Category: Editor’s report and club news

Our December Club Meeting will be hosted again at the Bentspoke facility in Mitchell – thanks as always to the Bentspoke team for their generosity in allowing us to use the premises.

When: Thursday, December 3rd 2020 from 7:30pm – late
Who: Attendance for non-members is free for their first meeting, but after then a paid membership is required. Visit this link to join up – Become A Member

Bring your beer/brews to share

Remember, our meetings are all about brewing – which includes sampling. Bring your best in bottles, growlers or kegs, and remember they earn NOOKIE entry points for the annual prize draw.

NOOKIE Prize Draw

The NOOKIE Prize, aka the Newcastle Or Otherwise Kinda Interstate Experience, is an annual award given to one lucky member who has accumulated NOOKIE tickets throughout the year by bringing beer to club meetings and buying raffle tickets. This year’s prize is a trip to Newcastle’s Foghorn Brewery!

Raffle

This month’s raffle prizes are centered around a summer theme;

  • Temperature controller – convert that old fridge into a temperature controlled fermentation chamber!
  • Citrusy hops – for summer ales
  • Hoppy beers – for summer drinking
  • Plenty of brewing goodies will be up for grabs as part of the lucky dip as well.

Education Session – Brewfather

MTB will be demonstrating the Brewfather software; Brewfather is growing in popularity among brewers, so we’re going to take a look at what it’s capable of.

Club Christmas Party

Separate to the monthly meeting, the club Christmas Party is being held on 12 December 2020 @ Black Mountain Peninsula. It’ll be a great opportunity to get together outside of the hustle and bustle of the monthly meeting and enjoy some great food, drink & banter in (hopefully) the Canberra summer sun.

Register your interest here.

COVID-19 Changes

  • A sign-in sheet will be provided for all attendees to complete. This is required for contact tracing purposes.
  • Nibbles will be provided per usual, but the committee will plate it out for members.
  • Seating and tables will be available sparingly to ensure social distancing. If you are able to stand, please do so.

If you are unwell or waiting on results from a COVID-19 test, please do not attend.
Hoping to see you there – and if you’re unable to, ensure you participate in our Canberra Brewers Members Facebook group and post up some banter on the Forum. The club’s all about collaboration!

Brewers,

Oil those lederhosen and blow the dust off you favourite stein – can you believe it’s Oktoberfest time again? … but with a twist this year.

With COVID restrictions, it has proven too challenging to organise our usual Oktoberfest outing with suitably German fare. With a kind offer from BentSpoke to host us at the cannery, we are going to break the mould – we are going to self cater.

Note this event is the monthly club meeting for October.

Date: Monday, 5th of October
Time: Kick-off at 3:00pm (see schedule below). Remember that daylight savings will have started!
Place: BentSpoke Cannery, 79 Lysaght St Mitchell
Cost: $20 members, $35 non-members – guests are welcome, we will have plenty of space.

Schedule

3:30 German Beer tasting. BJCP style tasting of three classic German styles.
4:30 ACT Amateur Brewing Results, Medals etc
5:30 Extra-ordinary General Meeting
6:00 Dinner!

There will also be a German brewing competition which will be judged after dinner – free to enter, just bring along a bottle (or two) of your best bräu, and the usual raffle and socially distanced mingling afterwards.
The club raffle will be held at some point throughout the event as well.

Non-members are encouraged to email us to arrange registration and payment.
Members can register their attendance on the forum.

Brewers,
It’s been a while since our last newsletter and plenty has changed – but we hardly need to point that out. The club has some important updates.

2020 Club Competition
We’ve arranged a club competition for paid members. Entries close this Saturday 27 June 2020. More information can be found on the forum.

Monthly Club Meetings
With gradual lifting of social restrictions, the committee is looking to resume monthly club nights as soon as practicable. We’ll be doing this a little differently to usual in order to minimise risk – but nothing drastic. Our goal is to get together, enjoy beer, and have some good banter – plenty of isolation stories to be shared I’m sure.
We’re on track to host an August meeting, but this is subject to restrictions. Watch that space.

Oktoberfest
The annual Oktoberfest event will be a little different this year – but we’re committed to getting it done. We’re looking at options for catering and venue at the moment. Now is a good time to brew your favourite German beer for the event as they often benefit from a long conditioning time. We’ll be running a German beer comp to recognise the best entries.

Craftbrewer Discount
Our member discount for Craftbrewer purchases has been revised to add value for paid members. We now have a 5% discount code for the overall purchase price! The code is CBC.Discount.Code.2020 and is valid through to June 2021.

Membership expiry
On 30 June 2020, we’ll be disabling forum access for members not yet having paid for a 2020-2021 membership. We’ve emailed unpaid members with information on membership renewal.

We’ve extended the expiry date of club memberships to 30 June 2021, which means paid members have gained six months of free membership courtesy of the club. June 30 will become the new membership expiry date moving forward.

Social Activity
We’ve increased focus on the social aspects of the club – most notably the Canberra Brewers Members Facebook page, and brewer catchups on Zoom, including beer tastings and collaborative brewdays. We expect this platform to continue post-pandemic as online comms are of great value to the club.

Education
We were privileged to host brewing historian Peter Symons earlier in the year for a presentation on Old beers. We’re working on the video for that presentation and will have it ready soon.

If you’re in our Canberra Brewers Facebook Group you would have received an invitation to a tasting session for the limited-run Russian Imperial Stouts recently released by Canberra’s own BentSpoke and Capital breweries. Richard Watkins from BenSpoke and Adrian Graeber of Capital will be joining us via Zoom to talk us through their respective beers as well as join in some brewing chat. This is a great opportunity to hear direct from two of Australia’s top breweries how they went about making these rich and complex beers, as well as to ask some questions and drink a couple of tasty distanced beers with your fellow club members.

With the potential for in-person club meetings on the horizon Kip is keen to get some in-person education sessions going as well. These are a key part of our monthly meetings, for new and veteran brewers. Some ideas are in the works but get in touch with Kip or keep and eye on the forum if there’s anything in particular which you’d like to see or if there’s something in particular you’d like to demonstrate.

Lastly, the club library! This is a really great resource – two huge crates crammed with books on beer and brewing. We manage the library through an online system called Librarika (some of you know this, some may not) so if you haven’t got access/an account get in touch and we’ll get you set up. If you get an account but find it a bit hard to decide on a book since their titles are almost exclusively variations on the words ‘beer’, ‘brewing’, ‘how’ and ‘great’ then put something up on the forum for advice or drop Kip a line to arrange a time to have a look.

BJCP
We’re working on lining up some BJCP Judging events soon – watch that space.

 

Stay safe and brew strong!

Michael Brown (MTB)