Author: Gus K

Hi Brewers,

Our monthly meeting is this Wednesday at The Wheaty, from 7:00 pm. Apart from catching up and trying delicious Wheaty Brewing Corps beers, we’ll focus on pressure fermentors. We’ll explore how to do pressure transfers or bottle from them or kegs to get the best results—perfect timing with Christmas around the corner if you’re thinking of gifting your brews or putting them in the case swap.

Don’t forget to bring along a bottle of homebrew to swap for another in bottle bingo. To encourage more members to participate, we’ll give all the swappers a bottle of the SABC x TAFE collab ESB. Bring one bottle of beer and go home with two!

Looking ahead, our end-of-year event on Sunday, December 15, is shaping up to be a big one. SA Brewing Supplies will host us at their Maria Street store for a Christmas Brew Day and Case Swap. This is your chance to see different brewing systems in action as we put them to the test with “System Wars” – brewing one batch, split across three systems with different chilling methods (immersion, plate, and no-chill). The results will be blind-tasted at our January meeting.

The Case Swap is also on that day: now is the time to brew a batch, bring twelve 750 ml or 24 stubbies, and go home with the same amount of different beers. Think of it as a beer advent calendar! If you want to join, sign up via the Facebook event or check in at Wednesday’s meeting.

To make the day successful, we’ll need a hand with food—BBQ chefs, salad makers, or those who can bring something to share. If the weather’s hot like last year, we might need marquees too. Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated. Let us know at info@sabrew.com or at the meeting.

These events are for club members with up-to-date subscriptions. Renew now if you’ve let yours lapse.

Calendar Dates Summary

• Nov 20: Club meeting, The Wheaty. Bottle and filling from kegs and pressure transfers
• Dec 15: Christmas bottle swap and brew day! Facebook event here.
• Dec 18: End of year drinks and pizzas
• Jan 15: At the Wheaty where we’ll be A/B tasting the brew day beercertain beer.
• Feb 9: Summer Comp – It’s time to start brewing if you’re keen on a Dunkelweisse, Witbier, or Wheat Wine.
• Feb 19: How RO works.
• Mar 19: Brewery visit – TBC

This is a reminder that our monthly meeting is happening this Wednesday at the Wheaty from 7pm.

This month we’ll be interrogating our medal-winning brewers and generally opening up the floor to questions, feedback and ideas about brewing winning beers from ABCSA.

We’ll glean tips and taste some and learn how they crafted their winning entries.

Congratulations to all the SABC brewers who placed: Percy Balls* (7 places and best brewer of show), Mark Lehmann (4), Charles Nzama (5), Lucas Veitch (3), Lachlan Johnson (2), James Edwards (2), Matthew Kennedy (4), Gary Waters (3), Gavin Pennell, John Van Der Zalm, Brendan Macey, Gus Kingston, Darren Williams, Maz Ali, Aaron Young, Russell Saint.

The full winners’ list is here enter.abcsa.org.au

Judges’ score sheets are now available in the portal for downloading as PDFs.

Thank you to everyone who helped judge, steward and administer ABCSA. It went very smoothly and we couldn’t do it without you.

Looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday! Bottles for bottle bingo swapping are encouraged.

New members are welcome to join us.

AABC entry

The Australian Amateur Brewing Championship will be judged in Brisbane on October 26th. To register, visit enter.aabc.org.au and submit your beer(s). If you are interested, SABC will organise a shipment to Qld. Drop your entries with labels affixed to bottles at the September SABC meeting or at SA Brewing Supplies by October 5th. Entries will be shipped on October 8th. Alternatively, you can send your entries directly to the competition. Good luck!

Calendar Dates Summary

• Sept 18: Club meeting, The Wheaty. ‘Best brewers reveal their secrets’
• Oct 16: Club meeting, The Wheaty. ‘Best brewing kit and stuff you don’t need’
• Nov 16: Club meeting, The Wheaty. ‘3V vs Brewzilla system wars, can you tell the difference?’ Beers to taste.
• Dec (date TBC): Christmas bottle swap
• Dec 18: End of year drinks and pizzas

*membership ‘pending’.

This Wednesday’s monthly club meeting, August 21, is at The Suburban Brew at 26-30 Provident Avenue, Glynde (not Goodwood!). The owner and brewer, Tony will give us a tour of this brewhouse and give us the secrets to producing the Royal Adelaide Beer and Cider Awards Gold Medal-winning Sunday Session Ale.

Formally from 7pm but the taps are open before that of course. Parking is available on site or bus 174, 176, or H33 from the city.

