The Crown of the Valley Brewing Society had their March Madness meeting at our place in Arcadia.  This was the first time we had the privilege to host the meeting and I would definitely do it again.  Jim Carey came to check out all the craziness and I am sure he enjoyed himself too.  My son Joel was a fixture at the tapper along with many of the others.  All the work was definitely worth it.

The schedule for brewing before the meeting was pretty intense.  In the month of December I was able to do 4 brew days to get ready for the coming meeting.  The Schwartz beir and the Dortmunder Export took the longest time while the West Coast Red and Ordinary Bitter were quicker on the fermentor.  I used the yeast from the English Ordinary Bitter to brew up an ESB and an English IPA.  The ESB I think was fairly good.

What follows are the meeting minutes:

Once again members of the Crown came out in force for our March meeting. Another first time host, another outstanding meeting. David, thanks for opening up your beautiful home for us; you couldn’t have ordered up better weather. The beers, peanuts, cheese & cracker platter and lunch were outstanding. All the stainless in your garage gave me metal envy, but you are definitely putting it to good use! It would be awesome to use that system of yours for a huge club brew someday…someday…

We had a couple first timers join us on Sunday: Tom and Gary. Thanks for coming out and seeing what the club is all about. Keep your eye on the forum for future meeting and events and hope we see you guys again. Also David’s son joined us; not a brewer but an appreciate of beer all the same. Thanks for joining us Joel!

In attendance, and the beers they brought, were:
David (on tap): Dortmunder, ESB, Schwartzbier. I think Sven received samples of some of his other beers..must be good to be the king. 
Herb - Belgian Triple
Todd – Imperial Wit, Craftsman Honesty, Craftsman Sour Lavender, SN Hoptimum
Brian – Imperial Wit, American Wheat (brewed by Phil Schafer)
Jim - Coffee Brown, Surly Furious
Jay – Smoked Chipotle Porter
Jimmy James – American Strong Ale (plus others I think…sorry JJ)
Roger M – Imperial Wit Bourbon Barrel Strong
Paul – German Pils, Maibock, Red Ale, Scotch Ale, Barleywine on Oak
Wally Saison
Steve Scott Helles
Sven
Brendan
Daniel
Tom new guy
Gary new guy

I think what we did a little bit more on Sunday than other meeting is to give the guy opening the beer the floor so he can tell us about what we are drinking and how it was brewed and give us a chance to ask questions about it. Sometime we get away from the feedback aspect of these beers, but from what I gather, many feel it is one of the most important parts of homebrewing. Anyway, it was good to see us doing this, and I think some good critiques were given.

Topics discussed:

Tresury Report by Herb
$1200+ in club funds.
Last month we were thinking that we should save as much of this as possible for when we win homebrew club of the year…this month we are spending it all on shirts, hats and glasses…more on that later…

Crown Barrel Project IV – da Wit
This month we sampled 3 Imperial Wits that were brewed for the barrel project. The concensus was that although all three were solid beers on their own, the barrel blending of this just might work! I for one am anxious to see how this barrel beer turns out. Brendan is still on schedule to pick up the barrel next weekend. If you haven’t already, please get with Herb and schedule when you can drop off your beer to him. I am sure he will post more on arranging drop offs later.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HOMEBREW FESTIVAL
Discussions of the Fest were focused on the serving box or boxes that will we bring. As you know the 16 tap club box will be there, and Todd will also be bringing his 12 tap rig. In addition, Todd will be bringing a hand pump to serve one of our English ale on. The booth configuration that was discussed was an “L” shape: main box in front with the hand pump and 12 taps to the right. Also, I believe we are thinking about brings 3 glass washers. In the past these have been as popular as our beers…and you know how popular our beers are!
Also, fees for Fest camping were discussed, and we are trying to determine an easy way for us to know how much this is going to cost eash member. I think once we determine number of people are camping/driving/carpooling we can make a better more informed decision. Just know, camping will cost you some duckets.

