BIG BREW – MAY 6, 2017

Join us on May 6 to see how craft beer is made and how easy it is to brew your own beer.

Taste, touch and smell some of the main ingredients of beer, which are water, grains, hops and yeast.
See how milled barley is turned into a sweet hot liquid (wort) and then how this wort is prepared (through boiling, hop additions and cooling) for yeast to be added later to ferment the wort into beer.
We will demontrate various methods of brewing: Extract, Brew in a Bag, traditonal All Grain, and an ‘all-in-one’ Electric System.

SPONSORS:
Big Country Homebrewers Association (http://bigcountryhomebrewers.com/)
Pappy Slokum Brewing Co. (http://www.pappyslokum.com/)
Brick & Forge Brew Works – inside Brick Oven Pizza (https://www.facebook.com/brickandforge)
Sockdolager Brewing Co. (http://sockdolagerbrewery.com/)
Filo Liquor (http://www.filoliquors.com/)
The Food Park (http://www.abi-foodpark.com/)

Sponsors will provide PRIZES & GIVEAWAYS

Big Brew is promoted by the American Homebrewers Association (https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/)

BCHA – Brew-Blast | 4-4-17 BIG BREW!

BIG BREW, MAY 6TH, 2017

Where: Food Park in Downtown Abilene (1089 S. 1st)
Time: 11:00AM – 4:00PM

This month we won’t be having an official club meeting but instead we’ll be putting on a Big Brew celebration. Come on out and support the club while we spread the love of home brewing to the community. We’ll have multiple setups out there brewing up different recipes. There will also be live music, food trucks and vendors. Don’t miss it!

Also check out David’s TV debut on KTXS tonight between 6 and 7 PM! sorry David 🙂


HOME BREWER OF THE YEAR, DAVID KASSELMAN IS TAPPING HIS ENGLISH DARK MILD AT BRICK & FORGE TODAY @ 5:30!

 

For winning home brewer of the year David Kasselman was given the opportunity to brew a batch of his English Dark Mild at Brick & Forge (Brick Oven Pizza). His brew is ready to go and will be launching tonight at 5:30PM, so come on out and support Dave and have a pint of this delicious beer. CHEERS!


TIPS AND BEERSOURCES

WATER CHEMISTRY – THE IMPACT OF MINERAL LOAD WHEN RATION IS THE SAME | RESULTS!

Once I started paying attention to water chemistry and adapting mineral profiles for my homebrew, I quickly became convinced that water is far more important than I’d previously believed and an easy way to improve the quality of my beer. While I’ve made other changes to my brewing process that likely helped as well, nothing seemed to make nearly the difference as adding a few grams of gypsum and calcium chloride to my brewing liquor.

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BCHA Brew-Blast | BIG BREW INFO | 4-18-17

BIG BREW – MAY 6, 2017

Where: The Food Park in Downtown Abilene | 1089 S. 1st Street, Abilene, Texas 79602
When: May 6, 2017 – 11:00AM – 4:00PM

Join us on May 6 to see how craft beer is made and how easy it is to brew your own beer.

Taste, touch and smell some of the main ingredients of beer, which are water, grains, hops and yeast.
See how milled barley is turned into a sweet hot liquid (wort) and then how this wort is prepared (through boiling, hop additions and cooling) for yeast to be added later to ferment the wort into beer.
We will demontrate various methods of brewing: Extract, Brew in a Bag, traditonal All Grain, and an ‘all-in-one’ Electric System.

SPONSORS:
Big Country Homebrewers Association (http://bigcountryhomebrewers.com/)
Pappy Slokum Brewing Co. (http://www.pappyslokum.com/)
Brick & Forge Brew Works – inside Brick Oven Pizza (https://www.facebook.com/brickandforge)
Sockdolager Brewing Co. (http://sockdolagerbrewery.com/)
Filo Liquor (http://www.filoliquors.com/)
The Food Park (http://www.abi-foodpark.com/)

Sponsors will provide PRIZES & GIVEAWAYS

Big Brew is promoted by the American Homebrewers Association (https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/)


TIPS AND BEERSOURCES

America’s largest craft beer festival is coming to Austin! This summer, Beer Camp on Tour takes over Carson Creek Ranch with hundreds of craft beers, the city’s best food trucks, live music and good times. Every craft brewer in the nation is invited and you are, too!

