Author: OVHA

Greetings Homebrewers,

Fall is finally upon us! As the leaves and temperature both begin to drop, we outside brewers enter prime brewing season where, just like in the Goldilocks story, it’s not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Like many other craft beer enthusiasts that also means some of my favorite style beers are in fashion, mainly malt forward and spiced fall beers like pumpkin beers, oktoberfests, marzens, and soon stouts, Christmas beers, and winter warmers.

In honor of that glorious gourd that is the pumpkin, our October meeting will be dedicated to the pumpkin beer and the topic of brewing with vegetables. We have a special treat in store, another rare beer tasting! We have managed to obtain a case of the very rare and much sought after St Arnold’s Pumpkinator! The 2015 Pumpkinator currently has a 98% rating on ratebeer.com and is an incredibly difficult beer to get your hands on, even if you live where it is brewed in Houston, TX. It is a 10% imperial stout brewed with a combination of pale two row, caramel and black malts, Cascade and Liberty hops, pumpkin, molasses, brown sugar, spices and dry-spiced. A single batch of Pumpkinator is released every year around October 15 and typically elicits black Friday quality lines of craft beer fans at the liquor stores causing it to sell out roughly 15 minutes after opening. We are incredibly fortunate to have such a rare treat make its way all the way up to Indiana! We will also have a discussion on brewing with vegetables and you are encouraged to bring and share any vegetable beer recipes (and vegetable beers!) that you may have.

In other club news, Learn to Homebrew Day is coming up fast. Learn to Homebrew Day (LTHD) was established by the American Homebrewers Association (AHA) in 1999 to encourage homebrewers to introduce their non-brewer friends and family to the most rewarding hobby, obsession and lifestyle since the beginning of time! This year John Mullins has offered to head the event. We will be brewing at Tieman Chiropractic, 202 S. Fourth St. in Boonville (corner of 4th and Locust). This location is right on the main drag through town, and would be hard to miss by anyone driving by. John will be there by 8:30am, and ready to fire up by 9:00. Restrooms will available to brewers for the day, and John will be bringing his Crank n Stein 3 roll mill with drill, along with RV hoses, charcoal filter, and extension cord (and anything else we may need). John will also be grilling burgers until they run out, since this will be getting into lunch time. A big thanks to John for heading this, and if you have any questions feel free to message or call John Mullins at (812) 217-2552.

Holy Redeemer’s 6^th annual Tap and Cork Festival is Saturday November 14^th from 6-9 pm. John Mills, the event organizer, will need volunteers and beer donations, so keep an eye on the OVHA chat room, set a keg or two aside, and mark your calendars.

After the Tap and Cork, the next club beer festival will be the Christ the King Winterfest on January 9^th from 6-11 pm. Nate Ferrell is the event coordinator on this one and it will also be the OVHA’s first time participating in this festival. We always have a long period of downtime in the winter and spring where no beer festivals are going on so I am pleased that our club has decided to add another festival to our list.

Thanks to everyone who volunteered at the Evansville Museum’s Brew Ha-Ha and the Wesselman’s Wandering Owl. Both organizations are treasures in our community and by donating our time and beer to these events we are ensuring their continued prosperity. Both groups have expressed their sincere gratitude to the OVHA for our donation and we will continue to support them in the future. We are working to repair some minor equipment issues and create a post event procedures list for cleaning the equipment for better efficiency in the future. And also, we may or may not have misplaced the OVHA pop up signage, so if you happened to take that home after the event please let someone know.

Reminder, next month’s meeting will be held early on November 18^th as we have in the past due to Thanksgiving. At the November meeting we will be collecting your Big Turkey submissions and nominating next year’s Board. If you want to be a board member or think you know a good candidate please let us know, and don’t be afraid to nominate yourself as well. We are always desperately in need of members willing to put forth their time and effort into the monster that is coordinating the OVHA club meetings and events.

In a final note, I am still on track to meet my new year’s resolution goal of brewing more by brewing at least once a month every month for the year. I hope everyone in the club is having as much luck with their “brew year” resolutions. To me there is nothing more wonderful then brew day. I love that sweet smell of the wort boiling and the spice of hops. I love sharing my finished beer with my friends, family, and strangers at the beer festivals. So for those that haven’t brewed in a while, there is no better time than now to dust off the old kettle and start making something special!

Don’t forget your canned good and I’ll see you at the Wednesday meeting!

Cheers!

