Here's hoping you all get to spend your day with family, friends, and someone you love. We're truly thankful to have such a great cast of brewers involved with our club, and we look forward to brewing better, bigger, and badder beers with each of you.

What are you drinking with your Thanksgiving dinner? Let us know!

Remember that the Guild Holiday Party is a week from Saturday. Tickets are still available, and we hope you'll help us represent Baltibrew again this year at Heavy Seas Brewery. We're also doing a bit of holiday fun at our upcoming December 19th meeting at Nepenthe. We'll limit club business to 2014 officer elections, dues payment, and the January collective brew day. Hope to see you there.

The post Happy Thanksgiving, Baltibrew! appeared first on Baltibrew.

Let's assume we are going with the Willy Wonka theme, everyone seems to like that idea and is on board. Our next brew will focus on making beer for the Christmas Party, centered around this theme. The idea is to have 3-4 recipes going at once at the next brew (smaller batches of course) and have them each be chocolate based. Each recipe would do something different with the chocolate/willy-wonka theme. Some of the ideas we threw around were Chocolate-Orange, A Salty Chocolate Gose, a Chocolate Cherry and a lighter Chocolate (white chocolate?) beer that is dyed Purple.

Everyone can submit recipes in the comments below and then we can all vote on them. The top 3 will be the brewmasters for that beer (or will at least be in charge of delegating the brew to someone else). On brew day we will split up into teams for each recipe.

Besides the chocolate based recipes, we thought it would also be interesting to have one more experimental recipe that would be the" Oompa Loompa beer". This could be more bizarre than the others, so feel free to submit your ideas for that as well.

Here are the current  September Brew Details.

When: Sat. 9/22/2012
Where: Ian's Place
What: 3 Chocolate Based Beers
1 Experimental Oompa Loompa beer

Submit recipes and general comments below. We should decide on the recipe's within the next two weeks, so get them in ASAP so we can start the voting process.

The post September Brew Day – Recipes Needed appeared first on Baltibrew.

We did a great job this year, and let's do our best to keep it up for next year.

The post Baltibrew Wins Club Hour Competition!!! appeared first on Baltibrew.

Lots to discuss:

1. This Saturday (11/26) we're returning to Josh Rosen's house to keg our Guild Holiday Party beer. This is also a great time to finalize menu for our club hour and get things planned and sorted before we have to make the push to prep for the party.
2. This Sunday (11/27) a fellow club on the Eastern Shore (OCMHB) is holding their East vs. West competition in Berlin, MD. They still need judges and stewards, have about 67 entries, and will be putting up BJCP certified judges at a hotel for free. Details on their competition site.
3. A week from this Thursday (12/1) we will be meeting at Greg Slack's house to prepare for Saturday's Guild Holiday Party. More details on that to come.
4. And last but not least by any means, Guild Holiday Party is on Saturday Dec. 3rd. You already know if you're going, because tickets are sold out!

Hope you're having a great run-up to the holidays, and hope you get to drink some great beers with your Thanksgiving meal.

The post Turkey Talk appeared first on Baltibrew.

Minutes from last Thursday's meeting are after the jump. As noted at the meeting, please read these here. They're posted to the website specifically so we don't have to re-hash all aspects of old business from the previous meeting. This saves us time, and gets us down to the ACTUAL business at hand of drinking, sharing, and discussing homebrew.

In addition to the link to minutes, if you won't take my word for how fun the Guild Holiday Party is, I've included a more thorough description.

Annually on the first Saturday of December, the various homebrew clubs around the state gather to share their homebrew, compete for the honor of best "club hour" presentation, share a meal, and generally hang out.

There is a raffle, a silent auction, door prizes, and most importantly, the ten-plus clubs come up with a themed booth and presentation to affect a happy hour style atmosphere with a select committee voting on the best total presentation.

A themed meal is served — this year's is "Gourtmet TV Dinner," and as guests of the Heavy Seas Brewery, we can sample to our heart's content in their tap room, all of this in addition to sharing our love of libations with other clubs, as well as our own home-brewed products.

Tickets are $25 with proceeds to support various charities. Some of this year's beneficiaries include BARCS, and the Wounded Warrior Project.

Baltibrew's theme is "Nightmare Before Xmas," and features off-kilter, spooky Christmas scenarios just like in the namesake movie with some similarly not-quite-Christmas style beverages thrown in to keep it interesting.

Once again, you can purchase tickets beginning at 9a.m. Wed, November 9th (that's tomorrow!) at mdhomebrewers.com/holiday/. Hope to see as many Baltibrewers there as possible.

And last but not least: Minutes!

The post November Minutes + Holiday Party Tickets (Broken Attachment) appeared first on Baltibrew.

We're only brewing 10 gallons, so there will not be any available for club purchase. If you have your own rig, feel free to do your own brew.

Brew day starts early as usual, bring food, beer to share, chairs, etc. We're meeting at Josh's place to get started at 9 in the a.m. Check the phone list if you need to get a hold of Josh by phone.

The post Guild Holiday Party Theme, and Brew Day appeared first on Baltibrew.

We brew on the 30th at Josh Rosen's house, so we'll need to have this locked up tight by Friday in order to formulate a recipe, and pick up ingredients.

The post Guild Christmas Party Club Hour Theme appeared first on Baltibrew.

As noted in the previous post, there is a wheat beer competition the day of the picnic, and apparently there are CASH PRIZES.The comp is BJCP judged, but not sanctioned; sorry, no points. That said, if you are taking the BJCP course, this is an excellent opportunity for you to get some off the grid tasting/judging experience.

