Here we go again…

Despite the pandemic, goddamit we will have a regular meeting next Wednesday at The Wheaty from 7pm.

After seeking you opinions in a poll, we know many are hesitant about meeting and are waiting for booster shots to soak in so we’ll keep it simple. Catch up with brewing buddies and bring a beer if you’d like to have it assessed. We thought about cancelling but we also don’t want to let down The Wheaty who are also doing it tough.

If anyone wants to present either a beer or a topic, drop us a line. We’re into it.

Be aware, the Wheaty will have capacity limits and restrictions we must follow.

It’s likely we’ll also do an Australia Day Zoom meeting. Stay tuned for that.

Summer competition update.

We know you are as disappointed as we are that the summer comp has been postponed. We would like this to go ahead and we propose provisional judging on the weekend of 19-20th February. We may need to extend this to the following weekend in sessions to minimise exposure numbers for gathering etc.

We know a lot of people will want to avoid larger gatherings and keep a low profile but to run it we do need help from the community with a suggestion for venue. Preferably outdoors and undercover (at least spacious), close to facilities and central. It’s likely bottles will need to be dropped on the day and maybe at the meeting in the week prior.

We also hope to be able to offer the best beer to be pro-brewed and served at the winter Beer n BBQ (if that happens).

Can you also indicate in an email or vote/ comments on the Facebook poll if you would consider judging or stewarding?

Summer competition 2022 and November meeting

The club’s 2022 summer competition will be a banger, trust us. The only styles being judged will be: 

  • Hop forward beers (IPA, pale ales etc)
  • Dark/Stout
  • Sours

You can make anything you like in these BJCP styles below.

Tip: your beer must be able to be rebrewed, all-grain and able to be replicated and consumed within three months. Ideally not super high abv or aged. We strongly encourage you to keep detailed notes on your recipe, process and brew day. You may want to go all out to win this one. There will be limits on entries per brewer and an overall cap on entries.

Open to financial club members who are amateur brewers. 

  • Dates: Entries close: Sunday 16th January 2022
  • Drop off and portal opening details TBA
  • Judging: Saturday 22nd January 2022
  • Winners announced: Sunday 23rd January 20223 categories will be judged, with a winner announced in each of the three following categories:

Hop-Forward beers:

Dark beers:

Sour beers:

SABC Summer competition 2022 Conditions: 

1. Entries must be All-grain, with exception of adjuncts, special ingredients. All special ingredients must be listed on entry.2. One bottle per entry as per the description of acceptable bottle type and volume set out in general club competition rules.3. Maximum of one entry per major category, 3 entries in total per brewer.4. Brewers must be able to provide detailed brewing notes to reproduce winning beers. 

General club competition rules: South Australian Brewing Club (“SABC”) General Competition Rules for all club competitions:

1. Disputes concerning any competition run by the SABC will be determined by the SABC in its sole and absolute discretion.2. Any dispute should be addressed to the Competitions Director and SABC committee.3. To be eligible for any prizes, an entrant must be a current financial member to enter.4. Bottle sizes: Only glass or plastic bottles or cans larger than or equal to 500ml and no greater than 1000ml will be accepted. 700ml bottles are preferred. 330ml stubby bottles or cans will not be accepted.5. Prior to the judging of entries, the Competitions Director may declare prizes available to any and all entrants.6. Prizes offered as are and cannot be exchanged for cash or same financial value.7. The Competitions Director may vary the rules applicable to any competition by declaring the variations prior to the commencement of judging.8. Entrants must declare any conflict of interest before taking part in the administration or judging of a competition.9. SABC reserves the right to cancel, postpone or modify the competition.10. All entries must be handcrafted products, containing ingredients available to the general public, and made using private equipment by hobbyist brewers.11. The competition director reserves the right to combine styles for judging and to restructure awards as needed depending upon the quantity and quality of entries received.12. All participants in a SABC Competition shall act in good faith at all times

October club meeting

The next club meeting will be a member’s beer assessment meeting. Bring a long neck or at least 750mls of your beer and we’ll allocate it to groups for blind assessment. Don’t mark the bottle with what it is, let them guess. We’ve done it before and it’s good fun and you’ll receive sound feedback too.

