Silicon Valley Sudzers Homebrew Club

Reviews of five California-brewed red ales from Sudzers Chief Communications Officer Derek’s column in the Los Altos Town Crier. Cheers!

Mike presented an excellent primer on Brewing Water at the November Sudzers meeting, including information on chlorines and chloramines; pH, alkalinity, and hardness; managing water flavor profile; and acidifying sparge water.

The full presentation is available for your edification and enjoyment.

Hello Sudzers! Our January meeting will be held Friday, January 10 at
7 pm at Nick’s house. Need the address or directions? Email
moresimcoe@sudzers.org.

As a reminder, club dues are collected on a calendar year basis, so
please bring $25 and arrive as close to 7 as possible if you would
like to pay your 2014 dues. We have made a slight change to the
structure this year as a result of the huge recent growth in
membership (We had 18 paid members in 2011 and 52 in 2013!) Membership
will now be $25/person with no “complimentary” spouse/partner/family
bonus members.

You may want to bring cash for T shirts as well – there are just a
handful of the 2012 beige shirts with the integrated circuit design
($20) and the 2013 black shirts with the Space Invaders theme ($15) left.

7:00 Social Time

7:15 Club Business

Annual Financial Report – CFO Nick
Upcoming events:
-1/16 Thirsty Third Thursday – location?
-SF Beer Week!
-Members-only off flavor tasting – to be scheduled in 2014 – Tyler
-potential March Santa Cruz coast brewery bus tour – Mike C
-potential March homebrew event for charity – Robin

7:30 Roundtable discussion topic: brew software, online brew tools,
and mobile devices – bring ideas to share

7:45 Homebrew evaluations. 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) Tyler and I are both planning to bring
big barleywines,
so if anyone else would like to join in our “winter warmer” theme,
please feel free!

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

Check out “Holiday gift ideas to please the beer lovers in your life” in the Los Altos Town Crier. Cheers!

 

Congratulations to the newly elected Silicon Valley Sudzers club officers and the 2013 Homebrewer of the Year, Jim Williams.

Club officers for 2014 are:
President/CEO: Tyler Dassow
Vice President/COO: Jim Williams
Treasurer/CFO: Nick Osborne
Chief Communications Officer: Derek Wolfgram
Chief Technology Officer: Chris Quinn

Cheers!

Derek Wolfgram and Mike Conant from Silicon Valley Sudzers and Andrew Carroll from the HeadQuarters homebrew club will be presenting a workshop on homebrewing for the Palo Alto City Library on December 12 at 7 pm, followed by Q&A at Steins Beer Garden in Mountain View. For location details and to register in advance, please visit: http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/news/displaynews.asp?NewsID=2256&TargetID=140,162. 

The slide deck from the presentation is available for download. Cheers!

 

Thanks to everyone who participated in the bottling day for the 2012 Dark Matter Imperial Stout. Many hands made light work, as we very quickly were able to get 53 bombers bottled, as well as six 12 ounce bottles for submission to the 2014 National Homebrewers Competition.

Over the next few weeks, each paid membership for calendar year 2013 will receive a bottle for your drinking or aging pleasure. The remaining bottles will be used for assorted club events.

As the label on the bottle says:

“Since 2007, the Silicon Valley Sudzers have produced four batches of this ginormous imperial stout. 2012 represents the first batch with an oak-aged component, which we hope you’ll enjoy. Drink it now, or lay it down for a year or two. Dark Matter will patiently wait for you. Brewed with Maris Otter malt, roasted barley, black patent malt, Caramunich, flaked barley, chocolate malt, and molasses with Magnum, Columbus, and Centennial Hops.”

The 2012 bottled version is 33% oak-aged. While most of the oak-aged batch was blended into the bottling, there is one magnum of pure oak-aged Dark Matter that will make an appearance at the December 7 club Christmas party.

Also, don’t forget that we’ll be brewing the 2013 Dark Matter next Saturday at Nick’s house. More information will be forthcoming about that brew day. Cheers!

Happy Turkey Day! Cheers!

http://www.losaltosonline.com/special-sections2/sections/food-a-wine/46074-give-thanks-for-california-s-craft-brews

On November 21, the Sudzers judged 19 entries, 10 brewed with the GigaYeast super-secret new Belgian strain, and 9 brewed with their Vermont IPA yeast. Scoring was loosely based on the BJCP scoring system, with a special category for “use of yeast,” but beers were not evaluated against a particular style. Judging was much more subjective based on enjoyability of the beers.

Special thanks to Tyler for organizing and creating score sheets, all of the members who helped propagate yeast for other brewers to use, and Nick for foregoing tasting in order to be the cellar master and score tabulator. Super special thanks to Jim Withee and Loren Reynolds of GigaYeast for providing the initial yeast, allowing the club to propagate it, and then attending the meeting to serve as special guest judges.

Ribbons and yeast were awarded to the three highest rated beers for each yeast. The winners were:

IPA
1. Raghu & Nick
2. Jim Williams
3. Adam Campbell

Belgian
1. Justin Vincent
2. Mike Conant
3. Chris & Linda