July Club Update:
A big thanks to Chuck and Ryan for getting together and getting the club across the threshold of being reimbursed by the AHA for our insurance. If you are an AHA member please check your account to see if you have OTMP listed as a club you are a member of. Login to your account, go to My Account > My profile > AHA Contact Information > Change (on the right hand side). Edit the club you are an active member of to include Olde Town Mash Paddlers. Having members complete this task helps us ensure that we will continue to have free insurance covered by the AHA.
We will have club dues coming up in September. For those of you that are recent additions to the club we will prorate your dues for this coming year. For members that have hosted at least one meeting in the last year, we will forgo collecting your dues and you helped provide a meeting spot. Otherwise in September we will be collecting dues from all other members, $30 for the year.
New glassware is now ordered for all club members. It has been 4 years since we made our initial tasting glass order. In the spirit of keeping things fresh we have designed a new logo for the new tasting glasses, see image below.
Beer Ramblings by Evan:
Summer beers pair well in life with sunshine and celebration. I would like to take a moment to think about beer pairing with food. For myself nothing is quite as fine as a meal with a beer, when the two can dance together it is simply amazing. As brewers, we are all also food scientists, we all also like cooking or at least grilling and pairing our food. I celebrate this as a club and an individual.
If a perfect food truck existed, in my mind, It would be a craft beer and sausage food truck. The salt content of the sausage makes one want to drink more; the protein content can fill you up, but the flavor pairings are so much more complex; it is the yin to the yang of beer, maybe a perfect match. There is also the Bitterness vs. Richness: Beer often exhibits varying levels of bitterness, especially in hop-forward styles. This can contrast with the richness and savory flavors found in sausages, which is what makes the combination a filling experience.
Historically, sausage was a meat for peasants, as it was scrap meat repurposed. Beer, originally, was a beverage designed to quench the thirst of the masses and not have much more appeal other than its basic functionality, a simple vehicle for consumption of alcohol with a good shelf life. Beer and sausage are both designed to be consumed by commoners, they are not nobility goods. Recently, both of these products have had a restructuring where there are higher and lower formats of each, with consumers willing to pay for a premium version of each product. With both of these products having a history dating back over 5,000 years easily all of our ancestors partook in a meal consisting of beer and sausage.
Crafting each of these items lends itself to the master of the craft. The sausage maker can include spices, vegetables, salts, sugars and textures to create an amazing inclusive creation to layer the palate. As does the brewer pull from different malts, hops, and water additions to create a balanced yet pleasant profile for the consumer. The master of both of these crafts is always looking to deliver on making the most out of the raw materials they have on hand.
This summer while camping and relaxing on the patio I am making it a point to pair my two favorite foods; beer and sausage. It is a summertime treat that can't be beat.
Who wants in on some fun?
There comes a moment in your life when you wonder if there is more to a hobby than what you are currently doing. For a homebrewer, this time can come when you are invited to complete a barrel project. Not only is this a long investment with potentially crazy results; it is also an investment of faith in other brewers, in time to complete this process, and an understanding that you do not know what you will receive in the future.
I would like to give a touch of background in Jeff O's background in barrel projects. Forgive my lack of details and foggy memory. Jeff a long time ago in a galaxy far far away had friends and a brother(?) in lakewood. Jeff is a master at formulating a recipe and assembling all the brewers to complete beers on time. We would schedule a date and drop off beers into the barrel. Months would go by and one day Jeff would call with a very excited tone and tell you the beer is ready. Then schedule a bottling date and take home a lion's share of high gravity beers to sit on (I still have beers from 2015 in my basement).
Much later and you would be cooking an amazing meal, then it would hit you. You have some amazing beer that would pair excellently with the meal you are making. Pop the bottle in the fridge and know then when you pull that bottle out that something amazing will be in store for you and your guests. It never failed me; Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, Easter, or even a summer BBQ, popping one of those bottles did something excellent. For beer connoisseurs it was a lovely treat, for loved ones they knew they were sampling your craft, for yourself you were always damn happy that you did such a simple task as a brew day and were only now reaping your long awaited rewards.
If you have an interest in playing a really long game in brewing, I challenge you to get on with this project. This is something that does not cross a homebrewers path often, but will offer you an interesting and rare reward at the end of the path. I am pleased to have both Jeff and Dave willing to put this project together, with the guidance of Jeff we will likely discover and create one of the most rare beers in the known universe.
Meeting Info:
Where: Dave and his Commercial Clubhouse (Westminster)
Location:
9172 Marshall Place, Westminster, CO 80031
Date:
7-19-23
Time:
7:00 – Beer tastings
Notes:
The Club will be christening this soon to be boys clubhouse. Park wherever is close. If carpooling is needed please jump on the discord under #meeting-plans to organize.
RSVP:
Register Beers and RSVP to the meeting here.
June Meeting Recap:
There are three things I love in life; my wife, my son, and hosting beer drinking events at my house. The meeting was amazing. With getting to know our newest member Bob S; thanks for joining the club of misfit toys.
I will wear this as a compliment forever; Jim told me as he was leaving “Evan, now I know why you are club president, you know how to throw one hell of a party”. I really do have a belief in this club and the culture that we develop, we are a homebrewers club and not a social drinking club, we are a club that defines the social aspect of homebrewing. OTMP is the place we come to meet our type of people. As strange as we are; we need the other people in our craft that; know our struggles, understand our type of crazy, and can talk shop on what we experience.
And by the way, those chicken wings were some of the best I have ever made. I can't believe how fast I saw 20lbs of wings disappear.
Attendants: See attached notes in the Google Sheets
Meeting Recap / Beers: