est 1998. “I’m sure it'll be just fine”
Congratulations to Steve Fletty on bringing home three medals from the American Homebrew Association’s National Homebrew Competition (June 21st-23rd, San Diego, California).
Category 34: Traditional Mead – Gold Medal
Category 36: Fruit Mead – Silver Medal
Category 38: Specialty Mead – Silver Medal
Not a club member? Not a problem!
Just stop on by. This meeting. Another meeting. Whenever it works for you. Meetings are informal and tend to last about two hours or so.
This meeting: Tuesday, July 11th, 7 – 9 p.m.
Meeting Agenda
It’s the Club Challenge! This one is Cream Ale (BJCP Category 1C) – bring your entries and your notes and be ready to taste and vote! Plus the typical nonsense that one expects at a Saint Paul Homebrewers club meeting.
Location
SPHBC is back at Northern Brewer on Grand Avenue (https://tinyurl.com/NBStPaul)! Northern Brewer is kindly keeping the door open for this meeting in their Grand Avenue store (thankyouverymuch!) and is happy to honor your SPHBC discount on supplies while there (and, again, the next day, when you are back to pick up the Starsan or bottle caps or whatever you forgot to buy during the meeting).
Thank you Northern Brewer!
Other Stuff
Bring your beers and your meads and your ciders and your cysers – oh my – for sharing and feedback. Bring your notes and leave your ego at home.
Open to Minnesota residents only. Limited to 400 paid entries.
Account registration: Now Open
Entry Registration: Now Open
Judge and Stewart Registration: Now Open
Entry Drop-off (local)/Shipments Accepted: June 30th – July 28th
Judging: August 18th and 19th at Summit Brewing in St. Paul
All of the details are at https://www.mnstatefair.brewcomp.com/ (opens in a new tab or window)
Judging in March and April with all results posted in May.
Beers:
(Chicago First Round)
Nicholas Stevens, First Place, Category 1 – Pale American Beer
Nicholas Stevens, Second Place, Category 1 – Pale American Beer
Dave Bance, Third Place, Category 2 – Pale European Beer
Dave Bance, Third Place, Category 3 – Pilsner
(Kansas City First Round)
Aric Daul, Third Place, Category 5 – Amber European
Meads:
(Indianapolis First Round)
Steve Fletty, First Place, Category 34 – Traditional
Jeremy Olsen, Third Place, Category 34 – Traditional
Steve Fletty, First Place, Category 35 – Cyser & Pyment
Steve Fletty, First Place, Category 36 – Fruit Mead
Steve Fletty, First Place, Category 37 – Spice Mead
Steve Fletty, First Place, Category 38 – Specialty Mead
Results:
https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/national-homebrew-competition/winners/
Not a club member? Not a problem!
Just stop on by. This meeting. Another meeting. Whenever it works for you. Meetings are informal and tend to last about two hours or so.
This meeting: Tuesday, June 6th, 7 – 9 p.m.
Meeting Agenda
Beer tasting 101, discussion and demonstration led by Joe Gerteis. Plus the regular SPHBC tomfoolery and hijinks.
Location
SPHBC is back at Northern Brewer on Grand Avenue (https://tinyurl.com/NBStPaul)! Northern Brewer is kindly keeping the door open for this meeting in their Grand Avenue store (thankyouverymuch!) and is happy to honor your SPHBC discount on supplies while there (and, again, the next day, when you are back to pick up the Starsan or bottle caps or whatever you forgot to buy during the meeting).
Thank you Northern Brewer!
Other Stuff
Bring your beers and your meads and your ciders and your cysers – oh my – for sharing and feedback. Bring your notes and leave your ego at home.
Not a club member? Not a problem!
Just stop on by. This meeting. Another meeting. Whenever it works for you. Meetings are informal and tend to last about two hours or so.
This meeting: Tuesday, May 2nd, 7 – 9 p.m.
Meeting Agenda
Garrick will be discussing his wild yeast harvesting project and a discussion about Cream Ale (BJCP style 1C), the upcoming SPHBC Brew The Style (BTS) challenge for the July meeting (get busy!). Plus the regular SPHBC nonsense.
Location
SPHBC is back at Northern Brewer on Grand Avenue (https://tinyurl.com/NBStPaul)! Northern Brewer is kindly keeping the door open for this meeting in their Grand Avenue store (thankyouverymuch!) and is happy to honor your SPHBC discount on supplies while there (and, again, the next day, when you are back to pick up the Starsan or bottle caps or whatever you forgot to buy during the meeting).
Thank you Northern Brewer!
Other Stuff
Bring your beers and your meads and your ciders and your cysers – oh my – for sharing and feedback. Bring your notes and leave your ego at home.
Not a club member? Not a problem!
Just stop on by. This meeting. Another meeting. Whenever it works for you. Meetings are informal and tend to last about two hours or so.
This meeting: THURSDAY, April 6th, 6 – 8 p.m.
Meeting Agenda
We have an exciting schedule change for April, meeting at Summit for a presentation and tour of Summit’s Quality Control lab on Thursday, April 6th, at 6 p.m. That’s THURSday – not Tuesday – and at 6 p.m.
Here’s the plan:
Summit Brewing QA/QC laboratory, hosted by Zach Quandt, Quality Assurance Manager, on Thursday April 6 at 6 – 8 p.m.
Zach will share a presentation on “The role of the QA/QC lab in the process of beer manufacturing” (~40 min) in a conference room followed by Q&A. This will be followed by a visit to the Summit laboratory where Zach will demonstrate some common commercial tests (alcohol, SRM, turbidity, maybe IBU) on a pre-selected bottle(s) of homebrew, then wrapping up back at the Ratskeller.
