1. The CRABS food-beer pairing was a great time as usual. Congratulations to Bob/Sylvia and Chris/Christa for their tie for best beer, Les for best food, and Bob/Sylvia for best pairing.
2. HomebrewCon will be held June 19-20 in Asheville NC, with National Homebrew Competition awards being given out on June 18. See https://homebrewersassociation.org/aha-events/homebrewcon/
A few CRABS folks will be heading down that Wednesday and staying until the following Monday, so speak up if you’d like to coordinate activities together.
3. MASHOUT will be held August 13-16 at the same Cumberland location. Registration will open in June. This year’s CRABS food competition will be meatloaf.
4. The Guild summer picnic will be on Saturday June 6, noon-dusk, at Patapsco Valley State Park, Hollofield area, shelter #300. Pot luck food. There will be a hedonistic homebrew contest run by Rob K.
5. The 10th annual Pints4Paws will be held on Saturday May 30, 2-6 PM (VIP @ 1:00 PM) at the Naval Academy stadium in Annapolis, Taylor Ave, Gate 5. Details/tickets at https://www.facebook.com/share/1786FWxcuf/
$45 to enter, or free entry if you serve beer. Sign up at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfT7cFr17mhSE1VVcU54xO3VrHC_qOC5BYNq2qQV5NYb2s1Ag/viewform
and also sign up on the CRABS club’s Google doc at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tzzmacgcbb97FVY2fANCfTr_6ORTnsrsV-q7nYOvsIk/edit?gid=0#gid=0
There is room for another beer on the CRABS jockey box. You can start setting up at the event as early as 10:00 AM.
6. Our June competition will be Sapwood Cellars Hedge Trimmer clone, and will be held at Sapwood Cellars. Brewers were each given a can of Hedge Trimmer for evaluation purposes. Entries should be dropped off at Maryland Homebrew or with Joe or Anil by June 14. The meeting is tentatively set to be held at Sapwood Cellars on June 24th (some folks will be traveling to HomebrewCon on the 17th).
7. Tom Flavin, the CRABS Guild rep, is having health issues. Justin Wilson has volunteered to fill in temporarily.
8. Several of us plan to brew a group sour ale to put in the now-empty CRABS quad barrel. We hope to fill the barrel this fall. Please speak up if you’d like to join this project. Since the barrel is already soured, you don’t actually have to brew a sour ale. You can use a basic Chico yeast or similar. Just a pale wort (no specialty grains) with a 1.055-1.060 gravity and no hops.
9. We will be choosing a date for Crabs4CRABS soon.
10. This month’s competition was pale/malty lagers. There were 10 entries. Winners were:
- 5th – Chris + Christa
- 4th (tie) – John Keough
- 4th (tie) – Jared Jarsocrak
- 3rd – John Bugert
- 2nd – Justin Wilson
- 1st – Joe O’Keefe
11. Next meeting: Wednesday June 24 at Sapwood Cellars. Competition will be Sapwood Cellars Hedge Trimmer clone.
12. Go to http://crabsbrew.org for CRABS-related information. The 2026 CRABS competition schedule is at http://www.crabsbrew.org/competition_schedule