March 2, 2010

Several people were in attendance this month and most were in a RVAR shirt! Shirts are still available and Jed will be ordering some more soon. Get yours and help promote our great club.

This months meeting began with a discussion about the upcoming Bluebonnet Brewoff competition later this month. The club will have around a dozen club members attending. We will also be participating in the club crawl for the first time. The club jockey box will be put to use and the club banner proudly displayed Friday evening for the crawl. Several members will take part in the final round of judging Saturday morning and we hope to hear some club member names called at the award ceremony Saturday evening. There is still time to join the group and experience one of the biggest single-site homebrew competitions in the nation. Check out the Bluebonnet website for more info: www.bluebonnetbrewoff.com

Jed Reinhard gave a demonstration of brewing a partial mash, which is a step up from all extract brewing. It incorporates using some grains in the brewing process to improve several aspects of your brew.

Planning for the All American Brewoff, sponsored by the RVAR, is well underway. The club will be hosting this competition of American style beers in July and volunteers, sponsors, and donations are needed to make this a great event. There are still several items that need someone to step up and help with. A list of action items and who has been assigned so far will be coming out soon. Contact Steve Arnold, vamil92@gmail.com , or Jed Reinhard, JReinhard@baldor.com, if you are interested in helping out.

Information about the St. Louis Microfest Homebrew Competition was shared. Check their info at http://stlmicrofest.org/homebrew.php . Entries are being accepted now through April 16.

Congratulations to Danny and Pat who each won a door prize at the meeting. They received a small soft sided cooler, insulated cup, and a couple of brewing ingredients including 2 ounces of hops!

Next month’s meeting will be Tuesday, April 6, where we will have a Gadget Night to share some of the great tools that help making brewing easier, How to Make a Mash Tun demo for those ready to start all-grain brewing, and a Kegging demo of Jed’s partial mash demo from this month for those ready to start kegging their homebrew. Plus we will be sharing about the outcome from the Bluebonnet Brewoff. This is a meeting you don’t want to miss!