Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

The January meeting will be hosted at my house on Thurs, Jan 15, at 7:00 pm. If anyone would like to bring food, please do. I declare the beer style of the month to be Bocks and Dopplebocks.

Here's a link to a map showing my house: Google Map

From I-380, take the Boyson Rd exit, and turn East. At Council St, turn left (North). Fox Trail Dr is on the left, about 0.5 miles North of Boyson. There's a large boulder at the intersection. My house is on the corner of Fox Trail and Gray Fox.

-Jim

I will make an appetizer. Not sure what yet.

First, thanks for hosting. You saved us.

Although not my favorite style, I think the Bock/Doppelbock style is a good one for this month's meeting. There should be some good ones out there right now and we (the club, myself included) need to try different beer styles, particularly ones that we may not drink all the time. It's all part of the whole beer experience. See you next week.

HURRAY

Just say "Uff-Da!"

I'll conger up some sort of snack. Leaning towards a hot dip and chips of some sort.

Well, I was going to make a bacon explosion. But I don't think I can get the smoker to stay hot in this cold. So, I may be doing a cheeseball.

I'm bringing a Doppelbock smorgasborg from John's and some type of snack.

I can't make it tonight. I should be back in regular attendance in February. I hope those that attend tonight can get us off to a good start this year.

I have a couple items for discussion.

1) We need to do some type of group brewing event like we did a few years ago at Brian's for Teach a Friend to Brew Day. I suggest we do Big Brew the first Saturday in May. The weather should be nice enough to brew outside. It could simply be one person doing a brew and the rest of us get together to brew with them or a few people all brewing at once. I liked seeing how three different people got it done. In any fashion, I would just like the group to get tooether with some beer being made.

2) I think a CR Beer Nuts canoe trip would be fun. A close spot with plenty of available canoes would be Pinicoln Ridge on the Wapsi. We could tube too. If you really want some of the best Iowa has, a trip down the Upper Iowa River would be cool. Maybe some camping could be optional.

3) Add a style profile to each meeting. We set the styles for the year, bring examples of both homebrew and commercial. The BJCP style profile is made available so there can be some education about the beer.

4) Keep quarterly club competitions. Tie them in with the monthly beer styles. Keep to stuff people make at home. Some examples may be wheat, stout, pale ale, porter, brown, amber, barleywine. Knowing styles well in advance would help get a decent number of entries.

5) As part of the actual business part of the meeting, ask if anybody has a brewing question or topic they would like to discuss. For example, how are people chilling their wort. It would be great if someone planned to discuss how they do something for the group if people were interested. It can happen as part of the meeting or transition in to a smaller discussion. I think as the group increases in size it is important to provide those opportunities before the party gets going full stride. This sounds very formal, but is meant to just guide some homebrew discussion.

I will bring a smoked dopplebock and some red pepper humus.

Great ideas Matt. 3 & 4 should be easy enough to do tonight. I would like to do a group brew too, and I'm always up for a canoe trip. As far as #5 we can use the forum to add to these topics. It doesn't get a lot of use.

As always thanks for hosting Jim, another great meeting under our belts.

Thanks for having us over on such a cold night Jim!

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 11:05 AM, DaveCo wrote:

Thanks for having us over on such a cold night Jim!

I'm just glad I didn't have to go out.

Thanks to all who made it!

-Jim

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Me, too! Thanks for hosting.

Also, thanks to all the new Officers for stepping up to keep the Club moving forward!