Venue: The Dove Street In

Date: Saturday 1st March 2025

Attendees: Dave Beaton, Peter Burgess, Dave Caiels, Nick Davis, Guy Gallington, Nick Leigh, Nik Leng, Jim Pettifor, Steve Plampton, Graham Smith, David Spencer and Evie, Tim Stanton, Rich Swindells, Tony Tilbury, Kev Warnes

Meeting Minutes

Q1 Beer Challenge

Kev Warnes presented a 4% pale beer using the same malt bill as last years Beyond The Firs clone beer challenge, using absolutely no water treatment whatsoever, not even a campden tablet to offset possible effects of Chlorine. Jim Pettifor gave us an English IPA made with 100% Chevalier and home grown first Gold hops. Lots of water treatment…AMS, CaCl, CaSO4 with a 2:1 Sulphate to Chloride ratio and 200ppm Calcium. Pete Burgess bought a very young (3 weeks old) Belgian Blonde which used AMS &DWB as water treatment. Pete’s recipe for Double Enghien Blonde originated from Tess & Mark Szamatulski’s book Clone Beers.

All three beers in their own way, especially Kev’s beer with no water treatment whatsoever, demonstrated that, it is perfectly possible to brew good pale beers with extremely hard water without worrying too much about the need for excessive water treatment. Pete’s beer was the pick of the bunch and is only likely to improve with a little bit of aging.

UK National Homebrew Competition Review

ACB fared very well with a number of members picking up medals…Kev Warnes got gold for his Best Bitter, Jon Rollison and Nick Davis silvers for their Baltic Porter and Smoked Dopplebock respectively. Kevin Surridge-Dines recieved a bronze medal for a Barley Wine. Overall, ACB placed second in the club standings, behind the “home club” Bristol Homebrew Collab and sneaking in ahead of Panomaju (once a quick edit to our club name had been done by one of our medallists!!).

Upcoming Competitions

• Lager Than Life – 22/3/25
• Beer Boars West Coast – 21/6/25
• Reading Amateur Brewers Sours in the Sun – 18/7/25

ACB Homebrew Competition

Our competition is planned for Saturday 22nd November, to be once more held at The Briarbank/Isaacs and the theme will be Dark Beers. Tony has confirmed we should not have the same website freezing issues that we experienced in the past, as the website will now be hosted on a better server. We believe that it is likely that there will be a charge for the hire of the room that we use. Action: Jim said that he would follow up with Rob at the Briarbank to get an idea of the potential cost. We agreed that we would charge a £10 entry fee for the competition.

Post Meeting Update: LAB have recently announced that they will not be holding their normal May competition but would possibly look for a date later in the year. To potentially try to avoid them using our “November slot”, I have decided to register our comp on the BJCP website and start getting it publicized so the date is well known around the brewing community.

Maltings Tour

Nick D suggested that it would be an interesting tour to visit a maltings. Due to an already busy calendar this year, this might be something we have to consider for next year. Possible contenders are Bairds, Crisps and French and Jupps (a specialist Crystal and Dark malt suppliers based in Hertfordshire). Action: Nick said he would contact F&J in the first instance, to see if this is something they might offer to a group of interested brewers.

Mauldons Visit

Some pre tasting may or may not have been done in Essex, but it appears they have 3 beers that are close enough to take for judging by the head brewer. The Suffolk guys will be doing a pre-tasting at their monthly meeting the day before the visit. Action: Kev Warnes said he would be sending out a reminder email in the week ahead of the visit.

Post Meeting Update: Due to the potential hazards of drunk’s carrying cartons of acid around on public transport, it was decided that perhaps it was not the best idea to do the Peracetic acid purchase and divvy up during the trip. This is something best done separately…perhaps one person takes delivery of the 25L and then we arrange a distribution in a more controlled, sober environment.

Beer Festivals

Nick mentioned that it might be a good idea if we had a resource where we could list local/regional beer festivals to help us (especially those of us who are retired and have plenty of time on our hands now). Action: Kev Warnes said he would create a page on the website to list known beer festivals and would also include such information via newsletter.

Water Treatment

Nick gave an hour long (sorry) presentation on water treatment, background to why we might want to treat our water, methods of treating water and what his specific personal approach was to the subject. Nobody fell asleep though perhaps Steve Plampton might have yawned a couple of times, but we can probably put that down to age.

Upcoming Events

• Q3 single hop challenge – we will wait until the end of March to see if we get any more interest before dividing up the hops.
• Ipswich Barrell Aging Project – the Ipswich group has got hold of an old Bourbon (?) barrel which is now in residence at Humberdoucy Brewery (Bacton). The plan is for multiple brewers to brew a beer (probably a RIS) and fill the barrel and let it age. Due to volume constraints (i.e. the possibility that our group might not be able to brew enough in one batch to fill the barrel) we opened it up to the wider group and several Essex based members said they’d be happy to contribute. ipswich group will discuss further at their March midweek meeting.
• Long Tail Competition – we are aiming to do the swap at the end of March. Specifically Sunday 30th at Jim Pettifor’s home. I believe that there are still decisions to be made on how bottles are going to be labelled…Dom will no doubt be communicating final instructions in the near future.
• Shed Brewers Festival May 17th – all brewers and beers have been sorted, Guy Gallington is working on some artwork for the event, just waiting on some sign off of image rights and the charity.

A.O.B.

The usual wide array of beers were presented…

• Evie presented a Ginger Bread Stout, the brewday of which did not go entirely to plan, the beer displayed an interesting array of flavours and defintely had ginger bready notes but perhaps needs a little bit of aging to mellow.
• Tim presnted a 3.8% Dunkelweiss which displayed a lot of chocolate notes along with plenty of banana (WHC Banana split yeast was used)
• Guy – Mountain Session IPA at 4% and an ESB at 5.5%
• Graham – Golden/pale Ale 4.7% and a Festbier/Vienna lager at 4.4%
• Jim – Historic London Porter 6.3%
• Dave C – Black IPA 6.0%
• Nick D – Belgian Christmas Stout at 8.2% and a Smoked Dopplebock of 8.0%
• Tony – Double IPA 8.3%
• Rich – Belgian dubbel 8.9%
• Nik L – a dark Portery/Stouty beer of 6.5%

We then retreated to the bar for another couple of pub beers before a few of us headed off to the Spread Eagle.