The former "hops capital" of the U.S. Oneonta NY, some friend and colleagues of mine have setup a group to study and appreciate the art of home brewing. The clubs name is The Home Brewers of Otsego Proper-Society. And you can join us every third Friday of the month and a different venue where we gather to share our home brews. To see a list of upcoming and past events visit us here,
http://hopsbrewclub.wordpress.com.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of beer making is in the act of sharing, discussing, experiencing, and promoting expansive beer styles and progressive home brewing procedures. As if the camaraderie and friendships alone are not reason enough to join a homebrew club, forming a larger network of home brewers gives each of us the opportunity to share and experience several different beer styles made by home brewers. Nothing can heighten the beer palate and senses like experiencing several different styles made with differing malts, hops, and adjuncts from around the globe. Listening to home brewers' procedures can educate and challenge each member to consider using alternative and different techniques and equipment with their own batches.
The objective of establishing this homebrew club is to cultivate, educate, and celebrate brewing. Each month we will gather to socialize and discuss all-things-brewed. For each monthly meeting a brewer/group of brewers will take turns brewing a specific, featured, style of beer to showcase for the club. We will spend some time tasting, learning, and discussing the specifics of this style. The brewer/s might explain the ingredients and processes that went into the beer, as well as, any history, special techniques, or tweaking made along the way. After the presentation, additional brews should make their way from those confining bottles, growlers, and kegs and into the cups of others. Additionally, other club members should bring and share the fruits of their labor as well. Depending on interest, down the road, we hope to establish club-wide brew days and even public-judged, club-sanctioned competitions.
My brew club gathers 3 to 4 times a year for a Big Brew Day. This particular brew day was the first ever for the Home brewers of Otsego Proper Society and it was held on Saturday 4/2. I had never brewed before so I was anxious to see what it was all about, and how I could get started into brewing on my own. The event was held at a member house, in Hartwick New York. We gathered at around 8:00 am in the morning to get the water boiling and the grains started. Roger Davidson the member’s home we brewed at had setup a beautiful stainless steel brew system, and he has just received his license to sell and distribute his own brew for resale and for the brew club. Our club president Josh and Roger also got together during the week to prepare all of the grains we needed for this big day as well. This is the process in which they crack all of the grain from the whole grain seeds instead of using a malt extract.
The entire brew day lasted 11.5 hour event had each of us a bit more content with our "smaller brew systems" ha-ha! I used a Belgium strain of yeast for our home brew club president but here were several other yeasts in the mix. The neat thing about this process was in the end we had about 30 car boys that we filled each with its own yeast mix. SO no one beer was the same at the others. After letting my beer ferment in my car boys for three weeks I prepared for bottling. In this process I had to heat up about a half-gallon of water and some more sugar, and mixed it in with the batch that was fermenting. I then siphoned out all the beer into individual Grolsh bottles and stored them away in my cellar for another week, to allow them to carbonate. Once completed after a week I grabbed few bottles and chilled them in the refrigerator and shared them with the brew club at our next meeting. The taste was phenomenal. It was a light summer like blend and it came out perfect. I still didn’t quite understand the entire process since there were so many people involved in this brewing even. But it gave me the motivation to start doing this again on my own at home. Since our first brew meeting I have done this three more of my own batches and each one has come out phenomenal. I have a done a light pilsner, a dark sour brown ale, and an IPA red. We currently are no longer using this site I setup but you can see what I Had created. We felt a blog was easy to edit, and update with current information.
http://jpbugyi.com/hops/
Some recommended reading for those of you interested in doing your own home brewing , is The Complete Joy of Home brewing by Charlie Papazian, master brewer and founder of the American Home brewer’s Association . Everything you need to get started is here, including classic and new recipes for brewing stouts, ales, lagers, pilsners, porters, specialty beers, and honey meads.
