So, we had quite a few members ribbon at the GCBA’s “Celebrewtion” recently (see recent post), but we also had excellent turnout recently at BAM’s (Bay Area Mashers) yearly comp:  World Cup of Beers.  I first want to thank everyone who entered their beers in the comp!  We had quite a few entries, and as a club that is just starting to focus on entering in comps and getting our name out there, we definitely brought it!

The comp is a very competitive one indeed, accepting entries not only from Northern California, but from all over the state, and out of state as well.  From what I have heard from some of our entrants who scored up above 35 (a laudable score to be sure), they have gotten great feedback as well.

Having said all that, I’d like to take a minute to congratulate two of our members for their placing:

• Shane Stain, taking a 1st place ribbon for his Extra Special Bitter (ESB)!!
• John Sanatar, taking a 3rd place ribbon for his Russian Imperial Stout!!
• Mike Mulligan, taking a 4th place ribbon (only category to place out to 4 places, so a tough crowd to be sure) for his Dark Belgian Strong Ale!!

Be sure to congratulate these brewers at the May meeting!!

Cheers!!

Here is what we covered at this month’s meeting if you couldn’t make it.

We started off with some general announcements.  The Davis Beer Fest will take place on June 2^nd at Sudwerk, and we will be pouring homebrew there.  We are looking for six people to donate kegs, and those who do will get into the beer fest for free.  This is a fun beer fest with 40-50 breweries represented, so even if you don’t donate a keg you should try to show up.  There will be a club night at the Davis Beer Shoppe on April 30^th, which will include a cheese and beer pairing.  We don’t have details on time, cost, or deals yet but will pass on the information as it comes.  On May 19^th the UC Davis graduate student organization is hosting a homebrew festival in Community Park from 2-5 pm.  There will be food and homebrew but only UC Davis graduate students may attend, along with one guest each.  If you really want to attend and are not a graduate student, find one in the club who will let you be their guest.

Matt gave us an update on the local competitions.  Ribbons and score sheets were given out to all who placed in Celebrewtion.  The club will be reimbursing people for their entry fees if they place in Celebrewtion, World Cup of Beer, the State Fair, or the California State Competition as an added incentive.  We have a few other competitions coming up that it would be great to get Greenbelt represented in.  State Fair entries are due on May 2^nd, and can be dropped off at the Original Homebrew Outlet in Sacramento.  Additionally, entries can be dropped off at John Sanatar’s house from April 27^th to April 30^th to make it more convenient for those in Davis.  There is also a competition in Napa with entries due May 19^th.  Mark Clark offered to deliver bottles to this event for the club.  The last competition discussed was the California State Competition held in November, which we would like to have a good showing at.

Jonathan Fuller gave a presentation on Scottish and Irish Ales.  He covered the different styles in this category and provided samples of homebrew along with Belhaven, Smithwicks Irish Red, and Alesmith Wee Heavy to represent each category.  The presentation is available on the members only site

The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, May 15^th at 7 pm in the Sudwerk banquet hall.

Several of our members did very well in the recent 2012 Celebrewtion competition put on by the Gold Country Brewers Association.  Thanks to everyone who helped put this competition on, and to all the GBA members who entered beers.  Here are all the winners from Greenbelt.

Light and Amber Lagers

• 1^st Place: Vienna Lager - Darrell Amerine

Hybrids

• 1^st Place: Camping Ale (Cream Ale) - Mark Clark

Scottish / Irish Ales

• 3^rd Place: A Little Bit Chubby (Scottish Strong Ale) - John Sanatar

American Pale / Amber Ales

• 3^rd Place: 7C’s Pale – Ian Elliott and Ben Hanken

Brown Ales

• 1^st Place: Tasty Brown Ale (American Brown) - John Sanatar

Porter
• 3^rd Place: Robust Porter – Marc Clark

Stout

• 2^nd Place: Woody Tsar (RIS) – John Sanatar

• 3^rd Place: Whiskey Stout – Shane Stain

IPA
• 3^rd Place: Brick House DIPA - Mike Mulligan

Belgian Specialty and Sours

• 1^st Place: Flemish Redhead - John Sanatar

• 3^rd Place: Belgian Bliss Brown Ale - Tom Karvonen

Belgian Strong Ales

• 1^st Place: Dark Days (Bel. Dark Strong) - Mike Mulligan

Smoked and Wood Aged Beers
• 2^nd Place: Bourbon Barrel Vanilla Robust Porter - Shane Stain

If you couldn’t make it to the meeting this March, here is what you missed.

