For the 3rd month in a row, the hosts for our monthly meeting had never hosted a meeting before. In fact, in this case, they had only ever been to one meeting before. No matter. The November meeting at Paco and Andrew Acosta’s was a complete success. They can’t take all the credit — Paco’s wife/Andrew’s mother helped with the food. But the evening went as smoothly as if the Acostas had been old hands at this.
And, as has been the case for the past few months, the hosts’ own brews turned out to be some of the evening’s stars. It’s becoming another tradition that our newest members are some of our best, and most knowledgeable, brewers. So much for the idea that brewers join a club to learn from the old veterans. We old vets have much to learn from the newbies.
November saw the return of Geoff, lost to the club for the past year. Lame excuses were made about home remodeling and such, as if we are supposed to allow family obligations to get in the way of making and judging beer. But it seems that he is back and hopefully for good this time.
We also learned a dark secret about 3 of the attendees. It seems that Mara, Nick, and Bobby have been meeting clandestinely to swap bottles and sample commercial beers under the code name “Unicorns”. Those of us with daughters cannot hear that word without thinking of big-eyed, horse-like things which fart rainbows. There will be repercussions.
Anyway, tasting notes. Uniformly excellent beers, across the board. Some were truly outstanding. Back in the day, we’d bring skunkers in and ask for advice on how to improve them. Nobody seems to make skunkers anymore. Or, at least, they don’t need our advice on fixing them. A great night for tasting.
