Hey, Good People of CHAOS!
We're looking to provide a varied, fun, and educational slate of monthly meetings this year. So, if you have any suggestions for 15-20 minute educational items (e.g., calculating a malt bill), for guest speakers we should invite, for beer styles you'd like to sample and learn about, for off-site locations (e.g., Headquarters Beercade), or for anything else, please let us know right here and we'll do our best to get it on the meeting calendar for this year!
Ideas thus far (I put the originator of the idea not necessarily the presenter so we can pick the orignator's brain for how they envisioned the 20-30 minute segment of the meeting to go):
- putting his Cicerone knowledge to use (Jeff W.)
- Jamil's pitch rate calculator (Mark V.)
- Manually calculating grain bill potential (Jim C.)
- Miracle berry and beer tasting (Joe F.)
- Historic difference between ale and beer (Joe F.)
- Guided tasting on a particular style (Jim V.)
- Beer gun use (Kyle N.)
- Short and sweet blind-style tastings (Kyle N.)
- hemocytometer counts (Kyle N.)
- Small scale hop cultivation (Rich R.)
- Examining the processes/outcomes of various types of fermentations of vegetables, meats, fish, fruits, dairy, &c. (Rob C.)
- Outing to Lagunitas (Kyle N.)
- Proper bottling techniques (Bill S.)
A lot of people are still confused about using Jamil's pitch rate calculator. I could take 20 minutes and go over that.
Double post accidentally, do not have permissions to delete my own posts.
I could do a lesson on manually calculating your grain bill; I think it's kinda cool to know how to do this stuff "long hand" in addition to beer programs like BeerSmith.
I still need to reach out to Aziz from Berrista about the miracle berry thing, I was gonna text Ken to inquiry about good dates for that when Ken texted me the news about Chef Cantu's passing, so I've been putting off reaching out to Aziz about it. Would that be something better as a stand alone saturday or sunday thing, or could we maybe have Aziz and the miracle berry thing happen at the June meeting, provided Aziz would still be up for it, I don't know what his situation is like. As far as having him as a guest speaker I would just ask him to discuss flavor perception and creation, how he approaches that as a chef, how he thinks we as brewers could apply that, that sorta thing. Or we could just get a bunch of berries or tablets and go to town ourselves... Just point me in a direction and I'll make something happen with it.
Also, I've had a lecture percolating about the historic differences between ale and beer and the birth of modern beer, but I would need some time to get it together.
I think the berry thing is a good stand alone; might take longer than 20-30 min.
I'm going to start editing my original post above, adding each new idea as it's proposed so we can keep track of them. I'll add the ale/beer one!
A guided tasting on a particular style promoted in advance, invite folks to bring either handmade or commercial versions of the style to compare and contrast. Could be done in 15 minutes or so. Would be an interesting opportunity for different folks to lead. I could lead one of those, and/or organize the folks who would lead it meeting to meeting.
www.singingboysbrewing.com
I've seen some questions on BeerGun use - I have my system pretty well oiled, so I wouldn't mind going over my process if people are interested.
Mark - did you cover hemocytometer counts in your workshop? If not, that along with viability counts could be another avenue to explore.
I also have plans for some short & sweet blind-style tastings to take place at meetings if there's time (and of course, interest).
Kyle,
Great thought. I covered hemocytometer counts without stains, but I think that one sailed over more heads than anything. I don't consider it that practical until either people have their own scopes or we acquire a club one from a lab auction site or other means.
Quite true. Looks like the club will have to let us buy a scope :)
Small-scale hop cultivation, when to plant, how to plant, how/when to harvest, how to dry and package. Looks like Jim V. might have some ideas based on his picture.
Awesome ideas, everyone! Keep 'em coming!
Also, if people have ideas for off-site venues, post that up here, too!
Why not consider brief discussions and presentations about the fermentation of products other than beer? I know that we are a homebrew club, but I think that there is value in examining the processes and outcomes of various types of fermentations of vegetables, meats, fish, fruits, and dairy. dairy, and potentially useful but inedible materials.
I envision pro tip secrets to making sauerkraut, or sake, or surstromming, or sketchy energy sources.
I love rob's idea. I've been making kimchi often. I could contribute a recipe.
As your resident Swede, the pro-tip of making Surströmming is: don't.
But if you ever come across it (or make it), the one tip is to open the can/jar underwater to partially contain the smell.
Oh, and I'd love to possibly organize an outing to Lagunitas. I sadly haven't been yet! But I figure if we get a group we can potientially get some inside hustle.
Nice! Great ideas! We're on a roll!
Our next meeting on May 3rd is at the brewhouse; can anyone come up with another cool idea for a 20-30 min. educational component to that meeting; or, suggest which of those ideas above would be do-able for a meeting in a week-and-a-half?