We can bring home brew for exchanges, but we can only drink beverages from Summit.
Final reminder: Everyone should be in Ratskeller at 6 p.m. sharp.
Location
The Ratskeller at Summit Brewing Company is St. Paul (map: https://tinyurl.com/SummitBrewingCompany)
Other Stuff
We can bring home brew for exchanges, but we can only drink beverages from Summit.
Not a club member? Not a problem!
Just stop on by. This meeting. Another meeting. Whenever it works for you. Meetings are informal and tend to last about two hours or so.
This meeting: Tuesday, March 7th, 7 p.m. – 9 p.m.!
Meeting Agenda
The topic of the meeting is to discuss the next Brew The Style (BTS) club competition – Cream Ale – which will occur at the July meeting.
Location
The very kind folks – mostly Bart, if we are honest – at Bent Brewstillery (https://tinyurl.com/bentBrewstillery) have invited us to have this month’s meeting at their place! Bring cash or your credit card and tip well.
Other Stuff
As always, if you have some homebrew or mead or cider (or whatever), bring it! Along your recipe and brewing notes. Leave your ego at home.
In evaluating the club membership survey results, the overall theme is the desire to brew better beer, and the value of the club is to help members accomplish that objective. One-on-one feedback, entering and judging competitions, and other educational activities are the tools.
The Brew The Style (BTS) challenges present a great opportunity to hone your skills and brew outside your comfort zone. It is also a great way to get feedback from others in a blind tasting format. We plan to have BTS challenges three times a year, and once the style is selected for the next challenge there will be a style discussion session two or three months in advance. We have decided to incentivize the BTS challenge by awarding the winner a voucher to cover the entry fees and shipping charges of entering the winning beer in a competition (up to $50 total).
We hope this will result in more club members entering the BTS challenges, and more entries from SPHBC in regional and national competitions. After all, entering competitions provides feedback (sometimes it is even useful!), and winning it is the ultimate test of brewing quality beers. There is no substitute for medals, and winning competitions will also raise the profile of the club, ideally increasing membership. So get brewing.
A common thread within the survey results was the camaraderie and social aspect of the club. We think that a fantastic way to promote that aspect, while keeping our educational mission in pursuit of better beer, is brewing a Big Brew with the 20-gallon club system. We will inspect and make the necessary repairs and adjustments in March (help wanted!) with the idea of organizing a Big Brew Day in April. If you have not brewed in a long time this is a way to ease yourself back into the game. At the end of 6 hours of fun with your fellow club members, you go home with 5 gallons of wort. Ok, it may be 7 hours and 4 gallons, but you get the idea.
The most common request was “more time to brew”, but there is nothing we can do about that. But a close second was a request for more structured and pre-programmed club meetings. This will allow better planning and should increase attendance by both members and curious souls. To facilitate this process, we have built a calendar for the rest of the year, with the next few months summarized below.
Thanks to the generosity of Charlie Madison, the manager of the Northern Brewer St. Paul store, we will resume monthly club meetings there. This will also help the meetings run more smoothly, as the space in Bent is a bit cramped and the noise level rather high. Unless noted differently, the meetings will continue to be held the first Tuesday of the month at 7 p.m. The first meeting at Northern Brewer will be May 6th, 2023.
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Kris England and Bart Blume for allowing us to meet at Bent Brewstillery over the past year. It was a generous act when securing meeting spaces was very challenging.
PROGRAMMED CLUB MEETINGS FOR 2023
February 7th, 2023 @ Bent Brewstillery, Roseville
Brew The Style (BTS) challenge beer tasting (Altbier), and selecting the style for the next BTS challenge, for the July meeting. Please send style suggestions to the list.
March 7th, 2023 @ Bent Brewstillery, Roseville
Brew The Style for July discussion, best commercial examples.
April 6th, Thursday, 6-8 P.M. @ Summit Brewing
NOTE THE DIFFERENT DATE AND TIME, THIS IS THURSDAY AT 6 P.M.
The role of the QA/QC laboratory in a brewery. Visit to Summit Brewing, presentation and discussion with Zach Quandt, Quality Manager, Summit Brewing Company.
May 2nd, 2023 @ Northern Brewer, St. Paul
TBD
June 6th, 2023 @ Northern Brewer, St. Paul
Beer tasting 101, presentation and demonstration led by Joe Gerteis
Not a club member? Not a problem!
Just stop on by. This meeting. Another meeting. Whenever it works for you. Meetings are informal and tend to last about two hours or so.
This meeting: Tuesday, February 7th, 7 p.m. – 9 p.m.!
Meeting Agenda
The topic of the meeting is the Altbier Brew To Style (BTS) club challenge. We will go over the BJCP guidelines and blind taste and evaluate the entries. Bring your Alts and bring your recipe notes!
We have decided to incentivize the BTS challenge by awarding the winner a voucher to cover the entry fees and shipping charges of entering the winning beer in a competition (up to $50 total).
We hope this will result in more club members entering the BTS challenges, and more entries from SPHC in regional and national competitions.
We will also discuss the result of the recent survey of membership and medium-long term plans for the club. A message summarizing the plans is at https://sphbc.org/sphbc-february-2023-communique/.
Location
The very kind folks – and Kris – at Bent Brewstillery (https://tinyurl.com/bentBrewstillery) have invited us to have this month’s meeting at their place! Bring cash or your credit card and tip well.
Other Stuff
As always, if you have some homebrew or mead or cider (or whatever), bring it! Along your recipe and brewing notes. Leave your ego at home.