Drew Beechum's blog

I'm in talks right now with a yeast provider to get our hands on a set of strains. They ain't cheap, but as a club we could probably make this work.

Look here for the product list:
East Coast Yeast

If you'd like to get something (or multiple somethings) leave a comment below with type and quantity, once I have a good feeling for our numbers, we'll settle on a small subset of strains we'll get and I'll get back a price and people can pay online for their yeast.

The article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/garden/home-brewing-need-a-beer-hit-th...

My take away - how incredibly awesome that homebrewing gets into the Gray Lady. Any publicity is truly well and good for the hobby. Anything to get people to think "wait, what? I can do this at home?"

Ladyface gets some love today from the LA Times Brand X group and the Falcons get some mention too!

The Craft Beer Chronicles: Ladyface Ale Companie brings its brews to L.A.

Hi-ho the derry-o, crap that's a ton of kegs and I'm not done yet!

New Trappist beer on the way!

That's right boys and girls - it looks like the second Trappist brewery outside of Belgium is about to become active. The of Abbey of Monts de Cats is working with the brothers at Chimay to setup an 8th Trappist brewery.

And just after I finished my collection of Trappist glasses! :)

Register now to listen to Charlie Bamforth, A-B Endowed Professor of Brewing at UC Davis on Thursday March 31st. Charlie is awesome to listen to and really knows his stuff from his time with big brewing companies like Bass.

The precis of the talk:

“Advanced Chemistry of Beer and Brewing” A short presentation followed by Q&A with speaker Charles Bamforth, Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Malting & Brewing Sciences at UC Davis.

What You Will Learn

* The chemistry that underpins the quality of beer (foam, color, clarity, flavor).

According to the press release from the Brewer's Association (aka the professional branch of the same org as the American Homebrewer's Association), craft beer grew in volume produced by 11% last year. Not only that, but we now have more operating breweries in this country (1759) than we did in the pre-Prohibition era of 1900 (1751).

Jay Brooks of Brookston Beer Bulletin has a writeup with all the figures and graphs.
http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/craft-beer-grows-11-in-volume/

Ok, so St. Patrick's day may be just about over, but I loved this

A Biologist's Saint Patrick's Day Song

(courtesy of the AHA Forum)

What an awesome time to be a Falcon. There's a lot of stride hitting going on around here, an awesome party at Anchor, big experiments on the horizon and new faces joining the crew continuously and spreading the love of homebrewing and craft beer.

Becki Kregoski, new brewer and new Falcon, joined in with VPster Steve for his shop brew session. Looking at her pictures on her blog, I'm a little sad I couldn't find my way to that session, cause man, those Oatmeal Stout Brownies with Caramelized Bacon look awesome!

Met a few weeks ago with the wonderfully ebullient Cambria from DrinkEatTravel.com at my new homestead where she asked questions, nosed around the R&D Brewing Company grounds and took some pictures that actually make me look not entirely loutish. All for part of her series on the homebrewers of LA.

Found today via Brookston Beer Bulletin, the American Chemical Society has released in time for St. Patrick's Day a video all about the chemistry of beer. It features Senior Brewing Manager of Boston Beer Company, Grant Wood.

Check it out!

The Chemistry of Beer

Hey everyone from the webmeister department!

It's a new year and while we're between that Anchor Madness and the Mayfaire, I figured this was the perfect opportunity to upgrade our website both in look (ohh shiny in blue - thanks Cullen!) and in performance. We're housed in a new setup that should be faster than our old site.

I'm still working on fixing a few glitches, so bear with us!

-- Drew

Nathan Smith and I talk with Brad (author of the BeerSmith brewing program) about ways to get more beer out of your brew day.

http://www.beersmith.com/blog/2010/12/07/multiplying-your-home-brewed-be...

Beer author Pete Brown has a new entry on his blog about a new sort of tied house that's popping up in the UK.

The article: http://petebrown.blogspot.com/2010/11/brewery-tap-next-generation.html

I'll link the full list when it gets published on the web, but I just wanted to throw it out here. Woo! (Full winner's list here )

The very first beer award handed out at the GABF is the ProAm Competition and you know who just walked away with the Gold? Our friends and neighbors at Eagle Rock Brewery with their version of Donny Hummel's Red Velvet Imperial Rye Ale. And how was that recipe chosen? It was chosen because Donny won the Doug King Memorial back in January!

