The raffles this month went out in style with plenty of hops up for grabs as well as stacks of other great brewing and beer merchandise.
The Club’s president took the opportunity to let the club know exactly where we stand financially and what we can look forward to in the future.
I took the opportunity to share with the club my own beer which has been made commercially for ANZAC Day which is dedicated to a mate who was killed in Afghanistan.
It was well received by the club with plenty of comments afterwards about the brew and the bloke it is dedicated to.
The night also saw many awards handed out to successful brewers from the recent brewing competition.
The rest of the night was spent with a few talks on various topics and of course the traditional catch-up sharing news and tastings of each others brews.
The monthly meeting night came around quick and saw club attendance back into full-swing for 2014.
Rob Horsfield gave a presentation on the importance of temperature control throughout the mashing process highlighting the different systems available to keep temperature under control.
Being an important part of the process it was great to see even the seasoned brewers with all types of brewing systems keen to learn more throwing all kinds of questions at Rob.
Steve Hogarth’s ‘House Brown’, an English ale, was on tap for the night providing brewers with a sample of his beers with many brewers getting back to the roots of the club meeting nights providing bottles to share and provide feedback on.
Members were updated in detail on the recent cider trip to Batlow where club members took the opportunity to visit a juicing company and then an apple orchid where they learnt all about growing apples that are then crushed to make tasty cider and some details were also provided on the upcoming International Home Brew Day – more news to come soon.
Basking in the afterglow? Resting on our laurels? Buggered after pulling together another National Multicultural Festival? Call it what you will but the March meeting was a suitably low-fi event.
We had a good turnout, with a heap of new brewers coming along to what was a largely social gathering. The bring-a-bottle themed event saw us return to a classic kegless meeting where we get to taste each others beer and focus on the craft.
Then we had the kegs, so the fun continued on.
Folks who had helped out at the Multicultural Festival got to take home a bottle of the leftovers from Byron Bay (Pilsner) and Mountain Goat (Steam Ale). It also gave me a great chance to practice using my PET counter-pressure filler which I thought was cool, until I saw how easy it is to fill bottles with the new Ultimate Carbonation Cap available from Mashematics/Keg King.
Neal Cameron from the Australian Brewery had also popped into the meeting – sharing his view on how much better craft beer is in cans. Rather than give an impromptu presentation, he made himself available throughout the night to questions form the homebrewers on his beer, cans and cider (Neal was in Canberra for Plonk’s ciderganza).
Richard Watkins was interrogated about when Bent Spoke was due to open (but his resistance is stronger than our need for information).
Welcome to all of our new members, and I think we are all looking forward to returning to normal come April.
There’s a reason the Multicultural Festival is held in February. If it weren’t, we couldn’t spend the remaining ten months of the year reminiscing on how hot, tired, and sweaty we got keeping the punters happy in the name of craft-beer and fundraising for our club.
This year certainly seemed the hottest and most crowded festival yet. At first I was a little confused as to why we had so many volunteers to run kegs through the intense crowd in 38 degree heat, but on my first visit to the Wig and Pen cool room I realised what all the fuss was about.
Kegs in the coolroom
2014 brought about a change in the most fundamental element of our enterprise: the beer itself. This year we diversified our line-up across four breweries and our punters absolutely loved the range:
Wig and Pen Malty Cultural
Mountain Goat Steam
Byron Bay Brewing Wicked Wit
Byron Bay Brewing Pilsner
Dr Pilkington’s Miracle Cider
The concept of the Malty Cultural has become a legendary aspect of the festival. I had interstate punters explaining to me that they make the festival pilgrimage every year and that our stand is a ‘must see’ stop – all thanks to the great concept beer. It was no surprise (though a little disappointing to many) that the Malty sold out on Saturday night.
The Malty wasn’t the only hit of the festival. Canberra Brewer turned pro Scotty Hargrave’s Wicked Wit was a huge hit in the heat. The cloudiness and spiciness did cause some punters to make a double take, but a simple ‘it’s like a hoegaardenen, but better’ covered their concerns off nicely. Again, this beer sold out quick smart by the time the sun was setting on Saturday.
In years past, the preliminary work to make our stall a reality has been largely run off the dedicated backs of David Gilks and Tom Dixon.
This year, a team of over ten dedicated members worked hard to cross all the t’s and dot the i’s leading up to the event, reducing stress levels across the board. The punters probably don’t realise all the logistics that go into the bar, the beer, the cash, the clothes, the food, the fun, and everything else that keeps them lining up outside our stall. That invisibility speaks volumes about the hard work that the organising committee undertook.
That dedicated committee, combined with the 40+ volunteers who kept the stall running throughout the weekend should pat themselves on the back.
We’re still counting the coin, but by all accounts it seems like we had another strong year of fundraising for the club. More importantly, we got rid of almost all of the fourty thousand Canberra Brewers cup wraps. I myself woke up with five of them strewn around my house on the Sunday morning.
These last remnants of the ancient Canberra Brewers tradition will be raffled off at the March meeting. I, for one, hope Dicko wins.