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BCHA – Brew-Blast | 4-3-17 – LOCATION CHANGE!

CLUB MEETING LOCATION CHANGE!! – APRIL 8TH, 2017

Host: David Kasselman
Where: 2133 Continental Ave, Abilene
Time: 7:00PM – 9:00PM

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT BIG BREW WILL BE REVEALED!! SO DON’T MISS THIS ONE!

CLUB COMPETITION ENTRIES WILL BE DUE! don’t forget to bring your entries for our first club competition of the year to this meeting. Remember this is an open competition, so bring your best brews (2 entry limit) and lets try to have a good showing for this one.

You can download the bottle labels and entry forms from our website here.

Points will be awarded for the top 3 plus points for every entry. Max 2 entries each. $2 per entry!


TIPS AND BEERSOURCES

The Effect of Gelatin on Beer Clarity

Some people seem to take pride in the fact their homebrew is hazy, usually alluding to the idea that the haze contributes greatly to the overall character of the beer, that it’s something all homebrewers should be proud of, as it symbolizes it was made by hand.

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BCHA – Brew-Blast | 3-28-17

NEXT CLUB MEETING – APRIL 8TH, 2017

Host: Matthew Cogburn
Where: 5418 Peppermill Lane, Abilene, TX 79606
Time: 7:00PM – 9:00PM

CLUB COMPETITION ENTRIES WILL BE DUE! don’t forget to bring your entries for our first club competition of the year to this meeting. Remember this is an open competition, so bring your best brews (2 entry limit) and lets try to have a good showing for this one.

You can download the bottle labels and entry forms from our website here.


BLUE BONNET BREW-OFF RESULTS

Thank you for everyone who attended the Blue Bonnet Brew-Off this year! It was a great time. If you didn’t get to make it this was a fun filled weekend with great tech talks, beer samplings, the pub crawl, food pairings and good times.

We also had a couple winners this time around. A big congratulations to:

Samuel Pugh – Silver Medal for his Smoked Chili ESB!

Adam Allegrucci – Silver Medal for his Red IPA!

Thanks also for everyone that had entries, it’s a hard competition to win but if you don’t enter you can’t win. Plan on entering next year, it’s definitely a great competition to enter.


TIPS AND BEERSOURCES

The Pico Brewing System

Automatically brew 5 liters of fresh craft beer at home in about 2 hours using eco-friendly grain and hop PicoPaks™ from dozens of award-winning breweries worldwide.

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THE WHIRLFLOC EFFECT | EXBEERIMENT RESULTS!

A curious thing occurs when wort is boiled– proteins coagulate in what’s called the hot break, initially causing a terrifying period of foaming, and eventually leads to a kettle of boiling liquid that looks more like egg drop soup than beer-to-be. A similar thing occurs during the rapid chilling of the wort at the conclusion of the boil, which is referred to as the cold break. Both of these are accepted by many as being an important component of the brewing process, as it allows the brewer to more easily transfer only clear wort to their fermentors, which is believed to reduce haze and improve shelf stability. While a good boil, proper wort pH, and quick chilling will contribute to a good break, brewers often rely on additives to encourage stronger coagulation of these proteins, with a popular option being Whirlfloc.

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BCHA – BREW-BLAST | 3-7-17

CLUB MEETING THIS WEEKEND – MARCH 11TH, 2017

Host: Pat and Marty Lannon
Where: 12732 County Road 310
Time: 7:00PM – 9:00PM

For this meeting we will be working on our club bar and also tasting any keg submissions we get for the club bar to bring to Bluebonnet. By now your keg submissions should be just about done, so carb them up and we’ll see you Saturday night!

