2010 NHC results

The complete list of award winners is available at the AHA website.Congratulations to Curt and Kathy Stock, Steve Fletty and Gordon Strong for winning gold medals. Kris and Orsi  England took a bronze. Gordon also won the Ninkasi award, again! Well done to all.This year DOZE won the Homebrew club of the year award.

Nov 2010 Club Meeting

The next SPHBC meeting is Tuesday November 2nd @ 7pm at The Happy Gnome in St. Paul.We will be hosting John Leinenkugel for a talk and sampling of Big Eddy Imperial Stout. They should be to the Gnome by around 6:45pm and will be the first item on our “agenda”.”Big Eddy Russian Imperial Stout, at 9.5% alcohol by volume, boasts a selection of eleven malts and grains, balanced by three distinct hops. Munich, Caramel and Chocolate malts combine with classic Pale and Pale Ale malts to provide a rich, dry character balancing Big Eddy’s hoppy assertiveness provided by Warrior, Summit and Glacier hops.”The 2007 edition of this beer was brewed at their small 10th Street brewery in Milwaukee, I have no idea if the same applies for the 2010 edition but the last time I had it it was a very nice beer.http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/leinenkugels-big-eddy-imperial-stout/78733/http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2010/10/04/daily50.htmlWe’ll also talk about the upcoming Upper Mississippi Mash Out and, as usual, feel free to bring your homebrew to share.

September Club meeting

The next monthly meeting will be on Tuesday September 7th at The Happy Gnome, starting around 7:00pm upstairs.The topics for the meeting will be recipe formulation and brewing software, PC and Mac.Bring your ears and something to take notes, and don’t forget your beers for feedback. Having your notes from the brewing session will help in understanding what is good and not so good with your beer. So come prepared.

Champion beer of Britain.

The champion beer of Britain,  Harvest Pale (3.8%) from Castle Rock brewery in Nottingham was announced at the CAMRA GBBF on Aug 3rd, so this is not exactly hot off the press. Timothy Taylor’s Landlord Bitter (4.3%) was the runner up, with Hammer Mild (3.8%) from Surrey Hills in third place.What I find of interest is that the Champion beer is described as:  ‘blonde and refreshing with distinctive citrus hop.’ , and it has an ABV of 3.8%.  So who’s going to brew a blonde session beer with Cascade hops?Of the 25 beers in the winners list only 5 had an ABV of 5% or higher, the highest being an 1872 Porter and a Welsh beer(?) Ysbrid y Ddraig (Ramblers Ruin) both at 6.5%. I wonder when, or if, any  US brewers will follow suit and brew beers that we can have more than one of and still walk?

AUGUST Club meeting this Saturday Aug 7th

The monthly meeting will be at Northern Brewer at the Mead Day thing on Saturday August 7th.
Elections for Pres and VP will be held.
 

iPod touch and iPhone apps.
 
Here are some free Beer related apps for your iPod or iPhone:

BJCP
PBRmeASAP
iTrivia Beer!
Brew Smarts
Avery Brewing Co.
Tap Hunter
iBrew
Sparge Pal
BeerAlchemy Viewer

These are not free:

Brew Pal    0.99c
Get Hoppy 0.99c
My Brew    $1.99

Tim Cichon’s Brewing System

Northland Brewing.   Tim Cichon Northland Brewing is a shot of my system functioning following with a couple different side angles.   The mash-tun sits on a shelve that will slide in and out.  Once I’m done mashing I can tear down the system and be left with just my boil kettle.  I use an immersion chiller and do not use a pump.  Results have been pretty good over the years.  I have only dumped 2 batches – one my temperature gauge broke and the other mistake was adding fresh Mango to a couple gallons of Helles.  I only lager two batches per year.  One O-fest for my annual poker party and one Helles for spring.Next pictures are (4) of my gravity fed system working.  Yes, I do climb the ladder to dump water for my HLT.Pictures 5 and 6 are of my fly sparging lid.   This is also homemade as my system was made on a very tight budget7 is a picture of my homemade hopstopper.  Works very well.  I purchased 2 stainless steel strainers from IKEA, deconstructed them, sewed them together with copper wire.The last picture is the outcome of the Northland Brewing Ghetto Gravity Stystem ~hmmmmmm BEER or wort at this time.