Underground Brewers of Connecticut

A large group of Yahoos (about 13) trickled into Clay’s home last Friday for our rescheduled March meeting. They also brought a lot of beer along with them.

Thanks to Clay and his wife for hosting, and providing an enviable spread of gourmet cheeses and salamis. The group certainly needed the snacks, as we made our way through more than a dozen blind tastings, as well as a couple impressive non-judged offerings from Andy—including an outstanding Scotch ale.

Scores ranged from the mid 20s up into the low 40s. Not only did we have several great beers to try, but there was a wide range of styles in the mix.

I was excited to introduce the group to a new-ish hop, cashmere, which is a hybrid of cascade and northern brewer. In my New England IPA the judges picked up characteristics of melon, peach, lemongrass and grapefruit and coconut from this unusual and rare hop. (Expect to see more beers with this hop from me!)

The night’s theme was IPAs, and we had our share of good commercial examples on hand. But a trip to Clay’s cellar inspired him to treat us to an Oude Gueuze from 3 Fonteinen.

Clay also conducted an impromptu survey of the group to see who could detect Phenylthiocarbamide (PTC). As it turns out, about half of us did, which is in line with the global population.

Upcoming:

Our April meeting will be held at the Veracious taproom in Monroe on the Wednesday, the 18th! We hope to welcome a larger-than-usual crowd for this one, so be sure to pass the word on.

Also, be sure to follow us on Facebook to get the most up-to-date info on all club happenings.

Competitions:

AHA Nationals First Round, April 6 & 7, New York, NY
South Shore Brewoff, April 7, Mansfield, MA

April brought our annual Cider meeting, hosted this year by Dr. Pivo (Steve Victor) and his lovely wife Sue at their house in New Haven.

We made some changes this year. No blind judging, for one thing. Everyone who brought things to share made a short presentation first and then we discussed our impressions. Huge success. We will definitely be offering this option in future meetings.

“Cider” usually connotes fermented apple juice, perhaps with some additives. We certainly had some of that. But we also had a number of other apple-derived entries: cyser (apple mead), calvados (apple brandy), and applejack (freeze-distilled cider). Some were homebrew and some were commercial. Some were fresh and some had been aged for years. In short, we were able to same an enormous range of apple-y drinks.

A particular standout was the hosts’ black currant cider. Fizzy, sweet-tart, and immensely refreshing, it came with stories of bottles blowing up during pasteurization. There were even pictures of Pivo’s protective gear. I will post if he will share copies.

Overall, a wonderful tour through the cider universe.

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Meetings at Mara’s place are always exciting. Things run fairly normally upstairs, although “normal” for Mara usually involves an outstanding spread of munchies. But we always end up drifting down to the basement eventually. And things get very interesting in Mara’s basement.

Mara has built her own glycol-chilled fermenter. She has built a 3-tier brewing stand we all envy. She has an induction brewing set-up and a 4-tap kegerator. And she has a beer cellar surpassed only by Clay, to the best of my knowledge. It’s all kind of intimidating.

As usual, the March meeting ended with everyone in the basement, sampling from Mara’s extensive sour beer collection plus some truly excellent cider she had on tap. As I tore myself away, she was opening yet another hard-to-obtain gueuze to share.

This particular meeting, however, included some excitement upstairs as well. We previewed some changes which may become standard operating procedure during at least some of our meetings. We glimpsed the future, and it was good.

As most of you know, we spend most of our meetings blind-judging homebrews according to BJCP guidelines. There is much to recommend this: it refines our palates, improves our descriptive ability, prepares us for BJCP exams, and makes us better brewers. But it can be a little too serious, especially when there are many homebrews to judge in an evening.

At the March meeting, we supplemented this with a second option: “tell-taste-talk” (as coined by our own Dr. Pivo). At the brewer’s discretion, we do not judge the entry blind. Instead, the brewer gives a short presentation on what s/he was trying to produce and what went right or wrong. We taste the brew and make comments.

Why would we do this? Well, in my case, I brought a saison made to an old recipe but with new water. This was my first brew in my new house, where the water is completely different from the water in the old place. I knew the beer was bad. I wanted feedback on what people were tasting. I could present the beer and the problem and I got excellent suggestions for improvement.

Other brewers discussed their beers (or ciders) or allowed the blind judging to proceed as normal.

Did this work? Yes! Fantastically. It will probably become standard procedure going forward.

Andy took pictures below. Tasting notes at the end.

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Our notes from the February meeting at Clay’s house come from Bugle Editor Emeritus Andrew Tipler (thanks, Andy!):

This was a small exclusive meeting of the most important Yahoo members. We had 10 homebrews to judge including 4 ciders. There were some good commercial beers to try, too – including a big bottle of Cantillon gueuze generously shared by Mara.

Judging took place at a leisurely pace. I don’t think we had a beer we didn’t like all evening. Everyone brought their smart phones to show off to Gerry but he wasn’t there to see them.

Big thanks to Clay (and his missus) for putting up with us and giving us a grand tour of his brewery and beer museum in his basement.

The tasting notes are in Excel format: Meeting Notes Feb 2017

Andy also took all the pictures!

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Vacations can be restorative. After a couple of months of reduced activity, the club was back in full vigor this month. Almost too full.

Our first meeting of 2017, hosted by Jaime Luna, his lovely wife, Laura, and their two dogs, was so well attended, and featured so many brews to judge, that we nearly didn’t get through them all. It helped that nearly all the brews were very good and a few were truly excellent. We were not slogging through a flight of mediocrities. Jaime’s spread of chili and munchies fortified us as well.

There are pictures. I know there are. But I don’t have them. I’ll post them when I get them. In the meantime, here are the tasting notes:

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“Robert Burger” is not a name you hear too often in these posts. With 2 young children and a very full plate at home, Bob doesn’t often get to club meetings. But he is a brewer of extraordinary talent. And meetings at his home tend to degenerate into expeditions into his basement for sampling from his kegs. September’s meeting was no different.

As is usual at the Burger Joint, the munchies were excellent, the beer was superb, and the attendance was … not overwhelming. Branford is just a bit too far east for many of the club’s members. (How many of the poor things will manage to get to my new abode in Guilford? Not many, I fear.) But we did have a quorum.

This included The Naughty Nurse, recently returned from a training seminar related to people who had lost their sense of smell. Much conversation revolved around the retraining of such persons and the various ways that sensory inputs affect the appreciation of beer, food, etc. It may not have been completely pertinent to homebrew, but it was very interesting.

More entertaining for your correspondent were the Burgers’ two kittens. And their children. And the kitten/child behavioral axis. Having had both children and kittens myself, I vividly remember the difficulty of regulating the interaction between the two. The Burgers seem to have this under control. Both species were extremely well-behaved.

Many outstanding homebrews were sampled, not all of which were brewed by Mr. Burger himself. Please refer to the tasting notes below.

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Each year, in June, we Underground Brewers engage in a fierce competition among ourselves for “Best Brewer” honors. We bring our best homebrews to John and Tracy Watson’s house, judge them for real, and give prizes to the brewers of the top three.

We’ve been doing this for as long as anyone can remember. And John’s been winning the contest for almost as long.

This year was no different. In fact, it is believed that John’s winning entry was from the same batch that he won with last year. I’d complain, but it is consolation enough to get to sample some of John’s beers while judging. And the potluck dinner is always amazing.

The winning entries:

Best in show: Helles, John Watson

First runner-up: Piwo Grodziske, Krzysztof Lasocki

Second runner-up: Berliner Weisse, Andy Tipler

Honorable mention: IPA with Tangerines, John Watson

And the scoresheets:

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