April 2018 – Meeting Minutes
WoW minutes April 2018
SCVB wrap up
- Pay your dues if you have not!
- Shirts were distributed in a cumbersome manner which was more difficult than expected
Bus trip
- Everything is set for April 21st
- Thanks to Jim there is a bus
- $30 and possibly less
- Alameda Island, Ale Industries and Temescal
- An up and comer, a new but established local, and a new one
- Alameda Island is opening early for us and giving us a tour
- Still plenty of room for other people, if 10 more people sign up then cost goes down to $20/head
- Leave Sunnyvale Caltrain at 10 am, back at 5:30
Diversity
- Another Women in Beer earlier this month
- Casey is new from that group – welcome!
- Very thankful for the quality of people she’s bringing in
- Queen of Beers one of our target comps – we had a goal of 5 which has been met, with a new stretch goal of 7
- Doing a help/advisory session for entering QoB at the end of September
World Cup
- Scott Satterthwaite won Best of Show at World Cup Saturday – he poured it for us! Excellent beer!
- 15 pounds Pils, 4 pounds flaked maize – 10 gallon batch
- Will brew at Faction for next year’s World Cup
Events
NHC in Portland
- Jim S met some homebrewers in Canberra AU who were thinking of going to NHC
- Great talks, Club Night, vendors’ area, more homebrew than you could ever imagine
- WoW is going, 9 people are committed
- You can brew for it and have your beer brought up even if you are not going
- Need 15 ish kegs
- If people are going, use the computer right here at the meeting and sign up
- Mad Zs will come bring beer and pour with us
- ITT in May – BREW NOW FOR NHC!!
NCHF
- Try to have same theme as NHC to minimize work and allow reuse
- 3rd weekend in September essentially
- Dobbins California by Lake Francis
- Lots of fun, clubs from all over Northern California and Reno
- NCHFinfo.org
- A lot of us go
Admiral Maltings
- Will try to visit or something end of July
- Craft maltster in Alameda
- More informal than bus trip
Competitions
- WoW Chili Comp just got listed on BJCP calendar
- People used to call us the “competition club,” but that’s not the only reason to compete
- Go to website and then the calendar section, brings up a spreadsheet with local comps
- One comp going on right now is NHC first round, Saturday judging at Sudwerk
- Big news is Scott’s BoS at World Cup, Howard won 3rd for dunkel bock
- Scott Angel – second place at Cal State Fair with Biere de Garde
- March – Anil got 2 third places at Kailua Kona – Belgian Wit and hefeweizen
- Steins comp was 2 weeks ago, stout with Mounds bars (?) won; not a Wow member
- BABO is coming up, registration open through April 20
- Doing a special evaluation session next week for people who are thinking of entering BABO
- Will get some special evaluation at Will’s house at 7 pm Tuesday April 17
- Can bring kids
- Sign up if you want to get evaluated
- Morgan Cup coming up registration Friday
- Mayfaire registration Friday – Southern Cal
- Santa Clara county fair – Clandestine will brew the winner
- Howard got to brew at the 21A in SF a couple of weeks ago from winning Oaktoberfest last year!
- Amador coming up
San Mateo Firefighters Chili Cookoff Comp
- Our yearly club comp
- BJCP sanctioned bottle comp and a people’s choice rah-rah keg comp, as well as firefighters’ best of show
- Toni: so fun to pour beer for the public
- Jon Kissinger running it
- 4 bottle comp instead of a traditional 3 bottle comp
- BoS prize is firefighters’ helmet
- August 4
- Will need a lot of help as we ramp up for the comp
- Bottle comp will be at 21A in San Leandro
- I need to call Warren at Loma
Temp control options
- Owen gave a presentation about options for temp control
- Important for beer quality/good fermentation; critical for some styles
- Pros have dedicated chillers, walk ins, etc.
- Lager should be colder than California summer! Hence, a need to cool
- Glycol is one way to go, mix glycol and distilled water
- Pump through pipes in fermenter, get food grade glycol in case there is a leak
- Owen submerged a window AC evaporator in the glycol in a Coleman cooler
- Simple controller overrides the AC control to control temperature
- Saves $900 over buying an off the shelf SS Brewtech control unit
- Also use food grade anticorrosion chemical to prevent tubing from corroding
- Raspberry Pi with BrewPi used as temp controller
- 2 controllers – one for wort and one for glycol
- They chill to 100 and finish in the fermenter with the glycol system
- Their system has twice the BTUs of a commercial system
Style of the Month – Alvaro
California Common
- Anchor Steam is the iconic example
- Also had St. Florian, Scott Satterthwaite’s, Alvaro’s examples
- Northern Brewer is the classic hop variety for this
- Lager beer brewed at higher SF temperature
- Called steam beer because it cooled in the roof in a coolship and steam would rise from it
Upcoming Styles of the Month
- May – Vienna lager, have 2 brewers signed up for it
- June – German pils
- July – hefeweizen or dunkelhefeweizen or anything with wheat that’s German
- August – Saison
Introduction to Homebrew Competitions – Brian
Brian presented and Intro to Home Brew Competitions. The Power Point presentation is included in our Education slides.