Bring another bottle for bottle bingo too.

Other things

We’re planing a club barrel project. Stay tuned for that one. We’ll let you know what’s happening soon.

The Christmas event is being worked out. It’ll involve your beer in groups/teams.

We’re back

With the easing of restrictions we are now able to meet at The Wheaty again but with some limits. Our capacity in the shed is 45 and we need to spread out. Please be considerate of this next Wednesday at our meeting.

The first order of business is our AGM that we are required to hold. It doesn’t take long. All financial members are invited to nominate for officeholders and committee positions and vote. If you want to play a part in the generating ideas for the club, steering it or just helping in any way, please nominate by email to info@sabrew.com.au or on the night. It’s not onerous and we do have fun meetings involving dinner, beers and thinking about ideas for SABC.

The notification and agenda here.

Following the AGM, and with the permission of the American Homebrewers Association, we’ll be screening a replay from the recent HomebrewCon Online virtual conference. The session we’ll watch is:

Making Sense of Terpenes, Thiols, and Biotransformation in the Quest for Unique Hop Expression.

Brewing modern, hop-forward beer styles requires us to look beyond alpha acids and focus on hop oils, their constituents, and how addition timing and fermentation processes affect hop aroma. Centred around the latest hops research, we will examine several families of hop compounds and their contributions to bitterness, flavour, and aroma. We will discuss brewing conditions and hop addition timing to optimize hop oil extraction, biotransformation, and aroma expression.

These sessions are currently only available to attendees of the recent online event, however in 2021 all sessions will be available to AHA members so it’s well worth joining. For more information check out there website: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/

If you’ve got a beer you want to share and talk about or a presentation on a topic, let us know for now and the future.

Everyone else, please bring a beer or two to swap in bottle bingo.

Winter comp

Our winter competition is being judged this weekend. The portal is open now to enter your beer. We are now able to offer BeerBelly as a drop off location as well as 12 midday on Saturday at the Irish Club. Judging is Sunday. If you want to offer to judge or steward, you need to nominate in the competition portal. It’s not really clear how to do this. You need to edit your profile to make the changes.

Everything you need to know on the competitions page.

BeerBQ

Reminder to block out August 1 in your diary for BeerBQ. It’s free for members as usual and bookings will open soon. We are limited to 60 so again, be aware and it might be non-members and partners won’t be able to come. Stay tuned.

Kveik — Aha, it’s just Norwegian for yeast

How good is brewing beer? Even better with friends. Fifteen or so SABC members and a few onlookers shared a great day brewing at Left Barrel Brewing, Balhannah on Saturday. We brewed 280L of American Amber with CTZ and Chinook that came out at 1.066 / 56IBUs. All the brewers took home 20L to ferment as they want. We’ll taste the results of their cold-side decisions at our December/ Christmas meeting.

Thanks as always to Brad at Left Barrel for hosting us again. 

This week is our regular monthly meeting at the Wheaty. The main theme of the night is kveik — the new-old rockstar Norwegian farmhouse yeast that’s spinning heads with its clean fermentation profile at high temperatures. Clinton has brewed a beer for us using White Lab’s commercial strain and, along with SABC’s own Professor of Kveik, Mark Pirate, they’ll present the background of the yeast, pros and cons and experiences using it.

Could this be a go-to Adelaide summer yeast? Get your questions ready to hit ’em with. We’ve also got a beer from Kieren (always a wild ride) and other stuff going on.

Don’t forget to bring a bottle for ‘beer bingo’. It’s hard to share a beer with all members so bring one or two to swap. Put your name on it if you’d like some feedback.

Do you have an idea for a club night theme, topic or want to put on a presentation around a style or comparison experiment? Let us know. We can help line things up or supply some ingredients.

In other club upcoming news and events, we’re working on an event for the end of the year. News to come.

Also (but TBC), next month we’ll probably do another off flavours education tasting session (always happy to have a dud beer donated for examination – don’t be shy) and December will be pizzas and the Left Barrel amber ales.

Summer competition

As you’d know the theme is all things Belgian. We’ll be judging on a weekend in mid-late February. So heads up, you might want to get brewing now and also be aware that sometimes the ingredient you need could be hard to get in January. It’s a good opportunity to brew something you might not usually tackle and put you out of your comfort zones.

