Canberra Brewers

Welcome to 2011!

By Tom Dixon, President

G’day Brewers and Welcome to 2011! I trust that you’ve all well and truly recovered from the festive season and are primed and ready for another big year of better brewing, camaraderie and of course beer appreciation [sic].

With our first meeting just a week away (4 February), it’s due time to provide an update from your 2011 Committee and assure you that we’ve been working furiously behind the scenes. The Committee Forum has been inundated with a frenzy of ideas and development for 2011. Whilst your committee members will update you on their areas of interest, I personally have adopted a leadership style akin to by my beloved Australian Labour Party, having found myself striving to lighten the Clubs coffers in a variety of different ways. I will outline some of these outlays at our upcoming meeting…

Other than upholding the founding aims of our Club, specifically “to promote the brewing of beer and the art of marking it, to improve the quality of the beer we brew, to promote sensible use of alcohol, and to create a social atmosphere”… i’ve tasked myself with two primary goals as your President:

1. To see through the incorporation of our Club
2. To retain our Nationals title for the third year in a row.

I look forward to achieving both of these goals with your continued support. Remember that it is your club, so the greater your involvement, the greater our Club will become…

So long, and thanks for all the beers

By Darryl Barbour, President

Brewers, we’ve come to that end of the year where we get to kick out the old committee and introduce some new blood. It is also time, after all the competitions, brew days and general chaos, that we can sit back and look at everything that has gone on, and gone well for the club. So let me reflect …

Having taken over the reins from President Stagger and crew last December, we had the legacy of one of the best, and most certainly biggest Canberra Brewers events that I can remember being run – the Nationals and club night. In his time in charge the club had been set on a great path with high standards to meet. This year, and I hope you’ll agree, I think we met those standards and introduced a few new things to make the club another step better. We’ve had great sponsorship deals, a return to the road-trips, a fantastic Wig-and-Pen brewday, more success at the Nationals, a new forum, a new webpage, we’ve broken the 100 member “barrier”, raffled off more brewing “bling”, filled out bellies at Oktoberfest, held faulted beer tastings (ahem.. education sessions). On top of that, and closest to my own interests, we’ve seen relatively new club members make a huge showing in the club competitions and then backing that up with success at Nationals. Finally, we’ve had another batch of brewers sit the BJCP exam.

Where oh where has the President gone?

By Darryl Barbour, President

Adelaide, San Francisco, Seattle and beyond. It has been a busy month travelling the country and the world, but alas there have been fewer brew-pub visits than I would have liked. I can complement The Pike Brewery in Seattle though, with a lovely “Kilt Lifter” Scottish Ale (around the 80/- mark?) and “Tandem” Belgian Dubbel. Of course, this is a poor excuse for not getting a President’s report out for the August meeting, but it is the best I can offer!

And so while it has been a busy and tough few weeks I was really encouraged to see the turnout of members, both those working towards BJCP recognition and those who are not, to the faulted beer tasting this week gone by. I hear that a report it being prepared, but can confirm that we had some absolutely horrid samples to work through. We did, however, get a better understanding of what the different flavours (that may or may not be considered faults) are like in beer and a few ideas on how to address them. Hopefully we will be able to offer that session each year that a BJCP course and exam is run.

Brewing, incorporated

By Darryl Barbour, President

We are into the second half of the year and what looks like being a busy time in the club. The Science Festival is now just five weeks away, Sunday 8 August. We have been provided a 45 minute talking spot at 11:30am, space for a stall, and weather permitting will also be brewing outside. We will need plenty of help on the day, so please get in touch with Craig (Brewtus) or myself — the more the merrier. We will be at the Shine Dome, otherwise known as the Australian Academy of Science.

After that we've still got two more competitions (Comp 3 and the ACTABC), Oktoberfest, a road trip to the Nationals, and at the end of it all, the AGM. We are also keen to try and have a second guided beer tasting at a club meeting a bit later in the year, following on from the weizen tasting at the July meeting, and I'd love to hear suggestions for styles or beers that people would like to learn more about, and get some tips on how to brew them well. As always, we need volunteers to help out at events, so please pitch in wherever you can.

