Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

Hello Beer Nuts! The March 2009 meeting is on the 19th at 7:00 pm. It will be at my house (Matt Franklin) which is on the southeast side of Cedar Rapids between 1st Avenue and East Post Road. It is not your normal location. It is a curvy gravel drive so please drive slowly. Google and mapquest get you close.

The address is 1102 30th Street Drive SE, Cedar Rapids, IA, 52403.

From 1st Ave, turn at the Walgreens on 29th Street heading East towards East Post Road. Stay on 29th Street Drive as it curves and becomes 30th Street Drive. My house will be on your left (North side). If you get to Indian Hill Road or East Post Road you went too far.

From East Post Road, turn at the intersection with Lakeside Road and 30th Street Drive heading East on 30th Street Drive. My house will be on your right (North Side). If you get to 1st Avenue you went too far.

I have a shared driveway with 1100 30th Street Drive SE. There is a blue Linn County address sign with my house number on it on 30th Street Drive. Enter the driveway between the blue 1100 and 1102 signs. My neighbor has a large, silver and red grey hound bus in our shared driveway that is hard to miss on the left. My house is the second house. The road goes down a hill and turns sharply to the left and then back to the right.

Parking is tight, but we should be able to get three cars wide in front of the garage and the rest pull in on the left side. I attached a picture as a guide. If we run out of room you may have to park at the top of the hill on the side and in the street. A few cars should fit off the road by my mail box. Car pool if you can.

If you have trouble finding the place call my cell at 654-5146. There will be a beer competition this month. Style is very wide open with browns, porters and stouts. We will group those as specifically as we can according to the number of beers available per style. I look forward to seeing you there! We will try to end the meeting around 11 so I can help my wife get the twins to bed. They will be about 7 weeks old by then.

Also, I will have March Madness running on the projector and bar TV so you can catch the games if you are a basketball junkie like me.

Really? I thought I was hosting this meeting. I will grab another one coming up.

We talked at the Feb meeting about those entering beer (or wanting to judge) to show up early; do we plan to do that this time? 6:30pm?

I plan to enter a porter and a stout.

Sorry Tim, I didn't know you wanted March. We still need a host for April. Can you do that one?

Lets get going early if we can for the competition. If you have a beer to enter, please get there by 6:30. I don't mind if you start showing up at 6:00. If you want to enter a beer but can't get there early try sending it with another member or just get there as soon as possible to get it added to the judging.

My indoor brewery is almost running! I know, it only took nearly four years. I still need to mount my burner to my stand and eventually modify my stand a bit, but I hope to have it running by meeting time. I plan to demonstrate how my chiller works by boiling some water and cooling it.

I am sooooooo jealous!! You have such an awesome brew room, even without all the bells and whistles. I'm still brewing in the kitchen and cleaning equipment in the downstairs shower, with a 25ft garden hose run from the laundry room for hot water.

I may have a couple guys that are interested in doing an October Fest type of event as a fundraiser - I mentioned the presenting idea at one of our meetings might be a good start. I have talked over some ideas with them such as making it a competition - needing a liqour license to server - cannot "sell" the beer for a profit but maybe for donations to a charity, etc. I think they are interested in making it a yearly thing so maybe a competition hosted by our club for home brewers?? I think possibly getting the Jaycee's involved as well. Anyway if a couple guys show up at your door that you don't know - that is who they are. Bill Mauer and John Schnipe are their names.

Brownbeard and I have been scoping out the website for El Bait Shop (www.elbaitshop.com) over in Des Moines and it has "ROAD TRIP" written all over it.

Here's what Beer Advocate had to say -

beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/13693

I'm interested in seeing if there's enough interest in planning a club outing.

I was just there saturday.

bigT

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Do we need to sign up to judge before hand or just show up at 6:30?

Just show up. No need to register or anything. Glad to have you there for judging.

Matt: Thanks for hosting the meeting last night. Great job. Dave

Thanks. It is always a pleasure. I didn't see any cars in the ravine on my way to work this morning, so I assume everyone made it out OK.

Well that's good to news.

Thanks for hosting, especially with the newborns!