Author: Lachlan Johnson

Countdown continues

Lachlan Johnson

The count down to the anniversary dinner continues. Here’s another beer and prize drop.

Kieren’s Gose(s)

Kieren doesn’t need much of an introduction. An SABC member since day 1, a previous committee member for both club and ANHC, Brewer Of The Year Winner and the inaugural winner of the The Mike Leupold Award for Champion Brewer of SA. Kieren has brewed them all and won them all. Perhaps that’s why the beers he turns out these days are frequently in ususual colours, may or may not contain glitter, and are just generally a little out there.

Enter the black and white goses. Why is one black? We don’t know. Why is there two? Because two is better then one. What would happen if you mixed them together to make a black and tan? You’ll have to give it a go and find out. We think it’s better to leave a little mystery around this one, because you just can’t anticipate what this guy is going to brew next. .

Prize Prizes Prizes!

Last week I mentioned there would be some HUGE prizes, and its time to let the first one drop. Its a Series X KEGERATOR! Big big thank you goes to Kieren for this as well! He picked it up in a raffle at the recent ANHC Club night, and has kindly donated it to the club to give away. The only way you can get your hands on this is to be there on the night, so click here to purchase a ticket for yourself and guest(s) if you would like to bring one.

Note: 3 tap model shown – the prize is a 2 tap.

Anniversary Dinner Countdown

Lachlan Johnson

There’s 6 weeks to go until the clubs 10 year anniversary dinner on Saturday Dec 10th. Each newsletter between now and then we’ll release information about the great beers we have on the line up for the night as well as the HUGE prizes that will be exclusively available for attendees.

Wolf’s Pils

Anyone who attended the SABC BeerBQ back in 2018 will remember Wolfgang’s sensational German Pils which won best beer by the popular vote of 80 attendees. This stood out as a huge achievement given the popularity of bigger flavour bombs like hazy’s and imperial stouts amongst homebrewers. Wolf has been a stalwart of clean crisp lager brewing since then winning best beer at the 2020 Winter competition with a Dunkles Bock.

Wolf describes his beer for the anniversary dinner as a “German Pils with a Bohemian twist“. He attributes this to the location of his hometown. “Growing up in Germany just 20 km from the Czech border has most likely influenced my flavour“.

This will be the perfect first beer to fill the SABC commemorative glass you will receive on arrival. Yes, it’s a pilsner glass!

Grab your tickets from the SABC shop now!

Actual footage of the line up for Wolf’s Pils at the 2018 BeerBQ

10th Anniversary Tickets

Lachlan Johnson

10th Anniversary tickets

Tickets for the 10th Anniversary dinner are now on sale in the shop. The anniversary dinner is an opportunity to come together and celebrate 10 successful years of the SA Brewing Club. The night will include guest speakers, an awards presentation for AABC winners, a special collaboration beer brewed with the Wheaty, raffles, prizes and more. Tickets include a 3 course buffet dinner and commemorative glass.

Date: Saturday December 10th
Time: Doors Open 5PM. Last Drinks 10PM
Location: Lavtian Hall. 4 Clark St, Wayville

Members are $30 and Guests are $50 (guest tickets can only be purchased by a member)

Head to the shop to secure your ticket!

AABC + ANHC wrap

Lachlan Johnson

Well that was massive few days in Melbourne for the National competition and conference! The traveling party is still recovering so I’ll keep this update short and provide a full report in the near future.

SABC had another great showing at AABC picking up ~10 trophies. (I honestly lost count!) A big congratulations go to Kam Simsek/Mark Woods for winning Champion Brewer/s!

Mark Woods putting the champion brewers trophy straight to work at the awards presentation.

SA did fantastic at an overall state level earning equal points with Victoria, but ultimately coming 2nd on count back. A huge achievement considering Vic had home ground advantage!

SABC also picked up yet another win at club night. This year it was best costume for our outrageous rainbows and unicorns theme. Check out the SABC Facebook group for some amusing photos!

September meeting this week

Lachlan Johnson

We’ve barely taken a breath after SABSOSA, but the September meeting is already upon us. We invite any members who placed in SABSOSA to bring along a sample of their winning entries to the Wheaty on Wednesday so they can share it with their fellow members. (don’t forget you entry for AABC as well!)