The AABC is getting closer

By Darryl Barbour, President

The big event that is now getting close for amateur brewers Australia wide is the Australian Amateur Brewing Championships (AABC). As the Canberra Brewers, we have been one of the most successful clubs outright – according to the results summaries, in the 15 years of the AABC, Canberra Brewers members have taken out 7 of the 13 “Best Beer of Show” awards and 7 of the 8 “Champion Brewer” awards. Add to that two of the four awards for “Champion State”, which appears to have only been awarded since 2006.

Now pride may come before a fall, and we should recognise that we’ll all be winners in the pursuit to brew a better beer, but it would be great to continue our hugely successful run at Nationals and bring back a bit more glassware for the cabinet.

Cold-weather brewing beckons

By Darryl Barbour, President

We've made it to May, and with winter just around the corner, remember that filling your hot liquor tun the night before the brew risks that layer of ice and a stark reminder how much warmer it is in bed … But we are brewers, we're tougher than that, and the cold weather makes for great stout and bock weather. Oh, that and easy lagering.

I trust that everyone heading off on the Sydney trip in just over a weeks time will have an absolute blast. Two great breweries and, I expect, even more great beers. For those of you sticking around, i'm scheduling a Presidential Brew Day for Saturday 15 May (Ed: now Saturday 22 May, with details to come in the forum).

Judging and Presidential Brew Day

By Darryl Barbour, President

G’day brewers, last month was a busy one for the committee, with sponsorship arrangements and moving forward on a few of the purchases we talked about at the last meeting. In particular, I’ve been hunting down the oxygen equipment for the proposed club buy. I’ve now sourced a good price on the needle valve and flow-meter assembly, and appropriate airstones so we should be ready to kick this off. Check the forum for more details in the next few days.

Of course, brewing leads to beer which leads to club competitions. The judging on Sunday 28 March was great – not so much in that we, the judges, were great (though feel free to tell is that), but rather the quality of the beers was on the whole superb. It was especially great to see a few new names amongst the brewers at the top of each category. I’ve said it before, but we’ve got a National’s title to defend and looking at the number of brewers producing great beers, we’ve got to have a good shot at it. No resting though, it’s time to get those strong lagers and strong ales in the fermenter, to get them ready on time.

Australian Science Festival, Miracles and Oxygen

By Darryl Barbour, President

G’Day brewers and welcome to Presidents Report #2 (such an inspiring intro surely bodes well for report #11). The committee continues to tick along, though as we only meet every second month there is not a lot of news to announce this month, but do have a few things we’ve been following since our January meeting.

We have again been invited to the Australian Science Festival which will be held across three venues from 2–15 August 2010. We’ve got a meeting with some of the organisers straight after the next club meeting so we will soon have some more details. However, if previous years are anything to go by we will be looking for up to a dozen brewers to help staff the stall over one weekend and promote the club and brewing to all and sundry (of legal age of course). Apparently gastronomy is also getting a showing at the festival, which will tie in well to the second half of the brewing craft! We will also be looking at arrangements and hopefully we can get the beer tastings back on the table this year.

Welcome to 2010

By Darryl Barbour, President

Welcome, brewers, to 2010 and shortly to our first club meeting of the year (4 February). I trust that you had at least a short break over Christmas and New Year to unwind, spend time with family and friends, and of course to brew some tasty beers to get you through the summer. I, alas, only managed a New Year’s day brew, but a Summer/Golden Ale with Palisade, Cascade and Glacier is kegged and on tap. But we’ll soon be rectifying the lack of brewing – after all the club has an AABC title to defend!

However, lets not get ahead of ourselves… who is this new president? Well, I joined Canberra Brewers in 2004, the year I moved to Canberra. I had at that stage brewed one kit (can + stovetop specialty grain steep) and one ginger beer. Colin from Brew Your Own at Home suggested I get along to the club meeting… and here we are. It was great meeting people with a similar interest in brewing and with the guidance from a heap of different members I’ve since moved into partial mashes and all-grain brewing – especially for the creative control over the process. Pale ales (English versions) and wheat beers would be the main styles I brew. If I’m not brewing, I’m probably spending time with the family, flying radio controlled models or getting a sneaky bit of caving in.