We started with general club news and updates.  The GBA is now well on its way to attaining non-profit status, just waiting on some of the final paperwork to go through.  John Sanatar gave a brief Sacramento Beer Week wrap up, along with thanks to all the club volunteers, members who donated kegs for the Capital Beer Fest, and the establishments (Rubicon, Hot City Pizza, and The Shack) who hosted us and provided deals for the bike pub crawl.

Matt Boyer updated the club on upcoming competitions which we hope to have good GBA representation.  Celebrewtion is taking place on Saturday, March 24^th.  World cup of beer and NHC are both coming up soon, and people were able to drop off their beers for either of those events at this meeting.  The California state fair homebrew competition will be in May, and entries are due May 2^nd.  Convenient drop off locations will be arranged.  There are several club only competitions in the near future.  April is Scottish and Irish ales, July is porters, August is light hybrids, and October is old ales.

The last order of business before the presentation was announcing the Raley Field beerfest, which will be held on May 19^th.  The club has been asked for volunteers to pour for various breweries.  This event is a fundraiser for the Northern California Brewers Guild.

We were very lucky to get Jamil Zainasheff to speak to our club for this month’s meeting.  For those of you who don’t know, Jamil is the owner of Heretic Brewing Company, and also a host on the Brewing Network.  His presentation was an overview of opening and running a brewery.  He discussed the financial risk, the business side, time commitments, and future plans for his beers and expanding Heretic.  Jamil gave a great talk and we really appreciate him making time for our club.

The next meeting will take place on Tuesday, April 17^th in the Sudwerk banquet hall.

If you could not make it to the February meeting, here is what you missed.

First we covered some general club business.  We handed out membership cards to everyone who had paid dues at the last meeting or through Paypal.  We had also just put in a clothing order, so anyone who got in on that picked up their GBA merchandise

The next order of business was to determine which stout to send to the club only competition.  Everyone at the meeting tried each stout and voted.  Justin Rowlett’s oatmeal stout was the winner, and will be representing GBA for the AHA club only stout competition.

We also covered some of the Sacramento Beer Week events.  Thursday, February 23^rd there is an “Art of Beer” event which some club members are pouring at.  Saturday, February 25^th is the Capital Beer Fest, where the GBA will have a booth alongside numerous professional breweries, so make sure to check that out.  We are going to send out a list of events that we think will be particularly worthwhile, so everyone can plan what they want to do for beer week.  On Saturday, March 3^rd, the club will be putting on a bike pub crawl event.  The three stops will be Rubicon Brewing, Hot City Pizza, and The Shack.  The pub crawl will be kept as a GBA event (with friends of members welcome), and so we are not advertising on the Sacramento Beer Week website.  Also, we will have people who wish to go RSVP, with a limit of 40 attendees for the pub crawl.

We went over two upcoming competitions, both of which are in March.  World Cup of Beer put on by the Bay Area Mashers and Celebrewtion put on by the Gold Country Brewers are both events that we hope the GBA will be well represented in.

John Sanatar and Blair Howard gave a presentation on maximizing a brew day.  It covered topics to save time by brewing more in one session, such as splitting batches with two yeast strains, parti-gyle brewing, and brewing two batches at the same time.  It also covered good styles to attempt with split batches or parti-gyle, as well as general tips and considerations when brewing on a larger scale.  This presentation can be found on the members only site.

The next meeting will take place on March 20^th in the banquet hall at Sudwerk.

Greetings all.  We just had our first meeting of 2012.  If you couldn’t make it to this one, here is what you missed.

First off, John Sanatar gave some general announcements.  Dues for this year have been raised to $25.  Among other things, the extra money will go towards fees for the club to become a non-profit organization, compensation for people who donate kegs to events, providing incentives for club members to enter beers in competitions, and naturally, more beer at the meetings.  Additionally, we are working on getting the Davis Beer Shoppe to host a club only night for GBA members sometime in the near future, so keep an eye out for announcements about this.  Also, we should have more GBA clothing in soon.