Also, the Uraidla Show is on November 3 and is back to judging beer and wine. Entry details here [PDF] 

Membership renewals and joining are online on our website.

Keep up to date with happenings and social posts on our Facebook Group for members

SAB at Left Barrel Brewing

President’s report, 2019

Earlier in 2019 the SABC conducted a questionnaire to find out what the membership enjoyed, wanted to do more of, see less of and the direction we should go in. The feedback we got was very positive. With that comes the hard part — how do we keep going offering the same meetings, activities, projects, events and get-togethers that our membership enjoyed?

It’s difficult for a club with a paid subscription to attract new members and maintain existing members with the pressures of life. There are also many avenues on social media to ask questions and get answers on how to brew better beer or overcome any challenges brewers face.

Forums and social media can quickly generate answers to a wide range of questions any homebrewer needs. Likes on a photo of a brewer’s ‘perfect’ creation can rack up but you can’t taste photos, friends and fellow brewers can’t smell the aroma from a picture. They can’t help with recipe design and other flaws.

It’s hard to get adults to join a club but everyone who has joined us recently has been pleasantly surprised by what they discover and the friendship we offer. This year we grew by around 25 members (that’s also 25 per cent) and now sit precariously on the verge of 100 members.

Our main focus is on how our members can benefit from what we do. Our special events are subsidised, the prizes for our competitions are for members to win, now our Facebook group is by-and-large for paying members and the unique opportunities like brew days are open only to our members to take part.

The most important thing we ask whenever the committee plans events is how much benefit does it offer our members and can we offer it for no extra money.

This year’s calendar has been choc-a-block and I did some back of an envelope calculation and estimated that if anyone came to at least half of the year’s regular meetings, attended a few of our special events, took up any of the special offers and benefits that come our way and maybe won a raffle, they’d have value that easily exceeds the $60 membership fee.

This year our meetings some great special guests. Many of you told me they enjoyed Stephen Nelsen from TAFE but we also had Gabi from Gladfield and Dermott from BeerCo. We went to the German Club, Little Bang and Pirate Life’s new digs and a tour of Southern Vales breweries.

Other highlights were presentations by members on water, lagers and kegging.

BeerBQ was again a highlight for the year – not only for Keiren’s green glitter beer but everyone else’s beers, the food was again on point and it was free for members again.

A brew club should brew beer and this year we were grateful that Brad at Left Barrel helped a group of members brew a pro-size batch of beer for them to all takeaway and make their own fermentation decisions. The rest of us got to try the results.

Brewing at Glen’s house was another great day of making beer and friendship and great pizza.

We’ll be doing both of these again soon.

We also kicked big competition goals. John Van de Zalm won SABSOSA’s Best of Show. Keiren Vercoe and Greg Weider shared silver at the Aust. National Homebrew Competition and SA best overall state.

The ‘Nats’ were held alongside the Nat. Homebrew Conference in Melbourne and a sizeable number of SABC-ers attended. Our beers were head and shoulders above other bigger clubs at the social club night and our theme bar took the equal top spot with a beer pouring Dalek. Gary’s saison also took silver in that unofficial competition.

I can’t write about our own competitions without by noting the work and passion of our competitions director Gary Waters and IT whizkid Julien Gibson. Gary’s passion was also rewarded. He was accepted into the associate judge program for the Independent Brewer’s Awards for the next year.

Our Summer Competition was saison, NEIPA and milk stouts and with 50+ entries, we had to look to the King’s Head as a venue to judge and then we came to the winter comp. At 75 entries for ‘All things American’ from club members, it was our biggest yet and judging day at the Irish Club was a suitable test run for SABSOSA.

That’s a wrap for the year but I can’t sign-off with acknowledging the hard work of the committee. It’s their ideas and support that really make things happen for the benefit of you the members.

Angus Kingston, President, SABC 2018-19

Water prezzo recordings and brew day info

Last week’s meeting centred around water chemistry with two excellent presentations by Leon and Luke. If you missed the session, have no fear, we recorded the meeting. Members can download the mp3s and the presentation slides and recreate the meeting at your own leisure.

