Category: Meeting Notes

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January President’s Message

President Jeff Smith

Fellow Homebrewers,

2014 promises to be another exciting year for the OVHA.  Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a certified cicerone will lead us through a beer and chocolate pairing at first meeting of the year on January 29, 2014.

In February we will be holding the first of our quarterly calibration tastings.  Michael Julian will be the sacrificial lamb for the quarter.  We will be comparing his Vienna Lager to a commercial example.  For this first calibration tasting a panel of the club’s more experienced judges will lead us through the exercise so those of us with limited experience can gain insights into the judging process.  This format may evolve over the course of the year, so your input will be greatly appreciated.  Also, calibration tastings for American Wheat and Scottish ales are planned for later this year.

Registration for entries into the National Homebrew Competition will open for a week beginning Monday, January 27, 2014, with first round judging in late March.  Details can be found at  www.homebrewersassociation.org/competitions.  Final round judging will be held during the National Homebrewers Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Speaking of the National Homebrewers Conference….  The conference runs from June 12-14, 2014.  The “Mashing in Michigan” conference is the closest to Evansville since the 2008 Cincinnati conference.  I hope you will join me this year.  Registration for this year’s conference opens in February and will be lottery-based.  However, with 4,000 slots available, everyone registered will likely have the opportunity to attend.  Go to http://www.ahaconference.org/ for more info.  So, let me know if you are committed to attend.  I plan to signup the OVHA to serve at Club Night and it would be awesome to have a strong contingent of orange shirts!  Even if you can’t attend, a contribution of beer would be greatly appreciated.

Some of you may be wondering “where’s the newsletter?”  Our perpetual secretary, Chris Norrick, has always done a yeoman’s job with the newsletter.  In fact, I don’t recall a missed issue in the five years I’ve been a club member.  However, this takes quite a toll on Chris’ time.  Thanks to Michael Julian tech savvy, practically all the information that was included in the newsletter is now available on the redesigned OVHA website.  So, the board has decided to discontinue to newsletter so Chris can devote more of his free time to hugging trees and making beer.  Thanks Chris!!!

Finally, I want to give a shout out to our outgoing president and three-peat Big Turkey winner, Don Heisler.  You’ve always provided great leadership and support to the club.  I hope your recent surgery went well!

Until we brew again…

Jeff

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Honorary Lifetime Member: Skip Seaman

Our first ever Honorary Lifetime Membership is bestowed upon Skip Seaman. Skip has
hosted several OVHA Learn to Homebrew Days at his business, Liquor Locker, where not only
does he provide us advertisement, brewing space, water and power, but also a hot lunch on
the big grill! He has opened up his other business, Product Acceptance and Research (PAR) for
meetings to tour the amazing Beer Room and also for indoor brewing. He provided us with that
wonderful Elijah Craig bourbon barrel for our latest group barrel aged olde ale project. He also
hosted the 2013 Big Turkey judging. The club has benefited greatly from his generosity and we
want to say thank you with this recognition.

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This months tech topic: Extract to All Grain

At this months meeting professor Delaney explains just what it takes to go from brewing with extracts to brewing all grain. He will go over all the necessary equipment and processes you will need to use to make the transition painless. If you have been thinking about making the switch you don’t want to miss this meeting.

Don’t forget that this months meeting has been moved up one week (Nov 20th) due to the Thanksgiving holiday. We will also be nominating officers for the 2014 club board as well as a new vice president.

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Another Wonderful Wandering Owl

The morning of Wandering Owl was looking rather dreary and cold for an outdoor event. However, by equipment loading time, the sun was out with brilliant blue skies to make for a perfect fall day in the woods.

It was a complete success for Wesselman Woods Nature Society as the event again sold out. In fact, the remaining tickets sold in 15 minutes! We can’t say OVHA has all the credit for bringing in the crowds year after year, but having 17 very unique beers for craft beer lovers to choose from can’t hurt!

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Thanks to all OVHA members that took the time to help make this event a success. Wesselman is always appreciative and has already sent the club a thank you note for our efforts.

Special thanks to Sky for sending in all the great photos!

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Big Turkey Brew Day at Carson’s

It was pretty exciting when Carson’s Brewery stepped up last year and offered to let the winner of the Big Turkey competition brew their beer for a special release. It definitely made everyone step up their game. After working out all the kinks of a new brewery, head brewer John Mills, gave Glen the green flag and it was time to brew.

Glen’s 2012 Turkey winner was his Foreign Extra Stout. So with recipe in hand Glen and John set out to duplicate his brew on the 20bbl system. Grinding and mashing 2,010 pounds of grain did take a bit of time but it didn’t look like Glen minded giving John a few pointers.

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All in all it was a great day! The sweet wort was transferred to the fermenter and 8 hours later was churning away.

Watch for updates as to when you will be able to head over to Carson’s and sample Glen’s Big Turkey winner. There is even a rumor that some may end up in barrels for a little “extra aging”. I can tell you that after 36 hours it was already really tasty!

Is your 2013 Turkey ready??

Special thanks to Jason and all the guys at Carson’s for supporting the OVHA.

 

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Web Site / Facebook / Message Board Integration. Please Comment or Reply for Testing

Now for the grand daddy of all the test posts. This should get pushed out to the Web site, Facebook and the message board with the click of just one button. It will take a little time for the town crier to get the hang of formatting posts so that it looks good on all three platforms. This should be a big step in being able to reach all the members with a single post.

I would like for some members to post a comment on FB or reply to the forum post to see the site will populate its comment section. The site should populate those comments/replies in to the comments section of the site.

There is also a section at the bottom of the Web site that shows the latests topics on the message board.

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New OVHA Web Site Launched

With the growing number of places folks hang out on the Web it’s getting harder and harder and keep up with everybody. Some like to get their information from message boards while others get their news and updates from Facebook. Gone are the days when when simply sticking information in one place on the Web would reach everyone.

As the club moves forward we want to make sure and accommodate as many members as we can without killing the clubs town cryer (Mr. Norrick). That being said we have been working in the background to update the clubs Web site and the way information gets published to all the different news streams. We will still have the same message board and FB presence but now the site will be able to push content from one to the other with little effort.

We have also added an interactive calendar on the site. The calendar will be used to list club events as well as events happening in the beer world that members might find interesting and want to attend. The “Featured Events” section in the middle of the home page will always be for listing upcoming club events.

Take a look around and see what you think. We are working hard (as we can) to populate the site with events and photo galleries so it will be getting bigger and bigger over the next few months. If you find a link that doesn’t work or something that just doesn’t make sense please let us know. If you have the OVHA Web site bookmarked you may have to update your bookmark to see the new site.