Sky Buttrum

Fellow Homebrewers,

The month of June has flown by so fast for me that I can’t believe it’s almost over! I’d like to personally thank everyone who contributed to the Mesker Zoo Brew this year. It was truly the best Zoo Brew we have ever had as a club and I am really astonished by how much our club has grown. We donated somewhere around 35 different beers to sample and had a solid 26+ volunteers there to help! This is the most we have ever contributed and participated to an event in the history of our club and I am so very grateful to be a part of it. I hope we can make the upcoming events which are the Indiana Brewers Cup and SWIRCA just as special. As a reminder, it is critical that if you would like to serve at one of these events you must have a valid Indiana server’s license. Indiana law requires ANY and ALL persons dispensing alcoholic beverages to possess a valid ATC employee permit and you must produce said permit on demand of an Indiana excise officer. Any violation of this could cause the event permit to be revoked. According to Indiana law it is illegal to give away an alcoholic beverage without a permit. I strongly recommend all club members to obtain a servers permit. It is extremely easy to obtain, just go to http://www.in.gov/atc/2641.htm

For the June club meeting tech topic the subject will be feral fermentation with John Dippel. Have you ever wondered how beer was fermented in the old days before brewers had White Labs, Wyeast, and all the other great yeast manufacturers we have today? John Dipple will show us how to collect and propagate wild yeast and what to expect during fermentation. This will be a tech topic that all you brettanomyces funk freaks (myself included) won’t want to miss!

I hope everyone who wanted to get their beer entered in the Indiana Brewer’s cup was able to register in time because the homebrew category is closed! I want to give Jeremy Dunn a HUGE thank you for volunteering to drive our entries up to Indianapolis. For new members or those that don’t already know Jeremy Dunn won a gold medal in the Indiana Brewer’ cup last year for his Belgian Strong entry. Once again I am amazed by the dedication and willingness to volunteer of our club members. To everyone who has an entry, good luck! This is one of my favorite weekends of the year and if you have never been to the brewer’s cup I strongly recommend you consider volunteering at http://www.in.gov/statefair/fair/contests/2560.html. The brewer’s cup has been called “The Super Bowl of Homebrewing competitions” by some people and I can guarantee those that attend will not be disappointed. I have a feeling this year we are going to shine more than ever and maybe even give our friendly rival club, those Foam Blowers of Indiana, a run for their money!

The next Evansville beer event is the SWIRCA & More Brewfest on August 29^th at Bosse Field. The event is 7-10pm with a VIP hour starting at 6pm. I expect this to be another record setting event for our club. For those that don’t know, SWIRCA stands for South Western Indiana Regional Counsel of Aging and is a non-profit organization serving seniors, people with disabilities, and their caregivers. SWIRCA & More Case Managers serve 5,000 adults and children providing over 30,000 hours of direct client services each year and offer services like home delivered meals, respite, Structured Family Care-Giving, repairs that directly correct and/or prevent health and safety hazards for the elderly or disabled individual to enable them to remain safely in the community setting, and so much more. I feel very strongly about SWIRCA and the support they provide and I love that our club donates their beer and time to support this cause each year. So get those brew pots fired up and get to brewing!

Cheers!

Sky Buttrum

 

Fellow Homebrewers,

For the May tech topic the subject will be brew gadgets! The homebrewing movement was founded on DIY principles, and home brewers are known for that awesome DIY ingenuity. I know in the past I have been amazed at some of the cool things that our club members have made. Homebrewing has taught many of us to be creative and to view the physical world in a different way. We look at ordinary things and think, “I could make something for brewing out of that.” So this Wednesday, we are encouraging all you MacGyvers out there to bring your coolest brew gadgets to the meeting to show off. The club will have some tables set up to display your gadgets. Bonus points awarded if you print out anything from the internet that you used to build it or if you have a print out to pass out that explains how to make your gadget.

Earlier this month on May 2nd our club participated in AHA National Homebrew Big Brew Day. OVHA members and friends came together to brew in the sunshine at the parking lot at the CYO Homebrew Supply Store at 116 E. Franklin Street and a good time was had by all. It was a tremendously successful event and a beautiful day. I’d like to give a big thank you to Drew Mitchell at CYO for hosting it. If you didn’t make it out, don’t worry, we will have another remote brew towards the end of the year for national learn to homebrew day.

As I write this, the club’s three way brew off contest is underway at the Gonzalez house. Three of our club’s brewers have graciously volunteered to brew the same beer recipe kit using three different popular brewing methods as a fun experiment on different brewing methods and their final outcome. They will be testing the extract method, brew in a bag, and traditional mash method all on the same recipe, to be fermented in the same place, at the same fermentation temperature, with the same yeast. At a later meeting all three batches will be compared side by side in a blind tasting by us and a vote will be held on which method made the best tasting beer.

