Fellow Homebrewers,

I can’t believe how fast time is flying this summer; it’s mid July and I haven’t sent out a club email yet. Well, I guess it’s that time of year where homebrewing takes a bit of a back burner to other interests and vacationing. I for one, seriously need to get some batches brewing.

What’s New

It’s still not 100% up and running although they said it would be by the first week of July, check out www.thebrewingnetwork.com. The network is touted as the world’s first online radio station and audio/video based website dedicated to brewing. They say it will be updated daily but currently only have a live broadcast at 5pm pacific time on Sundays (7pm our time). This is a pretty cool concept and I hope it really takes off. Check it out.

I thought I’d never see the day that a craft brewery would release a malt liquor, but DogFish Head Brewery has released Liquor de Malt and yes it will be sold as a limited release in a 40oz screw top bottle with its own brown paper sack. You’ve gotta love those guys! I wonder if a homebrewer could re-use some spent forty-O’s for our own distinguished packaging purposes. Let me know if any of you have tried this.

Local News

Butler Winery has their online shop up and running. You can check it out using this link. I haven’t used it yet, but it looks like Amy did a nice job of inventorying everything online. There aren’t any pictures of the items yet, but it looks like there are placeholders for pics so that would be a nice touch when it comes.

I don’t know how long they have been doing this, but they are currently selling a good selection of past due White Labs yeast for half price. They are about 2-3 months past their prime, so they aren’t good for direct pitching but they should be viable enough for a starter. Save a few bucks and cash in on that deal.

Club Stuff

Our next meeting is scheduled for this coming Thursday July 14th at 7:00pm at my place. (details and directions will be in a separate email).

We don’t have a host yet for the next meeting to take place on July 28th. But I’ll send out an email when we have a taker.

We should be having a club brew day in August, that date and details will also be announced.

The club brewery-crawl / camping trip scheduled for July 22-24th has been canceled.

Beer Style of the Month

July is AHA’s American Beer month and the have a whole domain name dedicated to it for full details surf over to www.americanbeermonth.com.

Two meetings ago we decided that July will be the club’s freestyle brew month. Which I think is most appropriate seeing as how creative and independent this country’s brewers are. Many American craft brewers have no problem going way off a deep end as far as beer style guidelines go, so put down your recipe books, get creative, and go freestyle.

In the next couple weeks, I intend to brew an apricot wheat, a big heavy scotch ale that will include peat smoked malt, maple syrup, and a caramelized decoction mash schedule, and a crazy idea that will be an double decoction Imperial All-American Pilsner using only cascade hops all the way through the boil. In a couple of months we can get together and share our impromptu creations. Yee Ha, I can’t wait!

Brew On!

Ryan.