National Homebew Conference
Theme: Just good beer
In discussing the history of events the club has been to, it seems that we tend to shy away from gimmicks and novelty schtick and just focus on bringing good beer. Not one or two good beers and some filler beers, but every tap be an outstanding beer on it’s own. Every tap. This is how we roll. Put on your game face for this one boys, it’s going to be a hell of a ride!
NHC 1st Round Competition There are 750 maximum entries being allowed for the region we are in, south west. At the meeting, there were 501 entried already submitted. We are working towards walking away with the Gambrinus Cup. If you have beers to enter, please enter soon. You do not need to declare the beer yet, just register that you will have the beer, pay for the entry and fill in the specifics later (per Sven…I have no idea if it’s true).
Who is brewing for NHC? What are you bringing? Thread coming…

Hats and Glassware
Wally took the bulls by the balls on this one and put together orders for both of these. I am sure you have seen the forum posts on these. These should both be ready for the next meeting.

Internet…the wave of the future
Just a friendly reminder that anything posted in our forum, excluding posts in the Member Only section, is out there on the web and available for searches via your favorite search engine and/or social media site. And apparently, it is being searched. Let’s just keep it fo realz dog!

Thanks again to David for hosting a great meeting.

Next month: Herb’s pad. See you there!

Head is always nice to have don’t you think.  Recently I have been learning to use the counter pressure bottle filler for compititon submissions.  The first attemp was to bottle up a friends lager that she was going to submit to an SCA advent.  I was glad to help so I tried out the counter pressure bottle filler for the first time two weeks ago.  The problem was the keg that she brought over to take some bottles from was not carbonated very well.  The result was NO HEAD.  Other than that I think the bottling and her submision went well.

Here is the Dorkmunder I kegged up at the begining of December and is properly carbonated now under 15 lb. of CO2 pressure in the keggerator for the past two weeks.  Now that is what I call Good Head!

This afternoon is the Crown of the Valley Brewing Society monthly meeting.  After I sanitize the counter pressure bottle filler thingy I will bottle up a few of these beaties to take to the meeting.  There I will get a full evaluation of the wonderful style – Dortmunder Export.

Here is the recipe that I used from Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff

1) just add some malt and hops ferment at cold temps and bingo beer

The Crown of the Valley  Brew Club has this great guy in the group named Herb.  He is really a legend around here.  He came up with this idea for a Mash Tun dump that looks pretty cool.

Here is a video of the set up:

Recently I switched to kegging my beer.  Bottling is really a lot of work for those that do not know about these things. Having to bottle up 10 gal of beer not only takes a bit of time but the results are not consistant in my experience.  I bottled up 5 gal of a Belgian Dark Strong that I brewed and after 2 months of sitting at room temperature it still has not carbonated. The high gravity of the beer must have wiped out the yeast and now there is nothing left to create the carbonation.  Now that really sucks.  Oh the joys of bottling.

The Belgian Dark Strong at 9% tastes great but no carbonation.  It will be a great beer for cooking right?  What I could have done is to re-pitch some White Labs 001 yeast at bottling time but its too late now.  Kegging solves these problems in an elegant way and makes for more consistency both for storage cold and carbonation.  So what to do if I want a few bottles for a friendly dinner party or competition?  The answer comes from Jon Plise from More Beer.

What follows is a short video featuring Jon Plise’s demonstration of the counter pressure bottle filler.

I will give an update next week when I try the counter-pressure bottle filler out on a Dortmunder Export that I brewed up 8 weeks ago that is now lagering in the refrigerator for the past month.

I have been brewing every Sunday for the past two months but today its not going to happen.  The rain is just to heavy for any outside activity.  The Easy Up would not hold up to the challenge of such a down pour today.  No worries, I will do a little organizing of the brew house and catch up on some reading.  Maybe do a little work fixing up the blogs too.

Here is an Avatar that I have tried to use in some of the forums:

DG at Work

There you have it for now.

Right now is the major brew season because of the cool weather and ideal fermenting conditions.

What follows are two short examples of fermenting beer with ambient room temperatures in the low 60s to keep the fermenting ales acceptable fermenting temperatures.  The target is 67 to 70 degrees warming up as the fermentation takes place and finishing out using a space heater in the spare bathroom to keep the temperature from dropping in the fermenting carboys.  Take a look.