Kelly opened the meeting with general announcements:
- the 2018 Christmas party was a success and for the second year in a row, the keg kicked.
- the next guild meeting is on 1/14/19, the $20 annual fee is also due.
Gregg presented the treasury report. The club ended 2018 with $755.09 in its account.
Myke added Adi to the website and designed a website area for the monthly meeting minutes. A new email list is being compiled by Gregg and Adi and should be updated during membership renewals.
Next, the club members shared info and tips about recent trips to breweries/pubs:
- Gregg advised us to skip Florence (SC) when it comes to trying/finding new beers
- Kelly visited Guiness and Sapwood Cellars, also mentioned that Full Tilt is now open, they serve their own beers plus some other local ones as well as wine, cider and nitro coffee.
- Inverness Brewery was also mentioned as a cool destination to grab a pint of beer, apparently the brewery is in the stables of an old mansion. Tom Davidson, who used to be at Waverly is brewing there together with Gregg (not our Gregg)
- Route 24 Alehouse has now a growler station and also their happy hour is from 3-7PM everyday featuring 3 beers for $10.
Kelly went over the style of the month: Russian Imperial Stout and we moved on to testing the beers (both commercial and home brewed)
- Ken started with North Coast - Old Rasputin, a 9% ABV RIS. The next commercial beer was Adroit Theory - Death of Cthulu which was sweet and fruity with a 12% ABV. Ken finished the commercial RIS tasting with Oskar Blues - Ten Fidy coming in at 10.5% ABV.
- Kelly followed with Samuel Smith - RIS at 7% ABV.
- Art & Claire brought Courage RIS from 2012 and 2013 at 10% ABV. The overall consensus was that the 2013 version was better than the 2012 one.
- Andy shared his homebrewed Holiday Cheer winter spiced beer. A 7% ABV, all grain recipe brewed with ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, hopped with Cascade and Saaz and fermented with S-05.
- Ken's homebrew was Christmas 2018, a 7% American Imperial/Double Stout brewed with cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg and 3 spruce tips. S-04 was used for fermentation.
- Linda and Adi shared their Collusion RIS, at 10.5% ABV, an all grain recipe brewed in March 2018 and bottle primed with Grand Marnier.
- Marc brought his 9% RIS brewed in July 2018, an all grain recipe fermented with WLP04 and hopped up to 98 IBU.
- Chris poured his May 2018 coffee RIS brewed with cocoa and vanilla together with 4oz cold pressed coffee.
- Gregg shared a sour RIS that came in at 13%. This is a 4 year old beer that fermented for 3 years and aged for one. It's a variant of a similar beer that did really well in a brewing competition (got a score of 43!)
- Chris also brought his oak aged stout that was flavored for 8 months using 2 cups of toasted oak chips.
- George B closed the night with a Belgian Golden Strong Ale.
Chris brought an interesting tonic water he made to the January club meeting, recipe is here.
The style for Jan 2020 was not picked during this session, so it will be on the agenda for next month's meeting. This meeting will take place on February 13th 2019 and it will be an open style discussion.