Club Posts

Greetings! We will be meeting this Sunday, April 25th to brew an American IPA at the home of member Matt McCann (2606 E. Baltimore Street Baltimore, MD 21224). This is right across from Patterson Park, with Luzerne being the nearest cross street.

The brew is all-grain so we'll be starting early — Say 9 a.m. Gotta' get water up to heat early so we can mash in early. But show up when you want to thereafter. We'll probably mash in around 10.

Bring food to share, beer or other libations to share, and something to keep you entertained over a goodly bit of the day. Bring coffee or some breakfast item if you're coming early. All-grain brewing is a much more laborious, and time consuming process than extract, so be prepared to learn a ton, and have a great time as well.

In other news, the American Homebrew Assn's National Homebrew Day (5/1) — lovingly referred to as Big Brew — is swiftly approaching, and Baltibrew has been cordially invited to attend a number of different events to celebrate. You can join member Kevin Berry down at Maryland Homebrew for the festivities put on by that establishment AND a number of different clubs in the South, or you can join some of us — possibly Ryan B, if the wife lets him play hooky from moving duties — at the Thirsty Brewer for Wootown's collective Big Brew up North.
UPDATE:

Wootown's Big Brew is on 5/8 — NOT 5/1.

With business out of the way… time to talk aesthetics.

Feast your eyes on the awesome label member Brent Hoffman designed to accompany our recently named Pagoda Porter. It's doubly appropriate that we'll be enjoying the better part of a Corny keg of this beer AT Patterson Park, NEAR the pagoda on brew day. Come out and have a taste.

We had a productive meeting, which involved tasting our Porter that we brewed in February, and everyone enjoyed it quite a bit.  We also enjoyed some home brew from Kevin (American Pale Ale, Amber Ale, Weizen Bock), as well as our newest member John (Recession Proof American Pale Ale).

Ryan B. gave a half hour primer on the basics of brewing and we had some great discussion/questions throughout the presentation.

We decided our April brew would be an IPA and would also be an all-grain so members could see how that's done.  We will do the brew on Sunday, April 25th at Matt's house (address, and start time will be emailed out.

Last but certainly not least, we named the Porter from last month as: Baltibrew's Pagoda Porter, as an homage to the vicinity to Patterson Park the beer was brewed.  Hope to see everyone in April, and enjoy the first weeks of spring.

We will be bottling tomorrow, 2/19 at the same location listed in the last post.

Bring bottles if you have them. They need to be clean, must be brown and can't be twist offs. Doing so will reduce final costs and is good for the environment and stuff.

We will go over priming for "bottle conditioning," cleaning and sanitation (there is a difference), and discuss proper storage, and the effects of time on bottled beer. And then we'll move on to kegging and force carbonation.

We'll collect money for production costs, so bring a little cash. Bring beer if you want as well.

We expect to spend about 3 or 4 hours bottling.

We are brewing an American Porter Sunday at 2 p.m. at the following address:

14 N east Ave.

Baltimore, MD 21224

Bring some food, bring some beers to share, and I'll post after we buy ingredients how much money you should bring to chip in.

We will be brewing 10 gallons. Five will be bottled, and the remainder will be kegged, so if you show up and pay in, you'll get a proportionate amount of bottled beer to take away once the process is complete. The keg we'll drink on at our next meeting/brew.

This is an extract brew, so it's a great opportunity to learn how to do one the right way if you've never done one before.

We're meeting tonight at 7 pm at Mahaffey's in Canton. Should be a good time. Detter has reminded us that tonight is slider night there, so if you're so inclined you can get your grub on.

Should be a good time.

Things on the agenda:

• When to schedule the upcoming January Brew
• When to schedule the Feb/March meetings and/or brews.
• plans for max's Belgian beer fest weekend.
• possible trip to tour flying dog
• Planning a tasting
• 2010 BJCP class details
• Website upgrades (calendar, recipe DB, messageboard, etc.)

Join us.