Date: 11th January 2025
Location: The Dove Street Inn Ipswich 12.00pm – 6.00pm (ish)
Present: David Beaton, Pete Burgess, Dave Caiels, Nick Davis, Justin Dean, Guy Gallington, Nik Leng, Colin Miller, James Pettifor, Steve Plampton, Graham Smith, Kev Warnes, Andy Whitaker
Beer Challenge
Once food choices had been made, and initial drinks purchased at the bar, we kicked off, as ever, with our beer challenge. Attendees were invited to present “dark beers” for the appreciation and judging of those present, and we had 9 beers submitted for critique…there were 5 porters of varying heritage, one RIS, one Dark Lager, one Mild and one Chocolate Stout.
The standard was, as is increasingly common these days, very high, with none of the beers exhibiting obvious faults.
The results were unanimous in terms of the top three beers, and in the traditional reverse order (a bit like Miss World but not quite as pretty) the top beers were…
3rd Place: An English Porter brewed by Jim Pettifor
2nd Place: An English Porter brewed by Guy Gallington
1st Place: A Dark Mild brewed by Graham Smith
Congratulations to Graham, whose beer was rich and flavourful, despite being the weakest ABV of all the offerings. Another shout out should go to Pete Burgess, who submitted a Russian Imperial Stout that was a mere three weeks old, which crept into 4th place overall…we will look forward to tasting the same beer later in the year.
A quick break was had at this point for the intake of food and more pub beer.
Competition Entry Guidance
Jim then gave a brief talk about the mechanics of entering homebrew competitions, why you should enter competitions, best practices for submitting your beer, obvious DO’s and DO NOT’s, choosing categories for your beer and a little bit about the mechanics of competitions and what sort of things judges mike look for based on your entry.
Further words of wisdom were provided by Steve Plampton and Nick Davis. Jim’s “primer” document has been published on the website and can be found at…
One of the things that we will try to do is to get Anglian Craft Brewers added to the list of clubs that are contained in the BJCP competition software package…this may save future confusion with members adding their entries under different club names (e.g. simply ACB).
Also, some questions were raised about the limits for shipping entries with doubts as to whether you can ship more than one liter of beer in a box.
I have had a look at the Royal Mail website, and it gives the following guidance for Alcoholic beverages and liquids containing 24% alcohol by volume (ABV) or less (including beer, lager, wine and champagne)
UK & International – Allowed in the mail, with restrictions and packaging guidelines below:
- Volume should not exceed 1 liter per item.
- No more than two items in any one parcel.
- Wrap in polythene and seal with tape.
- Surround with absorbent material such as newspaper and sufficient cushioning material to protect each item from breakage.
- Mark as ‘FRAGILE’ when sending glass bottles.
- The sender’s name and return address must be clearly visible on the outer packaging.
- Additional general advice: Place in a suitable rigid outer container.
This guidance would seem, on the face of it, to restrict you to sending just two bottles (items) in your package, but how well this is, or can be, enforced, is not obvious.
Interestingly, Parcel Force describe no such restriction in terms of quantity on their website and I personally have never had issues when sending multiple bottles using Parcel Force.
Future Beer Challenges
Ahead of the meeting there was a little bit of conversation and a degree of confusion as to what the four beer challenges for this year are going to be…with some attendees having different recollections from what was minuted from the AGM. After some noisy debate a line was firmly drawn, and the decision was made that the 4 challenges will be…
Q1(Jan, Feb, Mar) – The Mauldons Black Adder clone (this ties in with our proposed visit on 20th March)
Q2 (Apr, May, Jun) – Single Hop beer*
Q3 (Jul, Aug, Sep) – Belgian Style beers
Q4 (Oct, Nov, Dec) – Winter Beers (aligning with our own ACB Homebrew “Dark Beer” competition)
*Regarding the single hop beer challenge, Colin Miller has agreed to contact Charles Faram, and possibly one other hop supplier, to see if they can provide us with a 5kg block/bag of a new, possibly experimental, hop variety, for us to use in this challenge. There may then be the possibility that we could either send examples of the brewed beers off to the hop suppliers or perhaps, for a representative of the company to join us at one of our meetings, to sample the beers that have been brewed.