Go to the SABC Shop and log in with your membership where you can ‘buy’ the session for $0. After checkout, you’ll be sent a download link in your email receipt.

https://shop.sabrew.com/product-category/meeting-presentations/

Club brew day
There was a lot of interest in the club brew day on Saturday, April 6. Currently, there will be six systems brewing with more welcome. This isn’t meant to be a solo brewing effort, we all do enough of that. All club members are welcome to come and join a brewing team and enjoy some wood fire pizza. See more about the day in last week’s post here.

If you want to bring gear and brew or be a part of a team, send Lachlan an email via the club (info@sabrew.com) and watch Facebook for some organisation stuff coming soon. We hope we can have some beers brewed for the club BeerBQ on May 4th. Put that date in your diaries if you haven’t already.

Forward dates:
April 17: Everything you need to know about kegging and then some…
May 4: BeerBQ at Reade Park Bowling Club (Colonel Light Gardens)
May 22: Pirate Life Brewery tour (TBC)
June 19: AGM and winter comp.

Renew your membership now or join us at sabrew.com/shop

Water water everywhere… March meeting and club brew day

In this update: March meeting, Collab brew day, SABSOSA help! Wheaty Wildflower enduro event.

This month’s meeting is a return to a more normal format back at home ground — the Wheaty, this Wednesday from 7 pm.

The subject might seem dull but as water makes up 95 per cent of beer it’s an important ingredient and often overlooked one. Club ‘water guys’ Leon and Luke are going to lead a discussion in understanding what’s in our water by demystifying SA Water reports (so check out yours in advance here) and how to treat it depending on the beer you’re brewing.

Of course, there will be beer too with a tasting of the Dean Smith’s summer comp winning milk stout. Bring a bottle for bottle swap bingo. More to come on the event on Facebook.

Casual Collaborative Brew Day – April 6

In the lead up the annual club BeerBQ, we’re going to put on a casual brew day on Saturday, April 6th. Members are invited to bring their brewing rigs along and brew anything of their choosing either solo or in a team. Join the discussion in the Facebook group.

The club will fund grain bills and provide wood-fired pizza. We would love to see at least 5 breweries in action and we encourage members to team up if their get isn’t portable.

Members don’t have to brew to attend. Bringing a longneck or two to share is also encouraged and have some pizza. It’ll be a fun way to spend the last day of daylight saving. Join in.

General guidelines based on 5 brews ~1.050, for each brew the club will fund each brewing team
5kgs Gladfield Ale Malt
200g Gladfield Toffee
200g Gladfield light crystal or Gladiator (dextrin) up for debate
20g Magnum hops for bittering

Any other ingredients will need to be brought along on the day. Why not brew a freezer cleaner and use up some old hops or grains? Hit the supermarkets and bring some rolled oats or boost your ABV with some table sugar, honey or molasses. The grain can be milled on the day.

We hope some of the beers will be ready for the BeerBQ on May 4th – so consider fermentation and conditioning time. Split batches amongst your team for creative cold side decisions.

There will be a sign-up sheet at the March meeting so we can lock in interest. If you can’t make the meeting, then email info@sabrew.com and tell us if you want to brew, join a team or just attend. The event will be held at a private premise in Enfield, details will be provided to attendees closer to the event.

State Amateur Brewing Show, SA (SABSOSA)

As you know, this year we are running the state’s peak brewing competition. Last year there were 365 entries and we expect more this year — we need your help. The dates are in, sponsors sorted and the venue is booked. If you’re interested in judging or stewarding get in touch now with Gary, chief competition director. We’ve got a sweet deal for you (includes free beer). If you can help in any other way let us know now too — bottle sorters, pick up entry drivers, luggers, organisers, computer people — jump in, please. Judging is September 7-8. (Practice brewing now! We want to win too).

Wheaty Wildflower Enduro free beer offer for SABC

Go deeper into the Wild with Co-Founder, bug wrangler and barrel whisperer extraordinaire Topher Boehm of Wildflower Brewing & Blending in an epic three-hour tasting this Tuesday 18th. Watch our post of FB to add your name for a free fancy if you’re going. Tickets etc… here.

