About a dozen of us Zoomed and talked about a number of topics such as attenuation, sulfites, the National Homebrew Competition, today’s snow, smashing carboys, cats puking, the (possible) 2021 HomebrewCon in San Diego, cancellation of the Anne Arundel County bar/restaurant shutdown, Max’s bottle/can sale, adding fruit to lambics, beer flavor additives, Covid issues, brewing/drinking while teleworking, and the Grainfather.
After 3 months of in-person meetings at Checkerspot, we are back to Zoom meetings because of a spike in Covid-19 cases. This will undoubtedly be a rough winter for everyone, with limited indoor gatherings, cold weather which will make outdoor gatherings tough, and reduced sales for businesses.
We had our first in-person meeting since February. Since Heavy Seas still does not have indoor seating, we met in the parking lot across the street from Checkerspot Brewing. There were about a dozen of us. There were also other groups scattered around the lot who had brought chairs and tables. Rather than have a table for folks to crowd around, we kept socially distant by spacing chairs 6 feet apart and having folks walk around serving their beer to people one at a time.
2) We would like to have Crabs4CRABS in September. Howard County Parks and Rec is opening at 50% capacity. We could reserve the pavilion at Guilford Park as always. Limit is 60 people which we definitely wouldn’t hit, but we want to make sure we’ll have a decent number of people before we pay for the pavilion. So, please respond to the poll in the email message.
1) Most events have been cancelled due to COVID-19, including:
MASHOUT
All BAM festivals
Howard County Fair homebrew competition
Wootown’s Mead Day
HomebrewCon
2) We’d still like to do the CRABS food and beer pairing, but we cannot set a concrete date at this time. We’re leaning toward late summer or early fall.
1) BoTY awards were given to those who weren’t at the December meeting to get them. Trevor Rose got his 1st place medal and Brian England got his 4th place medal.
2) This year’s Brewer’s Ball will be on March 28 at The Anthem in DC. We have slots for 2 brewers to donate kegs and attend for free; everyone else must buy a ticket for $160. We are not allowed to pour our beer due to regulations, so someone else will pour for us. We need to apply by early February. See https://events.cff.org/dcbrewersball for event information.
1) Lots of folks, food, and beer. We did our annual holiday 750 swap.
2) CRABS won the table theme at the Guild holiday party. A big thanks and congratulations to all who participated. We will have a T-shirt designed with Brandon DeStefano’s logo, which has a crab with a hop cone for a body.
1) Congratulations to 4 CRABSters who won ribbons at the recent MALT Turkey Shoot. Joe O’Keefe won the porters and stouts category with his porter. Joe Horne won the New England IPA category. Trevor Rose took 3rd in the strong beer category with his double IPA.Ben Schwalb took 3rd in the sour/wild/experimental category with his Brettanomyces beer. See the complete winners list at https://turkeyshoot.brewcompetition.com/