Tip: If you ever want to find out what is going on with the club including events you can find current events located to the right in the sidebar or by going to “events” in the navigation.


JOIN THE AMERICAN HOMEBREWERS ASSOCIATION & HELP OUT THE CLUB!

If you haven’t already joined the AHA it is a great association with tons of cool benefits. Plus, by clicking on the link below and becoming a member you also help out our club. Oh! did I mention you also get a free gift for joining! So don’t delay, do it today and take advantage of this great offer.

    


TIPS AND BEERSOURCES

Wild Yeast 101

A lot of beers are marketed as wild if they contain brett, brett itself is often called a wild yeast, and WPL644 trois was thought to be brett but is apparently sacc and is being called a ‘wild’ saccharomyces. But if you buy a pure strain of brett from a lab, is it really wild? You know what you’re buying, you know basically how it will behave and what it will do to your beer. Maybe that yeast strain was wild once but I don’t really think that’s wild anymore.

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BrewDog’s The DogHouse Craft Beer Hotel

BrewDog is on a mission to open “the world’s first craft beer hotel, The DogHouse, along with a sour beer brewery” and, needless to say, life is worth living again.

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BCHA – BREW-BLAST | 2-20-17

NEXT CLUB MEETING – MARCH 11TH, 2017

Host: Pat and Marty Lannon
Where: 12732 County Road 310
Time: 7:00PM – 9:00PM

The time for this club meeting is yet to be determined. For this meeting we will be working on our club bar and also tasting any keg submissions we get for the club bar to bring to Bluebonnet. You still have a little time so if you have a brew you want to submit for our club bar, get to brewing and bring it for this meeting.


OUR NEW BCHA WEBSITE

It’s official! Our new club website is up and running. Though it is ready and in use I still have a lot of work to do to make it great. If anyone has any suggestions or comments shoot those over to me at adam@beer2brew.com or you can just reply to this email.

I also want to take this time and fill you in on all of the new features and things that we’ll be able to do with this new website.

  1. The first main feature of our new site is the events calendar. You can go here and see all of the events that our club has coming up. This gives you a convenient place to see all the happenings that are coming up without having to go to your email.
  2. We also now have a full featured forum, here. Take some time and check that out and let me know if you have any questions. You can subscribe or unsubscribe so that you can be notified anytime activity takes place on it. We really hope that we can utilize our new forum to give everyone a place for members only to share and ask brewing questions. No more wondering where to post questions or share their brews, this would be the place for it.
  3. This website is setup almost like any other social site. You’ll have the ability to upload a pic, information and also browse through current members so you can find people easily. You can message people directly from the system and also send files and more. There is a lot of features so not knowing what are the most important I’ve left them active and once we see what our members use and don’t we can modify that later.
  4. Archiving is another feature that we now have. I’ll be creating categories and you’ll be able to go back and see all the latest activity and even posts and brew-blasts from a year ago. It will hopefully give everyone a nice way to get information if they misplaced it or want to access it quickly.

We are going to be adding payments and some other cool features later so I’ll keep you posted on any additions to site as they are made. I’m really excited about the new website and I hope that everyone will find it useful.


TIPS AND BEERSOURCES

12 Tips to Making Amazing Session Beers

Beer enthusiasts seek out and enjoy a lot of stronger styles, and with good reason. The richness, complexity, and depth of flavor we find in a stronger beer like a DIPA, an Imperial Stout, or a Wee Heavy just can’t be beat. The market keeps fulfilling the demand for these beers, and homebrewers make their own on top of that.

But we can’t always drink big beers, no matter how much we want to. Sometimes, we want to have a few beers with friends, or we want to have something quenching on a hot day. Can we do that without making bland, unsatisfying beer? Yes, we can. Fortunately, there are beers – session beers – that are perfect for times when we want something milder.

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