Following the general information, Matt Boyer, the club’s new competition coordinator, let us know about some upcoming competitions and what he hopes to accomplish in this new position.  Several competitions are approaching.  There is a stout club-only competition in March, so at our next meeting we will be voting on the best stout to put forward to represent the GBA.  Other upcoming competitions include Celebrewtion in Sacramento, Battle of the Brews in Santa Rosa, and the World Cup of Beer in Oakland.  Some information for these has already been released on our mailing list, and more details are sure to follow.  These competitions are also a good opportunity for anyone who wants to try judging or stewarding.  To make it easier for everyone to enter, the club will arrange for an easy drop off point for entries, and one person will take care of delivering all of our club’s beers.

Anthony gave an update on what we are planning for Sacramento Beer Week, coming up at the end of February.  We will be at the Capital Beer Fest to kick things off, so start thinking of what you want to brew for it.  The club will put on a bike pub crawl in lieu of a brew day this year, as last year it seemed this was the more popular event.

The presentation this month was on how to brew your first beer.  It covered the basic equipment, an overview of the process for brewing an extract batch, and tips and common mistakes to watch out for.  A suggested order of equipment upgrades and purchases was provided, along with a list of helpful websites and resources for learning more about brewing.  This presentation can be found on the members only site.

The next meeting will take place on February 21^st in the banquet hall at Sudwerk.

Congrats to the greenbelts who placed in the CA state competition held this past weekend at Anchor Brewing in San Francisco, CA.  Results can be found here:

http://www.nchfinfo.org/images/stories/statecomp_forms/2011statecompawards.pdf

The following greenbelters placed in their respective categories:

Schuyler Campbell took 3rd place in the Pale ale Category for his “Wet Hop American Amber Ale”
Brad Hankee took  2nd place in the Specialty Category for his “Hankee’s Pumplin Harvest Ale”
Mike Matiasek: took  2nd place in the Belgian Ale Category for his “Witbier”

Not a bad way to close out the competition season!

Cheers!

Okay, so you found our site, and you thinking to yourself, “you know, making beer, that sounds like a fun hobby!”  But then you are faced with the obvious issue:  you don’t like waiting to learn stuff!  You have little patience for wikipedia to load on your iPhone, and having to wait a while to learn how to brew beer… well that might just be a deal breaker.  Well then…..YOUR IN LUCK!!!  You only have to wait a couple of days!!!!

This Saturday, November 5th, 2011, is AHA’s “Learn to Homebrew” Day.  And we, the Greenbelt Brewers Association, are doing our part to spread the knowledge of this hobby by hosting a brew at Sudwerks Brewery in Davis, CA (our homebase for all of our meetings as well).  We’ll be brewing a Kolsch, using Sudwerks’ all-grain 15 gallon pilot system.  We’ll be getting started around 9am, and hope to be “mashing in” (starting the actual process of brewing all grain) around 10-10:30am.  The event is open to everyone, so if you have been to a meeting, if you haven’t, if you’ve been brewing for a while, or just thinking about starting, then come on out and check it out!  We’ll probably be brewing until 2pm or thereabouts, so make sure to get there before then.

Sudwerks’ Dock Store will also be open, so you can grab a pint of beer to sip on while you enjoy the process!

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the GBA board (link on the right hand column) and we’ll do the best we can to answer.  Again, this event is open to the public, so head on down!

Hope to see you Saturday!

So, you’ve stumbled across our humble site, home of the Greenbelt Brewers Association, and you are curious, “what exactly does this brewing club do?”  You’re in luck!  Why?  Because here is a quick synopsis of what our little club has been up to these past several months!!!

In July, as mentioned in the post prior to this, our club hosted a ‘Single Hop Beer’ meeting.  Club attendees were given blind tastes of 13 different single-hop brews (all with the same recipe in terms of grain bill, IBU, and fermentation characteristics), and then had to record their initial tastes and thoughts.  Why blind?  Well, hop heads all know what different hops are supposed to taste/smell like…so we wanted to get more unbiased impressions!  The tastings were then all collected, and will be analyzed for posterity.  Missed the meeting?  No worries!  Become a dues paying member and access the results of over 50 people’s tastings to help you determine what hop you really want to use in your next brew!

July also saw the first ever GBA Family Picnic Day at Slide Hill Park in Davis.  The day was designed to bring together the families of members and to allow a little fun and friendly competition, as we played an excellent game of Kick Ball!  While fun was definitely had, it was determined that drinking beer in 95+ heat and then playing Kick Ball is definitely a challenge!  Next year, 5 innings will be the max!!

