Venue: The Walnut, Stowmarket
Date: 7th March
Attendees: Nick Davis, Dave Beaton, Justin Dean, Graham Smith, Steve Plampton, Kev Warnes, Tony Tilbury, Rich Swindells, Andy Whittaker, Guy Gallington
A few of us stopped off for a hearty breakfast at Osiers café en route to the Walnut, some of us, suffering from an excess of late-night Whisky, had an extra hour in bed and didn’t. On arrival at the Walnut, we were warmly greeted by the landlord in his slippers (OK we were a few minutes early) and we proceeded in boosting his takings for the day with a few pints from across the bar…something we continued to do throughout the afternoon.
A couple of early non-agenda items were raised.
1: Firstly, JD suggested that we might consider moving the April meeting as it was currently scheduled for Easter Weekend which might impact attendance. I’d say the topic was heartily debated but, in reality, the consensus was that the meeting should remain as published and the suggestion rejected quite quickly.
2: Secondly, the landlord pointed out that The Walnut were holding a Spring beer festival over the weekend of Friday 20th to Sunday 22nd March….14 cask ales, food and music. A few of us expressed an interest in going so maybe we might see each other there. This event is actually published on the Colchester Camra website… https://colchestercamra.org.uk/calendar/pubs-festivals/spring-beer-festival-walnut-stowmarket
ACTION: Somebody…can we add this to our website where we list upcoming public beer festivals?
Anyway…on to proper business…
3: A brief review of recent homebrew comps was had and some words of congratulations offered to brewers who had picked up awards at the recent Scottish and UK National events… Kev Surridge-Dines, Nick Davis and Rich Swindells.
ACTION (ND): we need to catch up with Tim Stanton who was previously tasked with building a “roll of honour” of our competition achievements.
4: BJCP training continues, everyone seems to be enjoying it, and a number of brewers are still looking to sit the tasting exam, which may be scheduled for either 11th or 18th July…. just waiting to hear from Ken Bazley of London Amateur Brewers (also the EU BJCP representative) who is organising.
5: On the subject of logo’d t-shirts, ND reported that his local shop was more geared towards providing work wear for businesses and bulk orders. At this point some Stripper music came out over the jukebox and Rich Swindells started doing the Full Monty, thankfully stopping quickly enough to reveal a black t-shirt with the ACB club logo on it. This seemingly has come from a company called Clothes2Order.
ACTION: TT is going to put together a brief summary of our options, and the club will invite members to centrally place an order with “US” which we will then place with the supplier. We are going to keep things simple initially and just look at t-shirts, but if there is future demand for stuff like baseball caps, hoodies etc., then we can consider that at a later date.
6: Brewery Tours – Colin Miller (not present) has already started talking with Batemans (Skegness) for a possible September date. Options being looked at also include possibly a mini-bus and staying over in a caravan and enjoying the Skegness nightlife. More to follow at a later meeting.
Also contact has been made with Colchester Brewery regarding a possible visit there.
ACTION: ongoing with CM
ND has also talked about the possibility of visiting French & Jupp’s maltsters who are based in Ware, Hertfordshire. F&J do public tours or could organize a dedicated tour for us if we had enough numbers. The tour however would be on a weekday, likely in the summer.
ACTION: ND will add an event to gauge interest and possible numbers before going back to F&J to try to firm something up.
7: Self Milling of Grain – ND presented a brief chart showing the significant increase in mash efficiency that he has seen since starting to mill his own grain. The belief is that it is simply the absolute freshness of the milling that is important, rather than any specific crush size being discovered to be optimal. ND has more work to do in analyzing grist crushes and this will be the subject of a wider article in the coming months.
8: The next newsletter is due in April and so far, we have ZERO content to go in it. So, if anyone has taken delivery of any shiny new equipment or gadgets or if you are brewing something new let us know about it…doesn’t have to be a full-blown article…just an outline of ideas/thoughts.
ND will submit a couple of articles on Cold smoking of malt and some Yeast Attenuation analysis that he has done. But the more folk we can get submitting ideas, even just images, the more we can drive our “web-presence” highlighting ourselves to a wider audience when they perhaps search for “homebrew clubs in my area”.
9: Shed Brewers Festival…the team reports that they have secured enough brewers/brews. They just need to think about a “theme” for the event…it was suggested that perhaps the restoration/repair of the Victoria Inn’s roof could be a good idea, given the contribution we made to the fund raising. The organisers might approach GG for some artwork ideas once theme has been agreed.
10: ACB Homebrew Competition – ND expressed an intention to take a rest from organising this year’s event. RS said that he could take up the reins with assistance from TT and KW (and obviously there is a great deal of historical experience that can be called upon…ND, Jim Pettifor, SP to solve problems). The consensus was that we would try to keep to our normal date of around 3rd week in November and keep the entry level around the 120 mark as a maximum. The team just need to identify a venue, likely to be in the Colchester area, and then start building the website.
ACTION: ND said he would contact Harry Kirkham who helped organize the Scottish National, where they used Electronic Scoresheets, to see how they implemented this. It might save a significant time on scanning and uploading.
Somewhere in the middle of all this we did order a selection of pizzas and other food. A pizza consisting of Mozzarella, Gorgonzola, Walnut, Pear and Hot Honey wasn’t on everybody’s preferred style list, but those who tasted it certainly seemed to enjoy the combination of flavours.
Anyway…finally….
11: Any Other Beers
Homebrewed beers brought for our tasting and critique were…
- St. Peters Golden Ale (kit) 4.7% (Andy)
- Dark Mild 3.5% (Guy)
- Brown Ale 3.6% (Dave)
- Irish Red Ale 4.7% (Graham)
- Porter 4.9% (Nik Leng not present)
- Abbott Ale 5.0% (Guy)
- ESB 5.8% (Steve)
- Maple Wood Smoked Porter 6.0% (Nick)
- American Stout 6.8% (Rich)
- NEIPA 7.0% (Guy)
- Belgian Xmas Ale 8.2% (Nick)
As ever, the standard was high.
The meeting wrapped up around 4pm and we continued to enjoy more bar beers until most of us departed around 5pm.