This was another great meeting, as usual, with our usual group of club members. In total, we had 27 beers to share and discuss. In addition to the beers, we also had a decent amount of club business which I’ll cover below.
Some topics we covered at the meeting included:
Next Meeting – Tuesday April 16th at 6:30pm at the Santa Fe Brewing Co HQ’s Party room where we normally meet. Note: This will also be our club elections.
Next Club Competition – Our next mini club competition will be during the June 2024 meeting. The style will be any kind of pale Belgian beer (Saisons, Belgian Pale Ale, Belgian Blonde, etc). We’ll have special guest pro judges and possibly some bigger prizes than just the paddle.
Bottling our club barrel barleywine – Thanks to Michael for bringing a sample of our club barleywine that has been aging in the Santa Fe Spirits Colkegan barrel for about 6 months. It’s tasting really good and we need to bottle/keg it soon.
That also means we need to decide on a group brew to put into the barrel soon if not immediately after we empty it. Some ideas were tossed around but I think going with a Wee Heavy or something that compliments the Scotch characteristics of the barrel is best. If you feel strongly about a style or recipe, please throw it out to the club. We need to get this nailed down soon so everyone who wants to contribute has time to brew it. We’ll need 26ish gallons which means at least six different 5 gallon batches.
Next Social Meetup – We’ll have our next social night at Tumbleroot’s main taproom on Agua Fria at 6:30pm on Wednesday April 3rd. The patio will be open and we’ll keep our fingers crossed for some nice weather.
Memorial Day Campout is back! – Thanks to Tom for putting this in motion so quickly and getting us a spot reserved at the Taos Junction group campsite for Memorial Day weekend. The camp site is located on the Rio Grande so you can drop in for some rafting / kayaking or just to cool off.
The important details are that we have the site from 7PM Friday May 24th through 10AM Monday May 27th. No RV hookups, but RVs are allowed and may count toward the 15 vehicle limit. We’ll have more information about this as time gets closer, but that should be enough to get it on your calendar.
A note about over serving and commercial beers – This is something I’ve had on my mind for a while and at least two other club members have brought it up in the last few months. These meetings should be an enjoyable time for everyone and a chance to share, sample and critique homebrew. While I have nothing against commercial beers being shared, the reality is lately the beers being brought to the meeting are about half to two-thirds commercial, most of which are higher ABV.
Rather than placing a ban on commercial beers, I’d like to have everyone put some self restraint on the amount of commercial beer you’re bringing and self limiting to a couple commercial beers each. Additionally, let’s keep commercial beers something special and not something you can pop over to Total Wine or Kelly’s and easily pick up.
Some good examples of commercial beer to bring are: if you’ve gone on a trip and found something awesome, someone gave you some beer you can’t find here or there’s something unique or otherwise special about the beer.
Some good examples of commercial beer to leave at home: you dug something out of your fridge because you don’t want to come empty handed (nothing wrong with showing up without beer), you can easily find it at local stores or the beer sucks and you’re trying to offload it so you don’t have to drink it.
Part of the fun of home brewing is trying to emulate other styles and getting to experience some top tier examples of a style, which is why having some commercial beer is good. Let’s just please try to make the commercial beers the exception, not the rule, when it comes to our meetings.
Bottle shares and other tastings – One thing that may help naturally minimize the amount of commercial beers being brought to our monthly homebrew meetings is to have more bottle shares and tastings. We used to do this years ago when I first joined and it was always a fun time. Picking a style or theme and everyone contributing a commercial bottle is a great way to clear out some of those 750’s and bombers from your cellar. We’ll discuss more of this in the future.
Custom Club AHA Renewal
I signed us up for the AHA referral program which gives our club a $5 kickback whenever someone joins or renews their membership through our custom link and enters SDCCB as the code. If you’ve let your membership lapse or haven’t signed up before, I’d encourage you to do so. You can find our custom URL here: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/support-the-aha/?promo=Sangre-de-Cristo-Craft-Brewers (note: you will still need to enter SDCCB as the code when you’re at that point in the sign up process).
The full list of beers brought to the meeting were:
- Ben: Himbo Pils (Timbo pils clone), Return of the Mack (Mackinac hopped pale), Rankin by Fair Isle, DDH Pillow by Highland Park, Flavor Brain by Highland Park, Citra Loves Nelson by Brewery X, Fill Pils by Highland Park
- Brandon O: Heavy Metal from Outer Space (Imperial stout), Agave Spirit Barrel Mole Stout (2022) by Tumbleroot
- Corey: Trillian’s (Irish Stout), Ursa Minor (Dark Mild), Hyper Paradise (2017) by Rare Barrel, Expedition Stout (2017) by Bells
- Eric H: Irish Stout, Chocolate Honey Porter, Mind Haze Cosmic Crusher by Firestone Walker, Rye on Rye by Boulevard
- George: Dark Mild, Lewes Castle Brown and Bonfire Boy by Harvey’s in Sussex UK
- Ken: IPA w/ Galaxy
- Lorrey: Dubbel (2020)
- Michael: Best Bitter, Barrel aged barleywine sample, Black Imperial IPA by Moab
- Tom: Good Kiss (Braggot IPA) by Obscurity Brewing, Pilsner by Penrose Brewing
(Note: commercial beers are italicized).
Sangre de Cristo Craft Brewers 