Zoo brew is coming up fast! Zoo brew takes place on Saturday, June 6, from 6-9 p.m. at the Mesker Zoo and Botanical gardens. The Zoo Brew is a highly anticipated happening that will be fun for all who attend! The evening will consist of beer and wine samples, great food, live music, and fun entertainment, all taking place on Zoo grounds. As usual, we will be participating in the Zoo Brew. As a participant, we will set up a tasting booth during the event to provide a 2 oz. sample of our finest homebrews to Zoo Brew attendees. So far we have 25 volunteers, 23 kegs and some bottles committed to the event. The zoo has asked us to set up and be ready to serve by 5pm for the VIP ticket holders, so we are planning on meeting at Turonis Main Street Brewery around 3-3:30pm that day to load up our equipment before heading to the zoo. I want to give a big thanks to Dan Mills for volunteering his trailer for the event, and to Turonis brewer Josh Petrowski for letting us store our draft cart at Turonis and committing to giving it a good once over cleaning the night before the Zoo brew! I will be organizing a serving schedule in the next few days. Once it is finished I will post it on our website. A server’s license is required to serve at this event so if you have signed up to serve be sure to double check your license and make sure it is up to date. Everyone’s server’s license will be checked the day of the event.

And lastly, the Indiana Brewers cup is set to start accepting entries on June 1^st. Last year some members had an issue with getting their entries registered because there are only so many entries allowed and the spots were taken up fast, so this year if you are planning on entering beer I encourage you to be ready to submit next Monday June the 1^st. To enter into the Indiana State Fair, please go to www.indianastatefair.com and enter online. Go to: Competitions > Indiana Brewers’ Cup> Online Entry and follow the prompts. No entries will be accepted after June 26, 2015 or sooner if the cap of 1,300 entries is reached (800 Home Brew and 500 Professional Brew) which it most certainly will be reached very quickly. To ensure participation, do not wait until the last minute to register. Each exhibitor is required to pay a $10 entry fee at the time of entry. Payment can be made online with a valid credit card. Each entry must consist of three (3) unmarked bottles, 12 ounces in volume, brown or green glass.

Cheers!

Sky Buttrum

Fellow Homebrewers,

It looks like spring is finally here to stay and that means brewing season has officially begun for us outdoor brewers! I can’t believe how fast March has flown by. So many exciting brewing events are all just around the corner starting with the annual club big barrel brew next Saturday the 28th at Carson’s Brewery. Once again Liquor Locker has graciously donated a fine oaken bourbon barrel to the club for us to fill with the finest beer we can brew. This year it’s a Jefferson’s Ocean barrel and we will be brewing a chocolate coffee stout. Yum! A big thank you again goes out to Jason Carson for hosting the event and John Mills for all of his assistance. We are very fortunate to have a place to brew inside as a club with a ready supply of hot liquor water available. All the ingredients are ready and John has even offered to mill the grain for us.

Other great events just around the corner are: The Bloomington craft beer festival April 11, Upland’s Up Cup (which yours truly will be judging this year) April 25, National Homebrew day May 2, Zoo brew June 6, then the Brewer’s Cup July 10 and 11. It is all coming up so fast!

The first quarterly club social night was a smashing success at Carson’s. No official head count was taken (everyone was too busy socializing) but the turnout was great. I’d like to thank all who attended. It was nice to relax with everyone outside the club in a social setting. Thank you to everyone who brought food. I had a blast! The next club social night will be June 13 at Tin Man. Be there or be square!

We have another great tech topic planned for the March meeting. Michael Julian, our resident tech wizard and webmaster, will be giving a presentation on BeerSmith, a very popular software program that helps brewers design great beers, match popular beer styles from around the world, manage recipes, generate step-by-step brewing instructions and perform dozens of brewing calculations with ease. For me Beersmith is an essential tool for homebrewing and I can’t imagine life without it. I have read in the “Designing Great Beers” book on how to formulate recipes and calculate the gravity and IBU’s by hand and let me tell you, those old timer’s had it rough! For those of you out that that listen to podcasts, Brad Smith, the creator of BeerSmith, has an excellent podcast that I listen to and strongly recommend.

As a reminder, please continue to bring those canned goods to every meeting. I have been floored by the amount of support and enthusiasm our club has shown for this cause. I know it can be a minor inconvenience to remember to bring another thing to every meeting (trust me, carrying them down the stairs and driving them to the donation drop off place hasn’t been easy for me either) but we are really making a difference is someone’s life out there and I am very proud of the generosity our club has shown.

So, everyone dust off those kettles, break out the burners and get to brewing while the weather’s nice, and I’ll see you Wednesday at the meeting!

Cheers

Sky Buttrum