May Meeting

By Nick Wiseman, Editor

Interest in the Brewers Showcase continued this month with Mark ‘Billy’ Bilbrough talking about his Robust Porter and Charles ‘Chuck’ Newton talking about his Schwarzbier.

Members were keen to learn about the styles and how they brewed their beers with many questions thrown at them throughout their presentations, more details and recipes will be available in a separate story to appear on the web site soon so keep an eye out.

With International Home Brew Day only a few days after the meeting Stephen ‘Kurtz’ Neilsen discussed with the club the various mashing techniques commonly used by brewers including some of those that would be demonstrated at the brew off day.

Despite most of the talk being of traditional systems such as HERMS, RIMS and three vessel gravity systems Kurtz later moved the conversation to the mysterious and often misunderstood Brew in a Bag (BIAB) method.

Gaining popularity as an alternative method to get into all grain brewing Kurtz gave a rather unbiased talk and informative session on the method noting he was looking forward to seeing the system in practice on the weekend – even posing for a photo with one of the bags that are used in the method.

The raffles for the evening consisted of a complete portable party keg system, oxygen kit and beer pack with the party keg going out to lucky member Mark Wilson.

Club President Tom ‘Dicko’ Dixon briefly spoke about some of the members heading down to the Great Australian Beer Spectapular being held in Melbourne and promised a full report on his return.

Other events to keep an eye out coming up in the next few months include the Wig & Pen brew day and the next club competition – make sure you get those entries in!