but no big vinegar aroma like some sour beers.

3.  Almond – not referring to any nutlike flavors from the malt, this is an oxidation flavor.

4.  Butyric – rancid butter flavor and aroma. Very unpleasant.

5.  Diacetyl – the standard description of this is “butterscotch”, which many of us could not pick up although we perceived something wrong, especially in the aftertaste.

6.  D.M.S. (Dimethyl Sulfide) – generally described as “cooked corn”. I wasn’t the only one who had trouble detecting anything off at the test level.

7.  Earthy – some hops are described as “earthy”, the word is also often used for Italian red wines. Those are not bad things; this is. It seems most of us have a clear idea what dirt tastes like and have no trouble recognizing it.

8.  Mercaptan – the classic skunk aroma caused by exposure to light. The test level was definitely lower than a typical bottle of Corona or Heineken.

9. Ethyl Acetate – described as “fruity” or “solventy”; I knew I didn’t like it but couldn’t recognize either of those qualities.

10. Ethyl Hexanoate – apple flavor, wrong for a lager but not unpleasant.

11.  Spice – again, wrong for a lager but not unpleasant. 10 + 11 were the ones often described as “improving the Coors”.

12.  Metallic – nothing else to say about this one.

There were some good-tasting things consumed though! Steve C. very generously shared some unusual spirits with us, the “R5” and “S” whiskies made by Charbay from Bear Republic beers (Racer 5 and Stout). The flavor of the original beer came through clearly in both, really delicious.