1) Big crowd, including a few folks who hadn’t been here in a while.
2) (From last month) Here is the recipe for May’s Same Grain / Same Hop competition (5-gallon recipe):
- 8 pounds 2-row (1.8 SRM)
- 2.5 pounds malted oats (4.0 SRM Briess blonde roast)
- 12 ozs crystal II malt (Thomas Fawcett 65 SRM)
- 12 ozs chocolate malt (215 SRM)
- 4 ozs carafa I malt (337 SRM)
- 2 ozs Hersbrucker (2.75%)
- 1 oz Magnum (12%)
- Smoking or roasting of grain not permitted. No adjuncts allowed. Any yeast, mash temperature, hopping schedule, and water profile can be used. Batch size can be scaled up or down but ratio of water/grain/hops must remain the same.
3) 2020 dues are due to our new treasurer, Rob Kiernan. $25 for individuals and $40 for families.
4) CRABS will be doing a Columbia pub crawl on Sunday March 15. There are 4 breweries in Columbia and we will hit them all. We are putting together an itinerary and will send it out as soon as it is set in stone. If the weather is nice some folks might want to bike it.
5) There will be a BJCP class for 7 Sundays starting on March 1 or 8 and ending in late April (no class on Easter Sunday). Each class will start around 1 or 2 PM and run for 4 hours. Cost will be about $100. Email Joe at jfo363@verizon.net or Les at lesbrews@gmail.com if you are interested.
6) HomebrewCon will be June 18-20 in Nashville at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. Many CRABSters plan on going. We haven’t decided whether we’ll have a table for Social Club or Club Night. Registration opens March 10 and the early bird discount ends on April 13. See https://www.homebrewcon.org/2020-registration/
7) BURP’s Spirit of Free Beer will be Saturday April 18 at Silver Branch Brewing. Registration opens March 12. Entry drop-off at Maryland Homebrew from March 19 to April 9. See https://sofb.brewcomp.com/
8) MALT will be doing a bus trip to Pennsylvania breweries on March 21. Tickets at https://bpt.me/4517706 . Use discount code “maltbus” for a $10 discount.
9) The American Whiskey Convention will be in Philadelphia on April 3. About 8 breweries will be there with barrel aged beers. See https://www.americanwhiskeyconvention.com/
10) Brandon DeStefano has put together 3 hop crab designs to be used for shirts or other swag. He will send them out to be voted on.
11) There was an idea for a guess-that-beer event. Everyone brings a 4-pack or 6-pack of commercial beer and we try to guess them in a blind tasting. It would be held at someone’s house. If interested, contact Les at lesbrews@gmail.com
12) MASHOUT will be on August 20-23 in western Maryland, same place as last year. The website is campmashout.com but registration is not open yet.
13) The Guild still needs a new president. Anyone interested? Free beer! Contact current Guild president (and CRABS member) John Jester at johnjester.md@gmail.com
14) This month’s competition was hoppy beers. There were 11 entries. Winners were:
- 5th - Mike Bodnar
- 4th - Zach Keim
- 3rd - Joe O’Keefe
- 2nd - Rob Kiernan
- 1st - John Jester
15) Next meeting: Wednesday March 18. Competition will be Belgian/Trappist. See the competition schedule at http://crabsbrew.org/competition_schedule for which categories are allowed.
16) Go to http://crabsbrew.org for CRABS-related information.
17) See http://crabsbrew.org/Other_Competitions for a list of upcoming local homebrew competitions.