Bring and Taste Brewers Meeting

Our next meeting in this trend will be on Wednesday 19th November at 7:30pm at the Masonic Hall, Elgin House, 6 Easter Road, Edinburgh.

The idea of the meetings is to:

	Provide an enjoyable social gathering that will supplement the other SCB activities to meet our association objectives.
	Provide a less formal environment where people who are interested in brewing can come along and get involved.
	Help to encourage members along that perhaps find it difficult to attend the weekend activities.

First Meeting

The inaugural SCB Midweek Meeting took place on 15th Oct at Elgin House, Edinburgh.

We managed to attract 10 attendees to the meeting which was very encouraging. It was a good number to get things moving allowed for lively chat on both the beers and for setting the agenda for more meetings through the winter. Members started to assemble just after 7pm and the meeting concluded at around 10:45pm.

In all we had around 10 beers, and a cider from Dinger, that were available to taste and discuss. Although the general quality of beers was high there were some discussions on whether we detected certain faults and taste profiles. Roddy suggested that we could make use of the BJCP Fault tasting kit to help us determine certain smells and tastes. We should follow this up for subsequent meetings.
Ian McManus mentioned that he had found that the cost of cornelius spares had soared due to the weakness of the pound. We discussed that there was a company who stocked cornelius spares and shipped them from Germany. The company is called Can Direct and the link is below.

http://www.novanorm.net/ec-shop/index.html

The other main outcome from the night is that we managed to agree on a schedule of meetings for the coming months

Meeting agendas for Winter 08/Spring 09:

19th November - Pale Ale
It was felt that the given that we only had 5 weeks to prepare a beer for the next meeting that a style that is traditionally ready fairly quickly would be best.

17th December - Wheat Beer
Similar to the November meeting we decided that a style that can be presented young was best. The covers all types of wheat beer.

18^th February – Stouts and Porters
For the benefit of Ian McManus, people should state whether they are presenting a Stout or a Porter.
Nb, might be worth a short discussion on the style of these beers.

18th March - English Bitters, liquid yeast trial.
We plan to discuss the liquid yeast trial at the December meeting so that the available strains of yeast can be discussed and ordered from Davie in time for the January meeting. We will be looking for volunteers to brew in time for this meeting.

15th April - Scottish 70'/ & 80'/
It might be useful to have a brief discussion at the February meeting to clarify the style of beer (it can be confusing if you read any beer sites from across the pond).

20th May - Kits & Extract
Note: we have left this to the members to decide.

Kenny and Bill are going to bring the PH meter and the Refractometer respectively to the next meeting so that other members can have the opportunity to borrow them from the SCB.

All the members that participated found the meeting both useful and enjoyable and we look forward to the winter season and hopefully welcoming other brewers over the coming months.