October Meeting

This is a friendly reminder that we will be holding our normal monthly meeting this coming Monday, October 21st at Old Dog Tavern in downtown Kalamazoo. The meeting will begin promptly at 7:00pm. This month's topic is Alternative IPAs which will cover some of the "up and coming" variations that are pushing the boundaries of this classic style. Commercial examples will be provided but if you have some your own homebrewed versions, feel free to bring them in to share.

Learn to Homebrew Day @ Bell's

The AHA sponsors a day each year asking homebrew clubs and shops to host events that help spread the knowledge and passion for brewing. We're happy to pair once again with our friends at Bell's General Store and we're asking for members who would like to volunteer to do brewing demos that day. The event is scheduled for Saturday, November 2nd with all-grain demos starting as early as 10am going to about 4pm.

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/events/learn-to-homebrew-day

To make this interesting, we are also proposing a small experiment for recipes brewed that day. We'd like to start with a basic recipe, like an IPA, and allow each brewer to change one or two ingredients to make it their own. Swap out base or specialty malts, hop varieties and quantities or yeast strains to add your own "tweak" to the original. When they're ready (potentially at the December meeting), we will have a group tasting to see if everyone can pick out the variations.

If you are interesting in brewing at the event, using the group recipe or something else, please let us know. This is also a great opportunity to introduce friends, family and co-workers to homebrewing so make sure to pass along the invite to anyone and everyone.

Kalamazoo Kup 2013

In an effort to help those brewers who are new to competitions and improve the quality and diversity beer brewed by the club, we are pleased to announce a new annual event: THE KALAMAZOO KUP. For this inaugural year, this competition will be exclusively for KLOB members. You can submit 1 entry to any of the 23 major BJCP beer categories with a maximum to 3 total entries. Entries can be submitted until December 2nd and the winners will be announced at the December meeting. We're also looking for BJCP certified judges to help with the evaluations.

Read all the details on our website:

http://www.klob.org/news/2013/09/kalamazoo-kup-2013

NHC 2014

If you had not already heard, next year's National Homebrew Conference will be hosted in Grand Rapids from June 12th to 14th. We have begun steps to coordinate both with other state clubs as well as the AHA for some of the exciting events that will take place over the weekend.

There will be several opportunities for our club members to share beer with the attendees so you may want to already be thinking about what you might want to bring. Specifically, the Michigan clubs are hoping to have a good representation of meads and ciders made with Michigan ingredients. If those are styles that interest you, you should be trying to put something together this fall.

There will be other details we will share at the meeting and through the website and Facebook page. Stay tuned.

Roast Follow-Up

We will have the last call at this month's meeting for anyone interested in ordering a T-shirt. If you have photos, feel free to send them our way so we can share them with everyone. We also have some leftover glasses which we will sell at cost.