CAMRA (Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale)

CAMRA Club Meeting – June 3, 2008
 
CAMRA had its fifth group meeting on 6/3/08 at the Court Square Tavern. It was another great turnout as we had around 15 members and guests attend. Some of the topics we covered during the meeting were:

1)              Next month’s meeting will be on July 8^th – Typically we have our club meetings on the 1^st Tuesday of each month, but there was a short discussion about whether or not we wanted to have a meeting on the first of July.   A few  members  have vacations and other commitments on that date, so we have pushed the next meeting back to July 8^th.  Mark your calendars.

2)              Thank you Evan – Thanks again to Evan for hosting our first official homebrew tasting at his house.  On May 31^st, we tried many good homebrews and enjoyed some of Evan’s smoked chicken.  Thank you to Evan and his wife for being such great hosts and telling us the story behind his neighbor’s tower/two-story unabomber shed.

 3)              A discussion of styles and why they are (or aren’t) important – For this meeting, we decided to forgo our usual discussion of a particular beer style, and address why we care about styles.  Beer style guidelines are set down by the BJCP, or the Beer Judge Certification Program.  There are other groups that have style guidelines, as well, but most brewers follow the BJCP.  These guidelines change infrequently every few years, and new styles are added, but the actual changes are usually relatively minor. The BJCP guidelines group the beers into categories and then each style is described by aroma, appearance, flavor, mouthfeel, overall impression, and additional comments.  The parameters for original and final gravities, IBUs, SRMs and ABVs are listed, as well some commercial examples.After some discussion, some interesting points came up.  In no particular order, and acknowledging the fact that these could completely contradict each other:

a)              Many beers styles have existed for hundreds of years for a reason.  They are unique, interesting and part of history.  There are still around because they deserve to be, and that is worthy of respect.

b)             Beer styles give us the basic vocabulary to describe and judge beers.  We have to agree on something before we can agree on anything.

c)               The ability for a homebrewer to nail a style is an important stage a brewer’s evolution.  Honing the scientific and artistic methods used to tweak recipes until you can create something that would be universally viewed as fitting into a particular style are essential.   Brewing without an end product in mind can certainly be done, but we rarely become better brewers by accident. 

d)             If you want to enter your beers into a competition, you need to have some guideline goals, or all of your beers are going into the “other” category.

e)             What is most important is making something that you like.  That may not fit any guideline.

f)                Beer style guidelines can be used as springboards.  Use them, but don’t let them stifle your creativity.  Why can’t you make an amber wit or a coffee lager?

4)              Brewing as the seasons change – The second topic was a discussion about how the change in seasons affects our brewing.  In the summer it is more difficult to maintain lower fermentation temperatures and the water coming out of the tap and into our wort chillers is not as cold.  The winter time poses opposite but similar issues, but we generally focused on warmer temperatures since summer is upon us in Central Virginia.  We discussed the purchase of refrigerators and chest freezers to cool our brews (and the difficult maintenance of them from growing mold), the use of evaporative cooling (keeping the carboys or buckets in tubs of water with t-shirts of towels around them), choosing to brew styles that are more forgiving of temperature fluctuations or require higher temperature fermentations (Belgians, for example), and simply taking the summers off from brewing. (Blaspheme!)

Was that it?  - No, not by at long shot.  There was discussion of culturing yeast, the joys of having access to -80° freezers and many other topics. .  If you missed it, you’ll have to make next month’s meeting on Tuesday, July 8th and take part in the sharing.  Next’s month style will be Saisons.

Jamey