August’s meeting was 180 degrees from July’s, as club funk expert Andy Gray, introduced the club to the funky side of beers:  Sours!!!  The beers he brought to showcase the style were sublime and subtle, to mouthpuckerin’ sour!  As George Clinton is to Neil Diamond, thus are sours to nice clean lagers.  Many members left speaking of when they were going to be introducing strains of brett, pedio, mothers-in-laws, and all those other bugs into their breweries to ‘pump up the funk’.  Expect in the coming months many more members’ beers to be funky!!

And then there was September, the highlight of which was NCHF!!!  What, you ask, is NCHF?  Northern California Homebrewers’ Festival, also referred to as the best weekend all year!  Basically, it’s a weekend camping trip were the entire campsite is taken over by all the homebrew clubs from the Bay Area to the Oregon border.  Saturday, there’s a festival…a beer festival…where all the booths are other homebrew clubs!  A dinner by the Homebrew Chef, Sean Paxton; talks by notable brewers; raffles sponsored by MoreBeer….and you only have to stumble back to your tent that night!!  Our club brought it this year, and purchased 9% of the total tickets for the festival!!!  Definitely a highlight of belonging to the club, and if you missed it this year, than you’d better make sure you join and get in the know for next year!!!

To help recover from this celebration, we decided to dial it back for our September general meeting; so we presented Barleywines!  Club member Schulyer Campbell presented on Barleywines as well as Old Ales, their differences, and notes on brewing them!  Again, the presentation was well received, and if you missed it, don’t worry, the presentation will be available online for dues paying members.

Still holding your attention??  Peaked your interest yet??  Ready to ‘jump in the wort’ as it were??  Well then, make sure you don’t miss out on the upcoming October General Meeting, when we’ll be presenting “Flavors and Off-Flavors”.  What’s that mean?!  It means that we’ll be serving you a bunch of Bud Light, intentionally dosed with flavors and smells (some desirable, some not so much), so that you can learn to recognize those same characteristics in your beers and more importantly, how to fix your process so you don’t keep getting them!!  It will be a very informative and interesting evening to be sure.  As always, we invite you to come out and see what the club, and more importantly, homebrewing, is all about!!!  See the calendar on the side bar (over there…look to your right) to make sure you don’t miss it!  Also, feel free to join our mailing list so as to get the most up to date information and start benefiting from the knowledge that our members disseminate to all who’ll listen!!  Have a question?  Feel free to ask!!  Want to know what good breweries you can expect to find on your next trip?  Again, throw out an email…most likely someone in the club knows where you can get a good beer in Hoxie, Kansas!!

We’ll see you at the next meeting!  Until then, Cheers!!

So, just stumbling across this page for the first time?  New to homebrewing or been thinking about getting into it?  Well, you’ve come to the right place!

Welcome to the home of the Greenbelt Brewers Association!  We are a homebrew club that focuses on building our collective knowledge about the hobby of homebrewing, enticing newbies into the hobby, and, well, we all seem not to mind tasting each other’s brews either!

If you haven’t been to one of our meetings before, please make sure that you come out and join us for our regular July meeting on Tuesday, July 19th, 2011.  We meet at the UC Davis Brewing classroom at Sudwerks Brewery, up above the Dock Store.  Our meeting starts at 7pm sharp, but we highly recommend that you get there between 6 and 6:30 to have a pint down at the Sudwerks Dock Store: help support the company that supports us (and really, do you need a reason to buy a beer?!)

What will this meeting be like, you ask?  This will be a very special meeting since we’ll be doing a Single Hop celebration!  14 members of the club all brewed the same recipe beer (grain bill, ibu’s, hop additions, etc), but each with a single different hop.  The entire meeting will be focused on tasting these hops and seeing the different aromas, flavors, and to some extent, bitterness characteristics as well.  What we feel will be an excellent addition to every level of homebrewer’s knowledge base!

We also highly encourage our members (and visitors…or as we like to say, future members) to bring out a bottle or two of their latest batch for evaluation and sharing as well.

And if we entice you enough that you’ll want to associate yourself with our mootly crew in the future, lucky for you that new members only have to pay a prorated membership fee of $10 for the rest of the year! (Good till Dec. 31; standard membership dues are $20 a year…..which is still a really good price when you think about it!)

Hope to see all you there!!  Questions can be emailed to the board at greenbeltboard@googlegroups.com

Cheers!