Another huge announcement to be made this meeting- no hints, you’ll need to be there to find out.

The team challenge with ingredients sponsored by BeerCo is underway. If you have taken photos/stories from team brew days please share them via the Facebook group. The western suburbs based A team put their brew down Saturday using the unique ingredient of hawthorn berries.

SABSOSA Wrap Up + Special Announcements

Lachlan Johnson

Beers were brewed, bottles were sorted and over 300 entries were judged in this years SABSOSA culminating in the awards presentation at the Wheaty this weekend.

Congratulations go to long time SABSOSA entrant Peter Bradshaw who won best brewer of show, Craig Blessing for best beer with his Rye Smile IPA and Bruce Token for highest score with his English Cider.

SABC members had great representation once again picking up best beer (Craig Blessing), Highly Commended Brewer (Lachlan Johnson) and 35 places out of the 60 available!

Results are now available via the entry portal: https://enter.sabsosa.com.au/. Score sheets will be available when they have all been scanned and uploaded (WIP).

BJ has put together this awesome video of footage taken during the judging weekend. It’s a great way to show your friends and fam what actually goes on at a homebrew competition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRd6FDddUPA

A huge thank you and round of applause for everyone who helped put another great competition together!

AABC Entries + shipping

Everyone who placed in SABSOSA is now ellegable to enter the national competition to be held in Melbourne on October 14th. Head to the AABC portal hosted by Vicbrew to add your entries: https://aabc2022.vicbrew.org/

SABC will once again be providing group shipping. Please bring you entries to the meeting Wednesday 21st at the Wheaty. If you cannot make it then, please reach out to the committee and make arrangements for an alternative drop off by Thursday 22nd. You also ship it directly yourself – details on the entry portal.

Wheaty / SABC / SABSOSA Collab

To celebrate 10 years of SABC, 25 years of SABSOSA and the long running support provided to both by the Wheaty, we’re very excited to announce we will be brewing a collaboration beer to be launched at the SABC Anniversary Dinner on December 10th! SABC and SABSOSA winners will be invited to join the brew day expected to be in October.

SABC took the opportunity at the SABSOSA presentation to thank Jade for all her support over the last 10 years with a gift of two exceptional Bruery beers.

Special thanks to Luke and Sam who pulled this gift together from their personal cellar.

SABSOSA rebrand

The SABSOSA committee has decided to rebrand the annual event with a name that better reflects its position as the top amateur brewing contest in SA. From 2023 the event will be called the Amateur Brewing Championship of South Australia.

SABSOSA and AABC/ANHC

Lachlan Johnson

SABSOSA Reminder

There is just over a month to go before this years SABSOSA competition, so you have time to get a few more brews down. We’ll announce when the entry portal opens in the next week or two. In the mean time you can review this years style guidelines by visiting https://www.sabsosa.com.au/

Australian Amateur Brewing Championship

As always, the top 3 entries in each SABSOSA category will qualify to enter the national competition http://www.aabc.org.au/. This year judging will take place in Melbourne and it will coincide with the national homebrew conference (ANHC). Not only do we benefit from a relatively short journey for our SA entries to travel, the winners will be announced at an in-person awards ceremony. This is the ANHC you want to win at!

Australian National Homebrew Conference

ANHC is back! After skipping 2020 due to covid, the event will return to Melbourne on the 14/15 October. For those unfamiliar, ANHC is a bi-annual conference for homebrewers that sees international guests and expert locals deliver a series of sessions over two days. The conference will culminate in the infamous Club Night where homebrew clubs from around Australia setup themed bars, don ridiculous costumes and pour some of the best homebrew their club has to offer.

SABC has won prizes for best bar/theme two conferences in a row and we want to put on a great showing again! We’ll be calling out for all members attending ANHC to help put on another great night.

For ANHC tickets: https://anhc.com.au/

10th SABC Committee

Lachlan Johnson

At last months annual general meeting members elected the 10th SABC Committee. This means 2022 marks the clubs 10th anniversary! Your new committee is meeting for the first time in early August and one of their top priorities will be organizing a special 10th Anniversary celebration to be held later this year.