Forward dates

April 17: Everything you need to know about kegging and then some…

May 4: BeerBQ at Reade Park Bowling Club (Colonel Light Gardens)

May 22: Pirate Life Brewery tour (TBC- might be April)

June 19: AGM and winter comp.

February news: Little Bang and comps

In a club first, judging of the summer competition will be at the Kings Head, cnr King William and Sturt St. They have reserved the back room for us to use. It’s a space which should be a large comfortable place to enjoy the competition beers and have space for everyone who can join us for a beer or lunch.

Judging will start shortly after 12 pm on Saturday 23rd as we have allowed for drop off to be done by 12.15 sharp on the day.

We have only booked till 3.30, so we can also do the awards presentation at 3 pm. Being prompt and arriving by 12 and having a hearty breakfast (and lunch) is paramount to the success of the day. So everyone is invited to come down during the afternoon as a social gathering and for the presentation.

Feel free to bring guests along to cheer your success and hopefully you can stay for a beer or two afterwards. There is the possibility of a guest brewer doing a tasting at the attached Sturt St Cellars. They’re a great supporter of local brewing so some money over the bar will keep them happy and us in the good books for future needs.

It takes a lot to run a competition. If you can help during the afternoon either as a judge or a steward or even just help process the admin or the cleaning up let us know at the meeting or email. Any support would be appreciated.
Entries:
Submit your entry online and pay here (you have to log in) https://comps.sabrew.com/

Bottle drop off:
– At the club meeting on Thursday 21,
– Gary’s house at 103 Childers St, Nth Adelaide. There will be an esky on the porch if he’s not there.
– Beerbelly Brewing Supplies – Unit 3, 95 Research Road, POORAKA – Strictly until 1pm Friday 22.
– The King’s Head only on the day of judging between 12 and 12.15

As you are aware, our meeting this month is on THURSDAY 21 at Little Bang Brewing, at their brand new brewery on Henry St Stepney. We’ll get a ‘backstage’ tour of the facilities to see the differences between the old venue and this new one. Come prepared with any questions you have for the Little Bang team, it will be an awesome opportunity to understand the logistics around moving to a bigger location.

Club news and events: 24 members went on the bus tour to the Southern Vales breweries, despite a last-minute scramble to get a replacement bus and driver and a pretty hot day, we had a great time meeting the brewers and tasting some excellent (and tbh, not so great) beers. We’ll do it again soon.

Coming soon: At the end of March, we’re having a club brew day with a bit of a twist. If your brewing gear isn’t portable, don’t worry, you can join a team. More to come. Some of the beers will be for the club’s annual BeerBQ which is going to be on May the 4th. Put it in your diaries now and think about brewing your Light Sabre Lager now.

Has your membership lapsed? No worries, you can renew easily online at any time at sabrew.com.au to take advantage of all of the club benefits and events we host. Membership is 1 year from whenever you renew, no need to wait until July anymore.

FREE! Fringe show
Local Adelaide comedian, Ken Balnaves, has comedy gig coming up at the Adelaide Fringe. ‘You Bewdy’ is full of relatable stories on those day to day things we all experience -— with a bit on beer and brewing too!
https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/kel-balnaves-you-bewdy-af2019
Ken has kindly given us two double passes to check out his performance this week — either Friday 15/2, Sat 16/2 or Sunday 17/2. If you are keen to go for nix, tell us what night you prefer and email us info@sabrew.com – first in, best dressed.

The Best of Adelaide Brewers Festival – BOAB is happening next weekend at the Flour Shed, Port Adelaide – it’s sure to be a great weekend event, with a host of South Aussie brewers on showcase to celebrate brews from micro and nano breweries around the state.

The Craft Beer King will also be hosting the “Brewers Stage”, talking to brewers about passions, influences and more. Head to the event page to find out how you can grab your tickets.