Mauldons Beer Challenge/Brewery Visit
Kev Warnes brought in a couple of bottles of Black Adder for us to taste whilst we discussed the visit and the brewing of the beer. The recipe should have already been distributed around those who have registered their interest in attending the brewery visit.
The visit has been confirmed for the evening of Thursday 20th March and will commence at 5.30pm. Currently 17 people have registered so far (though a couple of voices from the far corner of the room may have said they were now unable to go) against a notional limit of 20…so there are space places available, if anyone wishes to join us.
We will determine at a later date whether we have a round of “pre-judging” of the beers brewed (or whether we simply take everything that is brewed, along for the head brewer to judge). A show of hands at the meeting seemed to indicate from those present that 6 people planned to have a go at brewing the Black Adder clone, obviously this may rise (or fall) which will determine if there is a need for pre-judging. My scrawled notes indicate that Kev is going to contact all attendees via email, asking if they plan to brew.
If prejudging is required, then it can be done at any of the local mid-week meetings level or at one of the two Saturday meetings.
Travel to the brewery is largely down to individuals to sort for themselves. The local train station is approximately 2 miles from the brewery.
Peracetic Acid
In a separate discussion, which is not part of the tour/visit that Kev is managing, it transpired that Mauldon’s are the distributor for Murphy’s products and several folk have expressed an interest in obtaining some Peracetic Acid – an industry standard cleaner/sanitizer used by many breweries.
Kev will provide Colin Miller with his contact at Mauldons, and Colin will look to organize the obtaining of said acid. I believe it comes in 25L, and the intention is to split between interested parties.
Future Presentations
In an effort to generate future “content” for meetings a number of ideas for presentations or activities were put forward for possible inclusion. These included…
1: February – A repeat of the sensory tour proved previously by Alan Osbiston at his place of work. I understand that Alan is due to retire in March, so this is something that needs to happen sooner rather than later. Jim will contact Alan to discuss this.
2: March – Nick Davis has agreed to do a water treatment presentation, describing what he specifically does when preparing water for brewing.
3: April – A Kegging Master class, which could possibly be presented by Rich Swindells and or Tony Tilbury.
T-Shirts/Club Logo
There has been much discussion regarding the need/value of updating the club logo, with the possibility of having “branded” merchandise made available. Guy Gallington previously had submitted a number of designs for consideration with varying levels of support.
This has however dragged on somewhat, with no conclusions reached, so it has been decided that there will be a binary poll asking all ACB members if they wish to retain the existing logo, or adopt a new logo which will be the basic “Saxon helmet/hops design” that has previously been circulated. We will not be voting on a number of different designs.
Jim will send out an email to all ACB members to allow them to cast their vote. A simple majority will determine the outcome.
Finally, we wrapped up the discussions and got back down to drinking more beer in our traditional closing Any Other Beers agenda item.
A.O.B.
A further nine beers were presented…
- 4.2% Landlord 999 bitter from Steve Plampton
- 3.0% Table beer from Dave Caiels
- 3.5% Bitter from Guy Gallington
- 4.7% Weissbier from Jim Pettifor
- 6.1% Mixed style Farmhouse beer from Nick Davis
- 6.6% Cider from David Beaton
- 9.4% American Chocolate Stout from Pete Burgess
In addition to the challenge beers and the AOB beers, a number of beers from the bar were also consumed throughout the day.
- Hop Back Summer Lightning
- Nightjar Brewing Company Cosmonaut (Oatmeal/Milk Irish Stout)
- Oakham Jeffrey Hudson Bitter
- Woodforde’s Wherry
- Mauldon’s Silver Adder
- Fuller’s London Pride
- Dove Street Brewery Gold (Bitter/Golden Ale)
- Adnams Southwold Bitter
Finally, a few of us decamped to the Spread Eagle where we sampled a number of beers including ThreeOneSix, Red Nelson and Blackwood Stout