March Meeting - Belgian Beers

The style of the month for March is Belgian Beers. If last year's tasting is any indication your pallet will be throughly entertained. There are a wide range of styles within the Belgian beer family. We'll be sampling examples from the following styles:

Lambics

Wheat Beers

Brown Ales

Red Beers

Saisons

Trappist & Abbey Beers

Belgian Ales

Golden Ales

Speciality Ales

To learn more about Belgian beers, here are some resources to check out.

A Beginner's Guide to Belgian Beer
BJCP Belgian and French Ale
BJCP Sour Ale
BJCP Belgian Strong Ale
The Multimedia Guide to Belgian Beer

1st Beer Blogging Friday - Stouts

Food bloggers have their own cooking day once a month. Wine bloggers have Wine Blogging Wednesday. Beer bloggers take a turn March 2, and the theme is "Not your father's Irish stout." The beer blog Appellation Beer is hosting the first mass beer tasting.

According to Appellation Beer, the rules are simple. Simply pour yourself a stout (or stouts) and post on the topic March 2, looking ahead to St. Patrick’s Day or not and writing about any stout that isn’t Guinness, Murphy’s or Beamish (the Irish old guard - good beers but we’re writing about others).

If you want to participate, I can post your review on this site.

- James

Club Discussion Spotlight - Sanitizing Brewing Equipment

There was a great discussion on sanitizing brewing equipment and bottles at the club meeting on February 17th. One of our members brought in a couple bottle of homebrew where one of the bottle foamed excessively. He said that this happened on "a number of bottles" in a five gallon batch.

The main theory over the cause of this was a wild yeast somewhere in the fermenting equipment, the transfer tubing or the bottles. The recommended treatment was to throw out all the old tubing and do a thorough cleaning and sanitizing of all the bottles and carboys.

A number of sanitizing products and procedures were discussed. I went out to scour the web for homebrew cleaning and sanitizing procedures.

John Palmer's How to Brew
Steve Bader - Simplifying Cleaning and Sanitizing for Home Brewers
Brew Your Own Mr. Wizard - Hose Longevity Discussion

- James

Old Dominion Coming to Celebrate Virginia

Partially deciphering some PR-speak, it appears that there are plans for an Old Dominion Brew House at the "WorldStreet retail complex" at "Celebrate Virginia," a "retail resort" in Fredericksburg, Virginia, scheduled to open in 2008.

In case anyone else missed them (as I did), I'll throw in links to a Post article and blog mention of the Old Dominion Brew House at the convention center.

Brewery's Dominion Extends Downtown
By Fritz Hahn
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, February 9, 2007

A Bit of the Old Dominion in DC
Washington Post
Jan 17, 2007

Beer Guzzlers rejoice! The Ultimate Beer Glass.

"We wanted to create a glass that offers beer lovers a full sensory drinking experience by fully showcasing Samuel Adams Boston Lager's complex balance of malt and hop flavors. This glass achieves that mission." -Jim Koch --- Set contains 4 glasses (beer not included!) - $30.

Is it me or does this look like an upside down Coke bottle?

Spirit of Free Beer Homebrew Contest

If anyone is interested in jumping into the competition world, Joe is organizing the Spirit of Free Beer (SOFB) homebrew competition this year. Details below.

05/12/2007
Spirit of Free Beer XV
Ashburn, VA
Contact: Joe Gherlone
Phone: (202)767-1464
Entry Fee: $6.00
Entry Deadline: 05/04/2007

Competition Schedule

Beer List for February

Reminder! Our February FABTS meeting is this Saturday, February 17th. The meeting starts at 1:30pm at Kybecca. February's Style of the Month is Barleywine and Old Ale. Here's the list of beers that are going to be served.

Joe Gherlone

Homebrew Wheatwine (Sep. 05)

Homebrew Barleywine (Sep. 05)

Victory Old Horizontal (Dec. 04)

Victory Old Horizontal (Dec. 06)

Flying Dog Horn Dog (05)

Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot (06)

Sierra Nevada Bigfoot (06)

Brooklyn Monster Ale (04)

Brooklyn Monster Ale (05)

Clipper City Below Decks (05)

Clipper City Below Decks (06)

Old Dominion Brewing Company Oak-Aged Millennium (Nov. 06)

North Coast Old Stock Ale (04)

Kevin Brown

Anchor Brewing Old Foghorn Ale

Lyle Brown

Legend Brewing Company Barleywine

2 Specials from Japan (possibly Yoho Vintage Barleywine?)(courtesy of Michael Jackson's Rare Beer Club)

Please leave a comment on the beer(s) you will be bringing.

Google Maps + Beer = Greatest Site Ever!

If you are like me and the originator of beermapping.com and you like beer and maps, then you may have found the internet version of Beer-vana. beermapping.com is a project by someone who likes knowing exactly where he is and how far he needs to go for good beer.

The site lets you search by location for breweries and brewpubs. Fredericksburg's own brewery, Blue & Gray Brewing Company is represented. (Map)

It also has a great list of city specific maps that include Brewpubs, Breweries, Beer Bars, Beer Stores and Homebrew Stores. The map for Washington DC is great. (Map)

One of the coolest things about the site is if you want to plan a trip centered around a brewery/brewpub visit, it allows you to do a local search around the brewpub/brewery. Find the brewery that you would like to visit, center on it and zoom in fairly close. Now that you have the location centered, you can click the small “Google” icon on the bottom left of the map and it will transport you to a Google Local search page. Through this search feature, you can search for “hotels”, or “pizza” or pretty much anything in the area that you are looking at. Want to do an overnight brewery visit? This is how you can find somewhere to stay.

Check it out.

Thousands of vintage beer cans in the garbage - Pics

I'm sure these pics will make the hearts of the Blue Gray show participants break. Somewhere in Minneapolis two garbage dumpsters full of vintage beer cans were thrown out. Wow!

Beer of the Month Club: February Selections

This months shipment from the Beer of the Month Club included selections from Clipper City Brewing Company of Baltimore, MD (Map), and Two Brothers Brewing Company of Chicago, IL(Map).

The beers from Clipper City Brewing included:

Peg Leg Imperial Stout

Gold Ale

The beers from Two Brothers Brewing included:

The Bitter End Pale Ale

Domaine DuPage French Country Ale

The Beer of the Month Club ships you twelve, 12-oz. bottles of beer each month in a great container for shipping beer. These containers will be given away at each FABTS meeting.

The Blue Gray Breweriana Show

The annual Blue Gray Beer Can and Breweriana Show is held in Fredericksburg, on President's Day weekend every year. It's one of the biggest shows of its kind in the country and one of the best! This year the show runs from Feb. 14 - Feb. 18. Click on the title above to go to the show's official site.

Some die-hard FABTS members are planning on attending all the days. I believe there was talk of most of the group heading to the show on Friday night. Discuss your plans in the comments below.

Style of the Month: Barleywine and Old Ale

This month we will be tasting and discuss two styles of ales: Barleywine and Old Ale. Below are some links that describe the different styles and provides a few examples.

Barleywine:
Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) Style Guide
Wikipedia
All About Beer
Beer Advocate

Old Ale:
BJCP Style Guide
Wikipedia
All About Beer
Beer Advocate

Please comment on your favorite example of each style or a quick story about the first time you tried them.