After the normal pleasantries and securing of appetizers and pints, the meeting began with a bit of business.
- Nate passed around a photocopy of an article from Brew Your Own magazine on the hop shortage, which included a handy chart for hop substitution.
- The group decided that our big tasting of members' homebrews will be during the May meeting. We'll try to hold the Upstairs and perhaps start at 7pm on that Tuesday.
- More information on the upcoming "Pints for Pets" beer festival was given: It will be Sat. May 17 from 4-8pm at the Blair Co. ballpark (Altoona), with 30 breweries represented. Ticket price is $30, with all proceeds going to the Central PA Humane Society. If there is enough interest, we will try to rent the Coney van for passage to and from the beer festival. For more information, please visit www.pintsforpets.com (you can see the brewer list there!)
- Now that we've grown a bit, we may transition from this blog to an actual website so that we can archive meeting notes, include pages with brewing tips (like the hop substitution guide, recipes, etc.) and other information that we have more control of - rather than using Blogger for everything.
After "business", we had several homebrews to try, including a Guinness-like stout from Ray S. (brewed with some extra brown sugar and a bit of allspice), a pale ale from Tom W. (second homebrew batch), a clone of Dogfish Head Raison d'Etre from Bill D., Eli's steam beer (second homebrew) and his IPA, and Erick L.'s dry-hopped IPA (first homebrew, with a bit of assist from Nate).
After the homebrews, we also had a growler each of East End Best Bitter and East End Dubbel Trubbel (donated by Justin and Nate).
A big thanks to Caroline, our bartender for the evening, and the Coney for hosting us.
For those who could not join us this month, we hope to see you in April!