This is probably not a good idea for the meetings when it's mostly advanced brewers attending, but I'd love to have a kegging tutorial at the house at some time. Like me, I'm sure there are a lot of people contemplating making the jump. Having a hands-on, in-house experience would lower the barrier to make the move.
Jim - I'd be happy to do either the BeerGun demo or to run through a blind tasting panel. Either could be ready to roll May 3rd (but not both). If I were to run the tasting panel, I'd ideally have members taste 1 by 1 during the 6-6:30 session away from the general bottle share/catch-up. If anyone has a preference, let me know!
I actually think a kegging, keg maintance and gun demo would be great. I've been thiking of getting a Beergun but would like to undrestand what's required.
I can do a kegging, maintence, and beer gun expo at 11:30 ish on Saturday. Maybe a bit earlier or later, depends on how long it takes Bari to make my sandwich.
Amazon lightning deals has a monocular microscope up for another 2 hours.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B005O0XVTS/ref=gbmh_img_s-3_5662_72303907?...
Thanks, Kyle! Seeing as May 3rd is a week from Sunday, let's pull the trigger on a beer gun demo.
If I may take off my CHAOS hat for a second and put on my (former) teacher cap, I encourage anyone doing a workshop: (a) to have something people can take away (in this instance, maybe a link to buy a beer gun and basic instructions); and, (b) to make it as hands-on as possible (people learn best by doing something themselves.
Sorry, didn't see askchucky's post before I wrote. Kyle N. and Joe F., would you two be able to double-team this and cover kegging, maintence, and beer gun at the May 3rd meeting? Or is that too much for 20-30 minutes? If so, we'll just stick with Kyle N. and the beer gun demo.
For the keg maintenance presentation, I would suggest asking Ken for a digital copy of his kegging manual. Several months ago, he prepared an excellent demonstration that equipped me with the knowledge that I needed to get my head around this packaging method. After that meeting, I haven't gone back to bottling.
Jim, I think that would be too much for 20-30 minutes. I wouldn't want to do disservice to either topic, and I think keg maintenance as a stand-alone would take more time than that.
I'll get in the process of making some literature for the audience.
Awesome, Kyle. Thanks for stepping up kinda last-minute to get something together for the 3rd!
Kyle,
I'm interesting in the blind-tasting idea. How would you plan to set that up?
Either way, I'll be at the brewhouse saturday around 11ish cleaning, lubing, kegging, and beer gunning, if anyone is interested in learning those things and available at that time.
As I still bottle (hopefully for not much longer), I'd like to see something on proper bottling techniques.
I have issues with some bottles being super overcarbbed where, as soon as you pop the top they foam up, but others from the same batch open and pour out fine. I have consulated multiple forums and sites on this issue. I follow several different bottling guidline sites (the ones like http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/) just to see if they say to do anything different, but they don't.
The emperor is not as forgiving as i am
Variation in carbonation level can also be due to fermentation issues. Single bottle infections or irregularly distributed yeast.
Bill, this sounds like some of your bottles are getting infected.
Sean - the idea (depending on how nerdy I'd want to be) would be to have 2 different beers and give them out in a triangle test. That is, the taster would get 3 beers set in front of them and be asked to pick out the one that is different (2 beers are the same). And then, depending on my nerd factor, I would ask back those that correctly identified the different beer and see if they could then identify what the different aspect of the beer is (and I may supply a multiple choice answer sheet or something).
Basically, the whole purpose would be to see if I could derive any statistically significant data of tasters who could taste something different between the beers.
Depending on if I kick a keg this weekend, I may have some beers available for tasting at the meeting, even if it's not a formal evaluation.
Hold up Kyle, I've got a walkthrough on cleaning kegs and beer lines here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fX-BTA7C3YJkIOVH2ZFlc6A_0No80QpLzqhA...
We can do an improptu session after the meeting whether its Kyle or I, doesn't matter.
It also sounds like a planned workshop on bottling, kegging, and bottling from a keg is in order. Does anyone want to take the lead? Main thing is getting a date and time.
Matt - I'm just going through how to use the Blichmann BeerGun (or rather, how I use it) - just as an introduction for some and to receive constructive criticism on my own process. I won't be talking about anything concerning cleaning or sanitizing kegs. I may briefly mention counter-pressure filling and the bottling wand method, but 95% of the demo will be how to set-up, and bottle from keg to bottle, with the BeerGun.
I encourage everyone to actually read what everyone has posted and to stay on topic.
If ideas here spur full-on workshops, that's awesome! Please take it to another thread!
I started this to drum up some ideas (and, hopefully, volunteers) for the mini-educational component to our meetings.