Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

I estimated that we had around 20 to 25 people at last night's CAMRA meeting.  Thank you to everyone for coming out and learning about wit beer with us.  Special thanks to Evan for leading the wit beer style discussion, he had a lot of good ideas.  As mentioned during the meeting, please let us know if you can make our first homebrew tasting at Evans house by posting to the poll thread in the Beer Events forum.  We are looking to have it either Saturday May 31 or Sunday June 1, more information will be forthcoming.

Cheers,

Tom

Props to the founding Cam-rologists for the meeting and to Evan for the Witty breakdown. Too bad Court Square didn't have much representation in the way of Wits. Carry on.

Anyone have requests for the next beer style for discussion?  We have sort of been picking from a hat, but if there is a style that people are interested in or brewing soon, we could talk about that.

I'd like to discuss saisons since the saison-brewing season is near.  I haven't brewed one myself but I plan on trying one (or more) this summer with some different yeast mixes.  Unfortunately, I don't recall many, if any, saisons on Court Square's beer list.  However, a topic that I'd like to discuss on a broader note is Belgian-style yeast strains.  I'm really curious about whose tried what strains and what flavors they've gotten under different conditions.  And I've also tried harvesting yeasts from Belgian beers lately so I'd like to touch on this too.  Does this sound like it would be of interest?  I'd be happy to lead a discussion on this if you want.  I've read Brew Like a Monk after brewing on my own a bunch of different Belgian beers and it really opened my eyes in many ways. I'm an extract brewer so be forewarned that I won't offer much in terms of base grain ingredients, but I'd like the emphasis to be on the yeast choices and contributions anyway.

Hey Spidey -

That is a good idea and it fits in with one of the topics we were thinking about for next Tuesday's meeting (brewing in warmer weather).

Do we have enough who have brewed this style to cover this effectively?  I've done a couple of batches but a little support with this short notice would be helpful.

Brewin Bruen?  Others?

Greg actually has made an excellent saison, so we should definitely try to pry some secrets from him.  I have zero temperature control devices for brewing. The styles that I brew entirely depend on the season.  And to make matters more difficult, I don't have a basement where one might typically achieve that ideal steady mid-60F.  But, nonetheless, I think I've made some decent beers, both lagers and ales, of all different styles. So this is definitely a topic that is of interest to me and I'd be happy to offer my personal experiences if they'd be helpful at all.  See you guys next week!