Brewshare Night In Sydney & Melbourne

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Shuzzbutt.

I missed this thread by a day. Heard about it on the Melbourne Brewer Grapevine in a vague sense but the silly season has had its distractions.

Would like to support this event as I think it's a great idea. Will try and get my ducks in a row and get to the next Melbourne one.

Don't give up on us Taphouse! There is interest for this kind of event out there.

Hopper.
 
HoppingMad said:
Don't give up on us Taphouse! There is interest for this kind of event out there.

Hopper.
Click to expand...
There would have been 18 or 20 beers there last night, and a couple more people along as hangers-on.

The larger than expected turn up surprised the guy from Taphouse, so I am pretty sure they will be hosting it again come February next year.

Saying that, I can't see how it makes a whole lot of financial sense to the Taphouse people, tying up a couple of tables, even on a "quiet" Tuesday night with a bunch of people who are not actually paying for their beer? Maybe, they too, believe in Beer Karma (tm)? Was a good chance to try out the Jamieson's Black Beast, though.
 
Was a great night , good mix of brewing experience, loads of brew banter and plenty of great beers.

Look forward to the next one, hopefully the function room is up and running by then especially if the crowd grows.

Keen to keep it open style, think that worked well... people might lose interest if they need to brew purposely for the night.
 
seemax said:
Keen to keep it open style, think that worked well... people might lose interest if they need to brew purposely for the night.
Click to expand...
I was thinking the opposite.

As evidenced by the top 4 beers of the night being American style IPA's, there is a perception at the moment that good beer involves hops, hops and more hops. We seem to be where the US microbrew scene was a couple of years ago, with each brewer trying to crap more alpha's, more IBU's into their beers in an effort to "Out EXTREEEME" each other.

I think people should be free to bring whatever beer they want on the night, whether for feedback, for showing off, or just a desire to share. But the final 4 beers, which are voted to win the prize, should be judged against a pre-selected style.

Otherwise, I'm just going to brew another IPA...
 
I can get quite honest feedback on my beer in club meetings, so it would be quite a waste of time for me to go there for feedback. Judging to a style is definitely required otherwise we might as well just rock up to drink beer and not contribute anything, which I think a few smart ppl did anyway.
 
Hey all,

It was great to finally have a decent group of people turn up last night and save the Taphouse BrewShare in St Kilda (for the time being at least). Thanks for supporting us supporting the homebrew community. We hope you all enjoyed yourself enough to come to the future quarterly BrewShares and please help us spread the word to get even more people along. We have posted something about the St K BrewShare on the blog - http://thelocaltaphouse.blogspot.com. Darlo's will come soon.

To date, we have kept St Kilda's BrewShare as open class only as we had so few people attend and it would be silly to have two classes! In Darlo, we have so many people attend, people can brew to a style but there is also an open class. The prize, however, is only given to the winner of the chosen style.

If St Kilda can continue to attract more people, we could certainly do the two classes. The problem is we can't predict now how many people will turn up next time!

To those who plan on attending the next St Kilda BrewShare in Feb, what are your thoughts?

BTW, you are right that we make virtually no money from the night but we do like to encourage homebrewers as they may one day be commercially brewing the next great microbrew!
 
If you announced an expected style now or soon, more serious brewers can plan and brew in time and in turn end up attending. I quite enjoyed it, but the competition part was rather pointless this time.
 
My vote is for Belgian Ales for the next Brewshare. Perhaps email the previous attendees a Survey Monkey Poll?
 
For the next Sydney BrewShare they have decided to keep it all open class for the first time. The reason given by Dave Gumm (or Dave's Home Brew shop) is:


Yeast gets stressed when it gets too hot and can throw some horrible flavours into your beer if it is fermented at high temps, (over 26 for ales, 17 for lagers). As most of the guys, especially the newer brewers, dont have very much by the way of temperature control I thought that by giving them a chance to grab a beer from the garage we would get a better quality beer on the night.

