CAMRA (Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale)

CAMRA Club Meeting – March 4^th, 2008

CAMRA had its second group meeting on 3/4/08 at the Court Square Tavern. There was a great turnout as we had more than 25 members and guests attend. Some of the topics we covered during the meeting were:

1) The official naming of the club to CAMRA.

We had been using Cville Brewing as our working club name for a little more than 4 months, and that is still our club URL. We decided upon CAMRA which stands for the Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale.

CAMRA, in the UK, is an organization that is focused upon promoting small brewing and pub businesses, reforming licensing laws, reducing tax on beer and stopping the continued consolidation among local British brewers. Whereas their concept of ‘real ale’ refers more narrowly to beer brewed from natural ingredients and carbonated by secondary fermentation rather than carbon dioxide, we are focused on making beer (damn good beer, in fact) that is handcrafted and full of flavor and ingenuity. America is a country full of fizzy, yellow macro-produced beers, and we are committed to making exceptional ales and lagers, and improving our skills through the teaching of and learning from other club members.

2) Discussion of the website www.cvillebrewing.com and the forum

The website has been in operation for quite sometime, and we encourage members to visit it often and participate. Please feel free to ask any questions you might have, answer any questions you can, and to share any beer and brewing news to come across. It is a great place to meet and connect, as well as, keep current with CAMRA events and business.

Please stop by the forum and sign up if you haven’t already. Also, please give us feedback that you have about ways to improve the site. During the meeting Greg/Spider mentioned expanding the topics on the forum to be more specific, and we have made that change. Please send any comments to info@cvillebrewing.com

3) Discussion of the Brown Ales

Christopher led a discussion of Brown ales. He gave us lots of great information about Mild Ales, Southern English Brown Ales, Northern English Brown Ales, and American Brown Ales. These are beers of amazing subtly and complexity, and there are much more difficult to brew well than they may first appear.

We also sampled Newcastle’s Brown Ale, Bell’s Best Brown and Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale as commercial examples of these styles. We will continue to discuss a particular style each month, and we will try commercial examples. Hopefully, we hope to have homebrewed examples of these styles in the future, too.

4) Meeting Space

Our first few minutes have been at the Court Square Tavern. They have been exceedingly kind to us, and they have a great selection of beers to choose from. Despite our great relationship with them, we are quickly outgrowing CST as our club continues to bring in more and more brewers. We are tentatively planning to keep next month’s meeting at CST, but we need to find a bigger and more appropriate solution for our meetings soon.

We are reaching out to all club members to brainstorm some ideas for this. A restaurant or bar of some sort has many advantages, but they will not let us bring homebrews in to sample; which is the focus of the club. Please help us think of a better solution. VFW halls and Elk’s lodges are being considered. We will find the right solution with your help.

Thank you for coming out and we look forward to seeing you next month on April 1^st.

Jamey