This was our first live meeting since the COVID crisis, after our previous meetings were on Zoom. We met in an outdoor setting at Adi and Linda’s and we started at 1PM.
OLD BUSINESS: we are all very proud at how we managed to keep in touch during the closure months, be it via Zoom happy hours, tech corner and our regular meetings. We had our “Support Local Breweries” meeting last month and we had great participation with over 64 unique beers and 30 different MD Breweries supported.
NEW BUSINESS: 1) We will continue Tech Corner on Wednesdays at 7PM. These are short 1-hour sessions focused on various aspects of brewing. Our last one was on water chemistry, led by Art with a very informative presentation. Future subjects will be yeast harvesting and yeast washing. If anyone has suggestions for topics, let us know on Slack.
2) We moved Kettle-Sour to August and July will be an open month. This will allow more members to brew this interesting style, perfectly refreshing on a summer day. We will keep all members posted about the July meeting. There may be a date/time change depending on whether our regular location is back open or not. Kveik yeast is still on for September.
3) Chris will let us know in the upcoming week about the status of the dark wheat and spelt buy.
4) LABS is an advanced brewing club that is open to everyone who would like to be challenged from a brewing perspective. Those who participate HAVE TO BREW the style of the meeting, PARTICIPATE in meetings, and HOST. Meetings are around 4/year. Ken has offered to host next and he picked Sahti as the style to brew. This is one of the oldest beers; DogFish Head had one several years ago and Independent had one recently. Many recipes require dark caramel rye: if you need this grain, talk to Adi.
5) We are starting to implement some website changes to improve the responsiveness of the site. Myke will keep the domaine name but is transferring hosting to Adi. If anyone has ideas about how to improve the website or additional features they’d like to see, let us know under General on Slack. We would like to thank Myke for his years of service and recognize his efforts!
6) We have to start thinking about the Christmas beer!
7) Homebrew Con will be online ($100 for members, $130 for non-members) and will have many seminars and virtual happy hours.
8) Adi has been posting more on our Facebook, please “like it” and follow it. Kelly recommended that we look into making our FB page a “group” so it will pop up under the “group” search as it may get us more participation.
9) Adi is in talks with the owner of 3rd Base, a local liquor store, for 10% discount cards for our members. Gar is knowledgeable about beer and keeps a very well-stocked store; he is also very good at bringing in products upon request. While the deal is being finalized, if you purchase at 3rd Base, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to let him know you are part of Libations, so we reinforce that we support his store.
FINANCIAL REPORT: we have $1,022 currently and 26 paying members.
Beers: our style of the month was Saison.
A) Commercial Beers:
- We started with a quintessential Saison, the Avec Les Bons Voeux by Dupont.
- We continued with Unibroue’s Saison 13, True Respite’s Time of the Saison, Mobtown’s Witte Bloem Belgian Saison, Great Lakes’ Siren Shores (brought by Kevin) and Poole Island’s Honey Hives (brought by Steve).
- George brought Athletic’s Run Wild 70cal NA beer; we were all pleasantly surprised at the amount of flavor they achieved.
- Kevin brought Sapwood Cellars’ Sir Rupert Barrelton, a RIS aged in cognac barrels.
We took a break to have our raffle for various prizes and to eat some grilled burgers and sausages :)
B) HomeBrews:
- Chris brought a Saison he brewed with no spices or fruit, only Gregg’s cultured yeast. He still has 2 vials of this yeast for anyone interested.
- Art and Claire brought a Saison brewed with a combination of yeasts, including Gregg’s aforementioned strain. They also brought a DIPA they would like to re-brew with a different yeast.
- Marc and Mike shared their Spring and Winter Saisons back to back for comparison. They had the same grain bill but different yeasts.
- Steve brought his BigBrew IPA and a Pale Ale.
- Kelly brought his Lavender Lockdown Saison and a Smoked Helles. For his saison, he used 0.5oz of dried lavender he got on Amazon, dried orange peel and fermented with Belle’s saison yeast. He still has a lot of lavender left :)
- Gregg brought his Saison du Pont clone and a Smoked Helles.
- Adi and Linda shared their Super-Saison clocking in at 9.5%, which was a clone of Avec Les Bons Voeux Dupont brewed with Rustic Imperial yeast. They also shared their IPA de Pandémie, brewed from Independent wort, and a DIPA/NEIPA.
- Ken brought his Hibiscus Saison he has been brewing in different incarnations for several years.
Hope everyone stays healthy and safe! Cheers!