This is a kid friendly/family friendly event, so please bring out significant others, and/or offspring.

I expect that I'll brew something this weekend — probably Sunday — for this event specifically. Not sure exactly what, but I may do two different ten gallon batches.

I want to reiterate that this event is one of the Guild's bigger parties, and having as many Baltibrewers in attendance as possible is pretty important. We owe the Guild big ups for hooking all of our dues paying members up with our discount at the participating homebrew shops, and promoting homebrewing throughout the state in such an effective way.

If you haven't been to Patapsco Valley State Park, it's even more reason to attend. It's a beautiful park, not far from the City, and it's always a good time. The picnic is held in the Hollofield Area off Rt. 40 at Shelter 300, and you should bring food and beer as the event is basically one big potluck picnic. The shelter features a massive grill, so bring grillables if that's your thing.

I will probably send my beer(s) over by car with a friend or the wife, as I intend to bike out to the park which also features some pretty awesome trails — get some ride in between rounds of judging.

Hope to see a lot of you out there!

The post Guild Summer Picnic 6-4 appeared first on Baltibrew.

Tickets are only available online, cost $25, and proceeds go to charity.

If you are interested in going, get on this ASAP. Tickets ALWAYS sell out.

Our theme for "Club Hour" is "Griswold Family Christmas." We have a subcommittee that should get going soon to help get this in order. Individual emails about this will go out on Monday-ish.

Further details about the party after the jump.

The below is the text from Guild President, Les White's email:

Hi Fellow Homebrewers and Friends,

We're just under a month away from the Free State Homebrewer Club Guild Holiday Party. The date is Saturday, December 4th. Once again, Hugh Sisson and crew have opened up Clipper City Brewing to host our party. We thank them and all homebrew shops, breweries, pubs, restaurants and private donors who gratiously give to this, our largest charity fundraising event of the year.

Details, details, details....

Date: Dec. 4th, 2010
Time: 6-10pm
Place: Clipper City Brewing
Menu: German
Tickets: $25 in advance

This event is limited and will sell out. Tickets are Only available ONLINE at:
http://www.MDHomebrewers.org/holiday

Charities this year include House of Ruth, Soldier Care Packages, The Baltimore Station men's shelter, and the Harford County Animal Shelter.

***New This Year ***
You talked - We listened! After last year's party, we conducted a survey to gather feedback for how to improve future parties and here this year's changes:

1. Club Happy Hour - The first hour (6-7pm) of the party will be a time for the homebrew clubs to shine! If you've ever been to an AHA National Homebrew Conference you are familiar with "Club Night". Well, we're doing the same thing but on a much smaller scale. 5 local clubs will decorate tables and serve their homemade food and beer. All tables will be judged and a door prize will be awarded for best overall table. This is the "Appetizer" portion of our meal. The clubs are receiving a stipend and the Guild council is working closely with them to make sure we have plenty of tasty appetizers and beers to sample!

2. The Raffle will have fewer but larger prizes this year. We had suggestions to bundle smaller prizes into prize packages and we are doing just that! This will make for a shorter length of raffle and while we'll have fewer winners, those folks will go home with some really nice prizes!

3. More Staff - We admit we didn't have enough volunteers last year to successfully execute this event. That will be remedied this year.

4. The Homebrew Competition  - It's open to ANY and ALL types of homebrew - beer, wine, mead, cider, moonshine, sake - if you brewed it, bring it on! All attendees will receive a voting slip upon entry into the event and we'll have instructions on where/how to vote!

5. This year's food theme - Picked by the survey takers! Hope you enjoy the German cuisine!

Other homebrew events on the calendar...

Sunday, Nov 21st, MALT Turkey Shoot competition. All BJCP categories and entries are due This Sunday, Nov 14th. Check out the website for details, sign up for judging/stewarding, and drop off locations: http://www.maltclub.org/MALT/Turkey_Shoot.html

Cheers,

Les White
FSHCG Prez

The post Guild Holiday Party Tickets ON SALE NOW!!!! appeared first on Baltibrew.

Details on the 2009 Free State Homebrewers' Guild  Holiday Party are below.

Get on this now, as tickets tend to go quick.

Holiday party is always great, and this year's will be a great opportunity for our club to make a big splash, hopefully with a win in the annual Hedonistic Homebrew Competition with our Ginger Snap Ale entry. The Indian/Middle Eastern theme should be pretty impressive. The party is a chance for our club to mingle with the other clubs in the state, so please consider checking it out.

Ticket costs help pay for the food, and other incidentals.

Hope to see you there. The following is reprint of an email by Les White, the guild president:

Hi Fellow Homebrewers and Friends,

We're just over a month away from the Guild Holiday Party. The date is Saturday, December 5th. Once again, Hugh Sisson and crew have opened up Clipper City Brewing to host our party. We thank them and all homebrew shops, breweries, pubs, restaurants and private donors who graciously give to this, our largest charity fundraising event of the year.

Details, details, details....

• Date: Dec. 5th, 2009
• Time: 6-10pm
• Place: Clipper City Brewing
• Menu: Indian/Middle Eastern
• Tickets: $25 in advance

This event is limited and will sell out. Tickets are Only available ONLINE at:

http://www.MDHomebrewers.org/holiday

We're still working out some details on this year's charities so check on the above page closer to the party for more information.

The post Guild Holiday Party!!! appeared first on Baltibrew.