SABC at Forktree Brewing, Carrickalinga
SABC at enjoying beers, burgers and the view at Forktree Brewing, Carrickalinga (pic: Ben @ Forktree Brewing)

Hot, hot, hot — January catch-up meeting this week

Maybe you’re back to work, maybe you’re still on holidays, either way, you deserve a beer. Our regular monthly meeting (third Wednesday of the month) is this Wednesday at the Wheaty and we’ll be in the front bar. We don’t have anything planned except a catch-up beer (hopefully the Gladfiled Malt/Wheaty collaboration Enzed Red is still on tap for you to try) but The Wheatsheaf is hosting Ben, founder and brewer at Bridge Road Brewers at Beechworth, Vic. Their beers will be on tap and he’ll be open to having a chat about anything brewing — from straight-laced ales to funk and sours. It’s a good opportunity to get some tips from one of Australia’s best brewers. If he’s like all the other brewers and maltsters we’ve met recently, once he gets talking, he won’t stop. (Wheaty event on FB for more)

We’ll meet from 7pm. There will be a food truck as usual and it’s going to be hot, hot, hot.

For those who wanted to get to Little Bang Brewing Co., we’ll most likely meet there in February for our summer competition judging when things have quietened down a bit for those guys after their new opening and we’ll be able to get a bigger bang at Little Bang.

Events — at time of writing there are one or two tickets left for the Southern Vales brewery bus tour in the shop. You need to log-in to buy as it’s members only. February 2, $30. Be quick. Event details.

2019 and beyond — Thank you to everyone who filled out the questionnaire recently. We got a lot of valuable feedback and ideas from it. We also got the green light that the club and committee are going alright and giving members value for money and enjoyment.

The committee is meeting next week and if you have any ideas for events, meetings, project or just things you can offer, please drop us an email or even better, come along to the meeting. We welcome members to join us and get more involved. You might just want to help generally run things or run something specific (like a barrel project … hint hint).

We do need help running our competitions. If you want to get involved with that in some way please let us know or talk to Gary. You could help manage bottle drop-offs, stewarding or just buying the water crackers and sharpening the pencils. Every pair of hands helps make light work. There’s lots to do and won’t take a lot of your time. Email info@sabrew.com

See you Wednesday and if you can’t make it, stay hydrated.

February 20: Monthly meeting (at Little Bang TBC)/ Summer comp close and judging. Competition details here.

March 20: Water chemistry.

April 17: Everything you need to know about kegging and then some…

 

We want to hear from you about your club – Christmas event tickets now open

Christmas event tickets now open

Our Christmas event is on Saturday, December 8 at the Flinders Tavern from 1pm – 5pm. Members are free and guests are welcome to join us. The ticket for non-members is $25 which gets them a Burger Theory meal (inc. pint) and homebrew tastings.

Even though you’re a member, please grab a ticket here so we can generate a list of everyone attending and work out catering. You can buy one for a friend

The event is here on Facebook and below.

We want to hear from you. 

The committee takes a lot of time and consideration to plan the events and direction of the club. We want to know from you how you want us to give you the most value from being a member and what you want from the club — from the simple to big events. Please take five minutes to fill out this survey. It’s mostly tick-a-box style responses with a few places to write a broader answer. It’s also anonymous. The survey is now closed.

 

More on Christmas.. This years summer event will be held at the Flinders Tavern by Burger Theory at Flinders University. Saturday, December 8 at the Flinders Tavern from 1pm – 5pm.. Burger Theory is proudly South Australian small business and showcases a range of local and interstate craft beers in the tav including Big Shed, Mismatch, Hawkers and Green Beacon. As always the event is free for members and non-members can purchase a ticket. Snacks, a burger meal and pint will be provided.

Members raffle
We have a couple of prizes up for grabs for members only, you just need to be in attendance to go in the draw

1 x ticket on next years McLaren Vale brewery tour
1 x Inkbird temperature controller

Kegging and pressure filling demo
Thinking about moving away from the cleaning all those bottles and getting into kegging? We’re going to provide a kegging 101 demo and will show you how to:
-connect a basic keg & co2 setup
-transfer beer from keg to keg under pressure
-fill PET bottles from keg under pressure
A limited number of PET bottles will be filled with beer from the Left Barrel brew day and available for takeaway!

As is the tradition we’ll be announcing club brewer of the year and awarding the coveted trophy. There will be a couple of brew samples available from the Left Barrel brew day. The cricket will be on the TV, and the sun shining on the balcony.

