February 2015 Meeting Minutes

HOPS Club Meeting Notes February 20, 2015

Meeting held at 8 Ravine Parkway, Oneonta, NY

(14) HOPS Members in attendance with (12) beers sampled

Many orders of business were discussed including:

• There are many empty, cleaned, 12 oz. bottles from either Wes or Dale available for the asking.
• There will not be a HOPS table at Snommegang as no one at Ommegang would return voice or e-mail messages when asked about the subject.  Maybe if we start now, it may happen in Spring of 2016.
• A group to being assembled to go to Tap NY on Sunday April 26.  We are thinking of getting matching fluorescent shirts to better identify/find group members who wander too far from sobriety during the beer festival.  For those interested, please follow the link to Survey Monkey for this event at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JGSLM9B and state if you will be going with HOPS to Tap NY and if you would like a t-shirt.
• The next charity event/club home brew competition, HOPS for Hounds in conjunction with the Cooperstown SPCA and Council Rock Brewery, is set for Saturday, May 31.  This year’s winning home brew later be brewed as a special beer at Council Rock and served to the public.  The beers are to be roggenbier, dunkelweisen, altbier, or Baltic porter for the competition.
• A presentation on liquor laws and licensing for a farm brewery (between 50 and 75,000 barrels) was made by Barb and Bob for their new Willow Creek Farm Brewery.  This was very informative and discussed how there is a lot of paperwork and detailed steps involved in the process.
• The spiked beer for the month, a Coors light with a solvent/paint thinner flavor added was tasted to demonstrate a harsh alcohol/plastic taste that could be the result of using non-food grade fermenting buckets or too high of a fermenting temperature for the chosen yeast.
• The cereal beers were taste tested for this year and included such awesome beers as:
• Froot Loops IPA – The trub on the bottom of the fermenter was turquoise and there was green colored sludge around the top, but the beer came out a fine amber color and a fine IPA.  Do note that an observation was made, and confirmed by other brewers as happening to them in the past, that because older malts were used in the brewing process, the original specific gravity was low per the recipe estimates.
• The best name for a cereal beer went to the “Chocolate Frosted Shredded Wheat Southern English Brown Ale”.  The beer was even better than its name.
• The Cinnamon Toast Crunch had the closest flavor to the actual cereal as cinnamon sticks and vanilla were added to the secondary to better match the flavors.  Excellent effort and beer.
• A Cinnamon Life Wee Heavy did justice to both life cereal and Wee Heavies.
• And completing the informal competition was a tremendous Raisin Bran Belgium Quad by Dale checking in at a subtly balanced 11.2% ABV.
• Other non-cereal beers of note that were enjoyed included  the Accidental Anise beer that was not initially  intended to have this flavor but anise was used in the previous beer in the fermenting bucket and the flavor stayed in the bucket/scratches and was delightfully included in this beer.  A ginger cider made with 1 lb. of ginger root in the 5 gallon batch was also interesting.  And Dale’s Triple IPA set the record for highest IBUs (102) for a sessionable beer.
• The March meeting will be on Saturday, March 21 (not Friday) at 2:00 at Council Rock Brewery at 4861 State Highway 28, Cooperstown, NY