Once again it looks like good ole ethanol works by causing us to miss out on details we normally obsess over:

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2010/08/17/the-truth-behind-beer...

Coming back from Minneapolis here's the big word...

Next year's AHA Conference is in our neighborhood - San Diego.

Yes, we'll be involved and brewing and who knows what else. So get ready and no excuses since you've got plenty of warning!

To watch the promotional video and get psyched: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJZCSb8oCWU

This is my first year growing hops. Got Cascade, planted in a perforated bucket for drainage and crown control. They have a southerly exposure and are pretty much just rocking along right now.

I thought I'd share with you this pic. See the two black marks? That's one day's growth up the rope. Damn, these things grow faster than I did as a teenager!

I know, there's no sense of scale in this photo, but that's 3 inches of growth in 24 hours! (or about an 1/8 of an inch per hour!)

You know Falcons' users can a link to the Falcons website? Check out our other "Beer Links" section.

All of these are added by you and me. You'll see multiple categories, but you can make them up as you go along. In fact if you look all the way down at the bottom, you'll see a new link from me in a new category "Brewing Articles" and it's a geat article trying to prove the efficacy of starters.

To add Links of your own:

The folks at Beer & Nosh posted this news today - Anchor's been sold!

http://beerandnosh.com/2010/04/anchor-brewing-sold/

Eep! - What will this mean for the future of the California Homebrew Club of the Year? What does this mean for all our friends at Anchor?

And see what I meant about us reaching that magic point for the first generation of craft brewers? Anderson Valley sold and now Anchor! It will be an interesting period to see the effect this has on the spirit of Craft Brewing

Ok, so in reality - it's not terribly new - we've been doing this for three years now as a pilot program to get entrants their scoresheets back as quickly as possible.

It's a beautiful day here in Pasadena. My thermometer in the garage reads 70F and there's a nice little breeze. Both dogs are bouncing around the yard and yapping, playing in the sun while I sit here writing and doing my day job as well (instead of a coffee break, I'm taking a brewing break!)

I started brewing late today and I'm doing a split Saison and Amber Belgian Speciality. (more on that later)

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B6_s4FfjDuz-ZDEzYjRlNWQtOWVkYi00NWI...

How does this make you feel? Jason Alstrom of the BeerAdvocate brothers has a good point - we're reaching the point where many first generation brewers are thinking of retiring. If you don't have a successor in mind or an heir to throne, what happens?

From Julian down in the LBC (aka SacodeToro)

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/asm/ab_1551-1600/ab_1598_bill_2...

This is from Jim T Beal, the same state rep who keeps trying to pass huge alcohol tax increases. Write your rep and say no to the bill. Why?

Congrats to Skipp and Hank for representing the club so well. (http://quaff.org/AFC2010/winners.html)

Skipp tore things up with medals in the following

• IPA - 2nd Place
• Wood-Aged & Smoked Beers - 3rd Place
• Melomel - 2nd Place
• Cider / Perry - 1st Place

Hank scored a 2nd Place Ribbon for his Smoked Porter

Nice going you two!

Not to alarm anyone, but you may in the coming week find that maltosefalcons.com doesn't respond to your requests for more beer knowledge.

Why? In an effort to improve performance our hosting partner (BecoTech) is setting us up a little differently. When the dust settles out, the anticipated side effect is greater control and better responsiveness on the part of the website.

I'll post again when the transition is going to begin. When you see that post, just wait for the all clear and everything will be dandy.

First, the NY Times discovered growlers yesterday - Growlers, the New Old Beer Conveyance.

Jeremy and Steve continue to garner more press for their efforts - http://www.latimes.com/videobeta/watch/?watch=8f3a0e2e-4b58-4488-a2a0-42...

Congrats guys

DUI Offenders Ignition Interlock Device Pilot Project

So yesterday, the 12th, 30 of us gathered at the Home of the Stuffed Sandwich for our annual Xmas tasting. Sam and Marlene always generate a great list with a lot of oddities. In this case they managed to find 10 of 13 beers that I've never tried. See what you missed on a beautiful cold and rainy Los Angeles day?Good job by our new Activities Director Mike G for his work getting this event off the ground (and to our old AD - John Kaufman for getting things rolling)

Watch for this month's newsletter with Bruce Brode's tasting notes and official scores.