EOI for Anniversary brews

The committee would love to hear from anyone who would be interested in helping brew for the 10th Anniversary event. If you have capacity to brew large batches (~40L) and would like to help, please contact us via info@sabrew.com or reach out to a committee member directly.

2022/23 Committee

Office Bearers

  • President: Gary Waters
  • Vice President: Nick McAuley
  • Treasurer: Lachlan Johnson
  • Secretary: Brendon Macey

General Members

  • Clint Fisher (Competitions)
  • Julien Gibson (IT operations)
  • Mark Woods (Socials)
  • Gerard Flynn
  • Russel Saint
  • Luke Beard
  • Nick Hauschild
  • Jason Armfield

Club Christmas event at Shapeshifter Brewing Co.

Lachlan Johnson

Now that the government has given us some indication of when restrictions will be lifted (or not lifted), we’ve decided to keep the Christmas event simple and head to Shapeshifter Brewing Co and see their new home on Crittenden Rd Findon for a Sunday afternoon get together.

  • Date: Sunday 5th December
  • Time: 1 – 6pm
  • Location: Shapeshifter Brew Co. – Unit 2/54 Crittenden Rd, Findon

There will be a food truck on-site for eating and a wide range of head brewer James McCall’s delicious beers.

We’ll still have a regular monthly meeting for our annual pre-Christmas pizza get together at the Wheaty on Wednesday, December 15.

We hope to plan for a summer BBQ + homebrew event in the new year.

Australian Amateur Brewing Competition 2021 results

Congratulations to all the eight SABC brewers that won a medal, including gold in IPA by Craig Blessing, and Greg Weider winning fourth overall. It was judged in Hobart a couple of weeks ago.

The full results are here.

Real Ale Fest update

Lachlan Johnson

Real Ale fest planning is coming along with 6 members volunteering to put down some British ales – thank you to all who have offered.

The venue has now been confirmed as the Hilton RSL –
147 Sir Donald Bradman Dr, Hilton SA 5033.

It’s a great little venue with a very ‘pub’ feel to it. Bring your darts and coins for cheap pool. Their bar will be open for wine or other beer.

Reaffirming the date for your diaries: Saturday June 5th, 6-10PM

Stay tuned for a FaceBook event and registration.

Real Ale Fest – June 5th

Lachlan Johnson

We’re pleased to announce the inaugural SABC Real Ale Fest! It will be on Satuday, June 5. This means the BeerBQ event in the calendar is being replaced with this new event idea.

The theme for this event will be classic British beer styles that have been cask-conditioned and served using traditional methods such as hand-pumps or gravity fed.

Real ale is a tricky beer to have available at home given the unusual equipment, methods and fast staling due to oxygen intake. An event like this is an excellent opportunity for the club to get together and enjoy the cask ale experience.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Events like this can’t happen without member support. We need five members to put there hand up and brew a batch specifically for this event.

The club will cover the cost of the ingredients and we’ll work with you to ensure a diverse range of styles. We can help arrange kegging equipment if you don’t have any.

If you would like to put you hand up to brew please let us know – info@sabrew.com

Real Ale Fest Cask Bar
We still need a dedicated bar due to covid restrictions, but this is a cask bar so we need some specialist equipment. The types of things we need are:
Beer engines
Casks
Cask breathers
Beer bags
Corny kegs with a straight dip tube

If you have anything that you think would help, please reach out – info@sabrew.com

Note: we’ll only be serving the 5 member beers brewed specifically for this event – there won’t be any BYO kegs. We won’t have any ice or co2 for them anyway because.. Real Ale!

Venue
We haven’t settled on a venue just yet. If you know of one that allows BYO alcohol, please reach out.

Event details:

Date: Saturday, June 5th
Venue: TBD
Catering: Food will not be provided at this event, however you will be welcome to BYO or order in.
Homebrew: You’re welcome to bring bottles to share.

To see a video of how corny keg cask work – watch this: https://beerandbrewing.com/using-a-cornelius-keg-for-cask-ale/