Directions
Head to the main University entrance on Registry road. Enter the Student Hub and head upstairs.
Transport
Car
– car park 6 off Registry road. Free parking on weekends.
Uber
– enter ‘Registry road, Bedford Park’ as the destination for best results.
Bus
– catch the G10 direct from the CBD to the Flinders University interchange
– catch a bus to the Flinders Medical Centre interchange and walk 10 mins or catch another bus
Ride
A bike path follows the Sturt river from Anzac Highway to Maccas on South Road – then take the backstreets.

September meeting this Wednesday

Just a quick reminder email this week that the regular club meeting is on Wednesday at the Wheaty. As the newsletter post said last week, we’ll be having a casual Q&A chat and hear tips and tricks from winning brewers, judge’s advice and comp organisers on what makes a great entry, how to improve your own beer by taking on the feedback from the judge’s scoresheets.

We’ll have some member’s beers to taste and have an opportunity to apply BJCP judging to them. Even if you’re not competition driven, it’s still about making the beer you brew even better.

If you have a beer you want to share at the meeting, or you’ve made something with the Vic Secret hops, drop us a note on Facebook or email us.

There will be a food truck serving as well.

Also, get thinking of what we can brew for ANHC Club challenge with 1kg of Southern Cross (NZ) hops (there’s already been some discussion in the FB group.)

And if you’re interested in taking part in the brew day at Left Barrel, it’s on Saturday, Oct 13. It’s free and you’ll get to brew with Brad Bown and take away 20L of wort. You’ll need to clear your diary and be ready to sign up on Wednesday because spaces are limited. See more about it HERE. If you can’t make the meeting, let us know now if you’re super keen.

Other future dates for your calendar:

October 13: SABC brew day at Left Barrel

October 17: October(fest) monthly meeting at the German Club.

October 25-37: Aust Nat. Homebrew Conference, Melb.

November 21: November monthly meeting

Nov 24 or Dec 1 {TBC}: SABC Summer event.

December 19: December monthly meeting – Christmas drinks

SABSOSA success for club brewers, next meeting and forward dates

SABSOSA best brewer Keiren Vercoe (L) and best beer winner John Van der Zalm. [photo: Gary Waters/ SABSOSA/ Composite image]
SABSOSA best brewer Keiren Vercoe (L) and best beer winner John Van der Zalm with Tim Harriss. [photo: Gary Waters/ SABSOSA/ composite image]
The State Amateur Brewing Show of SA (SABSOSA) is over for another year and SA Brewing Club members didn’t go empty handed placing in most categories but most impressively, John Van der Zalm won best beer with his English best bitter, 46.33 points, and Kieren Vercoe winning best brewer (as he did with Gawler Show too) with 3 x 1st, 2 x 2nd, 3 x 3rd = 16 points.

Congratulations to both of them and everyone else who entered. All the scores are now online. {PDF}.

With 362 beers judged from 128 brewers, it was the biggest field in the competition’s 21-year history. Now as SABC takes over the running of the competition, it’s only set to grow but it’s a challenge we’re ready for. Congratulations to Mike Leupold, Tim Harris and all the team for building it into a strong and respected competition. Also huge kudos to everyone who helped judge and steward. A competition of so many entries cannot run smoothly without volunteers.

At our next meeting we’ll be having a casual Q&A chat and hear tips and tricks from winning brewers, judge’s advice and comp organisers on what makes a great entry, how to improve your own beer (and enter to win if comps are your thing) and how to read judge’s scoresheets and act on the feedback to make your brewing better. We’ll have some member’s beers to taste and have an opportunity to apply BJCP judging to them. Even if you’re not competition driven, it’s still about making the beer you brew even better.

If you have a beer you want to share at the meeting, or you’ve made something with the Vic Secret hops, drop us a note on Facebook or email us.

September meeting is at the Wheatsheaf Hotel on September 19 from 7pm. There will be a food truck serving as well. See the Facebook event for more closer to the date.

Other future dates for your calendar:

October 13: SABC brew day at Left Barrel (see next post).

October 17: October(fest) monthly meeting at the German Club.

October 25-37: Aust Nat. Homebrew Conference, Melb.

November 21: November monthly meeting

Nov 24 or Dec 1 {TBC}: SABC Summer event.

December 19: December monthly meeting – Christmas drinks