So perhaps an open class is the way to go in St K too, at least for the Feb BrewShare? Comments?
 
oztapguy said:
For the next Sydney BrewShare they have decided to keep it all open class for the first time. The reason given by Dave Gumm (or Dave's Home Brew shop) is:


Yeast gets stressed when it gets too hot and can throw some horrible flavours into your beer if it is fermented at high temps, (over 26 for ales, 17 for lagers). As most of the guys, especially the newer brewers, dont have very much by the way of temperature control I thought that by giving them a chance to grab a beer from the garage we would get a better quality beer on the night.

So perhaps an open class is the way to go in St K too, at least for the Feb BrewShare? Comments?
Click to expand...
I was surprised at the time with the decision for a "style free" night at the February Darlo event. But after hearing Daves logic it makes good sense, of the brewers I have spoken to at past events those with temperature controlled fermentation environments are definitely a small minority of the attendees. ;)
 
Didn't attend the Melbourne one but my thoughts would be to definately keep it open due to the timing of it.

Summer is a busy time for many of us in terms of getting into the brewshed to knock up a beer (most of us are socialising and drinking the stuff rather than making it), so given that you need people turning up and sharing it makes sense to keep it open so people can grab something from their existing summer stockpile.

In terms of feedback on your beer (and whether or not brewshare feedback is worthwhile), I think regardless of whether it is at club or brewshare any feedback is a good thing and can help you make better batches of beer. I take my beers not only to club meetings but also hand some to work colleagues and non-brewers as it gives you a perspective on what brewers and non-brewers enjoy drinking and what freaks them out (sometimes that can be the fun part :D). For those not looking for feedback I think the Voucher prize is a real grab to get people interested - particularly for many of the Club Brewers who talked about this event a week or so back and thought it was worth going to.

Hopper.
 
Here is the issue with open style, as said above by someone much more exp'd, unless you like brewing hoppy IPAs the voucher prize is useless for you. It's quite a lot of fun being open style, but you pay a little to go there even before you buy a drink and the number of get togehers, swap meets, club nights and meetings that go on anyway means that some ppl that don't really come talk here don't bother turning up to events like this just because it's no different and you pay to just come. It's a bit silly. Even me with no fridge can keep temp control with some effort.

Thing is, if the local is expecting a bigger crowd, you need to attract more than just hopheads. This time it was emails to all brew clubs that got the crowd happening. Would be better if people actually want to come because they planned their brew in advance for the event rather than be reminded and called out to come. Open style is just not a clear target, if I haven't made something for the day in advance then I have no special motivation to come. Lazy n busy factor n all.... Maybe just set 2 categories as low alc and high alc instead of open style. Much fairer competition and some target to brew to. Well, Sydney seems to have done pretty well so far with set styles.
 
oztapguy said:
For the next Sydney BrewShare they have decided to keep it all open class for the first time. The reason given by Dave Gumm (or Dave's Home Brew shop) is:


Yeast gets stressed when it gets too hot and can throw some horrible flavours into your beer if it is fermented at high temps, (over 26 for ales, 17 for lagers). As most of the guys, especially the newer brewers, dont have very much by the way of temperature control I thought that by giving them a chance to grab a beer from the garage we would get a better quality beer on the night.

So perhaps an open class is the way to go in St K too, at least for the Feb BrewShare? Comments?
Click to expand...

Go belgian!!!!

If you are running with the temp theory than these are a style that can deal with warmer temperatures better than many other beers. It's still a pretty varied class of beers though., so shouldn't limit people too much.
 
Due to a continuing lack of interest, we have cancelled tomorrow night's BrewShare night in St Kilda. There will be no St Kilda BrewShare nights in the forseeable future.

We remain keen to support the Melbourne homebrew scene but clearly BrewShare isn't resonating. If, for instance, some enterprising person wants to establish a new homebrew club in our area, we'd be happy to discuss the Taphouse being the "home ground".

A tremendous thanks for John Preston at Grain & Grape for their support and the $100 gift vouchers they offered for each BrewShare.

Steve
 

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