SSBC Newsletter

Past Newsletters

February 2009

Meeting Minutes - 2.10.09

16 Members attended.

Business:

• South Shore BrewOff Update - we're in good shape for the BrewOff. Mark Irwin updated the web site for judge/steward signup and entries. Homebrew shops have been contacted to be drop-off sites. We need to get Roger to update the club home page with the correct year for the Brewoff (2009) and link to the new entry pack. Do we have a Prize Coordinator? Steve G. offerred. It was also discused to get the word out on any brewing blogs/communities that people frequent.
• Mead Free or Die - a mead-only competition on April 25th in NH. Grand prize for the homebrew club of the year is a 55 gallon barrel of honey.
• Boston Wort Processor's Boston Homebrew Competition is on Feb 28th. Entry deadline is Feb. 14th.
• Yeast Experiment = Coastal Extreme trip failed due to a horribly stuck mash. So we'll need to brew our own for this experiment. We'll use the recipe Jason suggested to accomodate both all-grain and extract brewers. The May meeting will be the presentation, so bring your beer to that meeting. Let Jason know what yeast strain you'd like to use if you want to participate.
• Scotch Night report out - there were 11-12 scotches, it was a good time with good food. The party went until 2:30 that night, not bad for a night where everyone is drinking scotch!
• Extreme Beer Fest is next weekend, Feb. 20-21.
• Pub Crawl - is there interest in a pub crawl? Brendan will try to get this rolling. We may be able to use club money to get (or help with) a bus for this, based on cost and number of participants.
• Web Site - Matt Menard looked into geting hosting and using free tools to handle stuff for our web site. This is in an effort to stop relying on Roger, Mark and other members for different parts of our web content - to centralize it, in other words. We voted to move forward with this.
• March meeting - Dunkel presentation and competition will be held at Frank White's in Middleboro on March 10th.
• April meeting - Growing Hops, and the impact of beer glass on beer flavor. Mary Anne offerred to do the hops presentation. I think Jim Blanchette offerred to do the glass impact presentation. It will be best if everyone can bring glasses of certain types (to be identified), since it will be hard to pass around glasses for everyone to try. Location will be announced at a later time.
• NHC Conference - the NHC is in June. If anyone is interested in going let Kevin Farrell know.
• Raffle - a small raffle will be held after the presentation.

Presentation:

Mashing - by Brian K.

Brian explained mashing and covered various topics.

Mashing is the process of converting starches into sugars to make wort. It's really an extension of the malting process, which creates and readies the enzymes needed for mashing.

Mashing Options:

Single-Infusion Mash: a mash with a single temperature rest. This is perfectly fine for most highly-modified malts available today.

Multi-Infusion Mash: a mash that uses multiple temperature rests using hot water infusions to raise temperature. This allows the brewer to affect characteristics of the finished beer beyond just the gravity.

Decoction Mash: a mash that has multiple teperature rests, but reaches those tempratures by removing a think portion of the mash, boiling it and adding it back to the main mash to raise the temperature. The need for this is debated, but some claim that decoctions provide a maltiness that is not attainable in any other way.

Sparging:

Sparging is rinsing the grains to collect all of the sweet wort. The club discussed fly sparging (adding water as you draw off wort) vs. batch sparging (draw off all wort, then add water and repeat). There are different trains of thought on which is best.

Enzyne Temperature Ranges:

Different temperature rests are used in mashing to affect the resulting wort in different ways. Different temperatures can break down proteins and/or beta-glucans, and can create a more- or less- fermentable wort. (I did'nt capture the temp ranges, but they can be found in just about any how-to homebrewing book, or on-line).

If there are any updates or corrections, please contact Rick Rodriguez