Anglian Craft Brewers Suffolk November Meeting
Date: 1st November 2025
Venue: The Arbor House, Ipswich
Attendees: David Beaton, Steve Bennet, Pete Burgess, Nick Davis, Guy Gallington, Jim Pettifor, Tim Stanton, Tony Tilbury, Kev Warnes.
We all pitched up at the Arbor House around 12 or shortly thereafter and after grabbing a beer or two from the bar, and sorting out our food orders, we decamped up the narrow staircase to the nice large room where we had a table reserved.
Other tables were reserved for another group who arrived in dribs and drabs over the next hour. We thought that perhaps we might have to mind our language given the majority of the other group were ladies but honestly, the volume that emanated from the other side of the room threatened to drown us out.
The other group were also surprisingly responsible for the first “beer throwing” incident as one lady managed to knock a large glass of something all over one of the others. Luckily us seasoned brewers, used to gushers and the like, were well prepared and gave them a couple of tea towels to mop up the mess.
1: Q4 Yeast Challenge
We had a couple of submissions for the yeast challenge, brewing a beer with Harveys yeast.
The first was a 4.2% Harveys Sussex Best clone from Jim and it displayed the light Belgian flavours associated with the yeast, perhaps the phenolics were a little bit overpowering but there was a nice parting bitterness.
The other submission was from Guy – a 3.9% “Pseudo Sussex” which displayed slightly more restraint in terms of the Belgian characteristics but lacked the finishing bitterness.
Interestingly Guy’s beer was fermented at 17C whilst Jim’s yeast got to work at 23C.
2: Wet Hop Beer
Kev brought a 3.5% Green Hop and Elderflower beer brewed with a wild hop grown up from a cutting from his dads garden. A very pale beer despite there being 1% of brown malt in the recipe. A pleasant refreshing beer which was quite dry and sharp without descending into astringency.
3: Competition Update
Nick provided an update as to the latest status of the competition…
- 121 paid for entries
- 17 judges registered (hoping to grab a couple more)
- 11 tables of 7-13 entries plus 1 table of 19
- Just over £1,000 in entry fees taken
- A brief audit of payments seems to indicate that a small handful of brewers have paid twice, possibly three times, for their entries. A full audit will be completed once the comp is over and excess monies refunded where possible
- We will try to recruit a couple more judges from the BJCP training group
- Have a decent level of prizes from Inkbird, MaltMiller, CrossMyLoof, Crisps, French and Jupps and Charles Faram. Nick will use some of the funds from the comp to purchase a selection of hops to flesh some of the prizes out a bit
- Shipping window for entries is now open
- Jim agreed to see if he could contact Grainfather who sponsored us last year but have not even acknowledged any requests for sponsorship this time round.
4: Miscellaneous Items
Pete asked those of us who use All-In-One style systems how we went about whirlpooling. Several folks simply gave their beer a good stir with a big spoon whilst others cited the use of various attachments that would sit in the recirculation path and force the wort into a natural whirlpool.
Nick asked Tony if the club website can be updated in early December with the 2026 calendar/meeting schedule, highlighting the various upcoming challenges so that club members would be well aware, before the turn of the year, what they needed to be planning…especially in respect of our first challenge to clone Abbot Ale using Gerard Galvin’s recipe.
Tim enquired as to whether we had a Roll of Honour on the club website, documenting our successes in Local and National homebrew comps. Tim agreed to go away and browse the old competition sites where available and compile a list as best he could. Those of us with our own records would forward them on to Tim to make it as comprehensive as possible
5: Any Other Beers
Where most meetings wind up with AOB this is the point at which our meetings usually get into their stride. 14 beers were sampled as part of AOB…
- Nicks 5.6% German Helles Exportbier
- Kev’s 4.7% Death of a Cowboy American Pale Ale
- Tim’s 3.7% Ordinary Bitter
- Guy’s 4.7% Death of a Cowboy APA
- Nicks 5.0% Smoked Rye Ale
- Jim’s 5% Cherry Lambic
- Tony’s 6.2% Bretted Saison
- Tim’s Raw Wheat beer…an unboiled beer consisting of 50/50 Lager and Wheat malt.
- Jim’s 5.7% Bretted English IPA
- Tony’s 6.3% Black IPA
- Nick’s 7.7% Weizenbock
- Pete’s 7.6% Orval Clone
- Steve’s 8% ish Tally Ho clone with extra spices (Clove, Cinnamon, Vanilla)
- Finally we finished off with a commercial 8% Grain D’Orge tradition Biere de Garde
We then finished off with another beer from the bar downstairs before heading off into our various sunsets. In Jim’s and my case, that meant a quick visit to the Arcade Street Tavern for a couple of Westmalle’s. Once Jim departed, I headed off for a bite to eat that also included a couple of bottles of Tiger!!
Nick