Reminder, ABCSA entry is open

The ABCSA Home Brewing Championship for 2024 is open for entry! ENTER NOW and don’t leave it to the last minute.

• Entry Fee: $8 per entry
• Entries close online: Thursday, August 29

If you can judge or steward – get involved! Register your interest in the entry portal or talk to Competitions Director, Gerard at the meeting.

Bring a bottle to swap in the random bottle bingo.

Renew your membership, view the updated calendar on the website and subscribe to your Google Calendar or Outlook 365 and don’t miss an event.

I was pleased to nominate Julien Gibson for SA Brewing Club Life Membership at the AGM last week. It was seconded and passed without opposition. As he was unable to be there, the award will be presented at a meeting in the future.

There’s a theory of clubs and groups that says, for every 100 people in a group, nine will be active and one person will be super-active. Julien Gibson is SABC’s one. He has been a key member of our club since its inception and puts a lot in to make it run well. 

He oversaw the club’s transformation from a group of homebrewers to an incorporated club.

Introduced a modern cashless and online membership system — said to be one of the first brewing clubs to offer it. This reduces the workload for everyone else from the treasure down.

We have a shop to manage and buy club merchandise.

Our website is never down and is an important feature in presenting what the club is to the interested outsider.

He has set up and managed the competition portal for all our club competitions and SABSOSA is also said to be the first in Australia to do so.

He is the club’s public officer to keep us legal and within the associations’ laws.

He’s won many Best Beer of Show awards and places in competitions.

He was a club president and has been on the club committee for all of its existence.

His contribution to the ideas and progress of the club is highly valued.

Another year is done — a year that wasn’t without Covid disruptions but we managed to work around it.
The club finally managed to host its premier event, BeerBQ, in its old format in June. All brewers bring whatever creation they want to share, food cooked and provided by the club and everyone digs in. The new venue at the ETKG Tennis Club was great and my only regret was I couldn’t be there (bloody Covid).

Our alternative events were also well attended and enjoyed — like our British cask beers night at the Hilton Hotel.
In an attempt to work around the restrictions on gatherings, we introduced the team’s brew-off. The first was the supermarket challenge that resulted in some interesting and very drinkable creations.

The second was Brew The Burra — a brewing challenge to replicate Lady Burra beers. Something closer to known styles than the supermarket beers.

While fun, the team events allowed newer members to connect with others often in their local area and in turn strengthened connections within the membership.

Again we successfully ran SABSOSA, won by our own Brendan Macey, and two club competitions.
Throughout the year members had some social catch-ups at local venues including Shapeshifter, Kickback and Brightstar.

All of this including regular monthly meetings couldn’t be organised by a single person and I thank the committee for all their work, even with life’s commitments, serious illness, Covid and weddings.

I won’t be standing again for president this time. I’ve enjoyed it a lot and I feel it’s time to let someone else have a go and new committee members to share their fresh ideas.

I’ll still be a part of the club of course.
Thank you.
Gus

It’s been a big few weeks in beer with our Winter competition and Beer n BBQ on the weekend. We hope you can join us for the regular monthly meeting at the Wheaty on Wednesday from 7pm.

Our AGM meeting special guest is a club founding member, president, brewer and owner of Left Barrel Brewing, Brad Bown. He is also now 2022 Champion Beer of Show brewer with his Bob’s Ya Dunkle judged at the SA Beer Awards last week. He always has a lot to say about brewing and going pro.

We’ll also hold our AGM and to begin the celebration of the club’s 10th anniversary, the club will put on some special treats for everyone attending.

The AGM agenda is here (but will probably be updated on the night), including nominations received so far, and the minutes of the 2021 AGM here. You can still nominate for a committee place now via email or on the night at the meeting. As we wrote before, joining the committee is rewarding, fun and helps steer the best brewing club in Australia in the right direction.

We’ll also be presenting the medals to the winners of the Winter Competition.

Greetings. It’s that time of SABC’s year for two things — the winter competition and its AGM.

Is your SABC membership up to date?

Go to https://sabrew.com/join-sabc/

Check your membership by going here and log in, navigate to My Membership and then Member and Manage to see the expiry date. Alternatively, look at Membership/orders to see the most recent payment.

Tips on joining, renewing or checking here.

The Annual General Meeting for the SA Brewing Club will be held on Wednesday, July 20 at The Wheatsheaf Hotel, George St Thebarton at 7pm.

All financial members of the club are invited to attend. The agenda can be downloaded here. Nominations for all positions can be submitted by email in advance.