February 2020 News
Happy FeBREWary! Read on for details about the upcoming JamBEERee, a recap of our January meeting, and some upcoming events.
February Meeting: 2/22 @ 1pm
Our annual JamBEERee with the other DMV homebrew clubs will be on Saturday, February 22 from 1pm – 5pm in Washington, DC.
There’ll be a few fun activities going on with different clubs taking point on each.
- BURP will be running a “Best of American Beers” competition. It will be BJCP-judged, so you only need to provide two 12oz bottles (or the equivalent). More details & registration here: Best of American Beers Competition.
We’ll need folks to help work a registration table. Each club will take an hour & if we can get 4 people to volunteer from BURP, then it’s a mere 15 minutes each! Please let me know if you’re willing to help out (otherwise I’m going to “volunchoose” 4 folks at the meeting!).
January Recap
We had another great start to the year with the BADASS group in Wheaton. It was great to kick off the new year with some delicious beer & a ton of food. We welcomed Stephen Clapham to discuss the BJCP cider exam (see my email earlier this week & reach out to Chuck Hughes and/or Matt Peppe if you’re planning on taking the exam). Our competition was for Belgian Ales & we had some stiff competition (I should know–I helped judge them!). Team Aaronridge (Wendy Aaronson & Bill Ridgely) took both 1st and 3rd place with separate beers, while BADASS’s Hillary Sadoff took 2nd place. Congrats to all the winners!
Upcoming Events
- BADASS’s March Madness: Details from BADASS…
I’m excited to announce that we will be running a March Madness club competition this year! We did this 2 years ago and it was soooo much fun;) Most of you are probably already familiar with the traditional brackets people fill out for march madness pools. We’ve decided to put our own BADASS twist on the idea by turning it into a beer competition! How will this work?
Bring your $10 entry fee and a 12 pack of beer to Gary and Claire’s place on Saturday March 14. The beer can be commercial or homebrew; it’s up to you. Your beer will be randomly assigned to a slot on our March Madness bracket. To determine the winner of each match-up we’ll perform a blind taste test of both beers. Tasters will vote for the beer they enjoy most. Whoever gets the most votes wins the match and advances to the next round. We’ll repeat this process until we have crowned our champion. The entry fees and leftover beer will be used for prizes.
We will be limiting this to 32 participants. If we can’t recruit 32 people from within the club we’ll likely extend the invitation to other local clubs. To register please go to https://goo.gl/forms/JOPKO3Et1Bg6PDIo1 and enter your name/email. I’ll send updates to registered participants as we get closer to the event. Also please feel free to invite your friends and family to this since they could enter a commercial beer;)
- Spirit of Free Beer (SoFB): Our big annual competition will be held on April 18 this year at Silver Branch Brewing. Check-in will be the weekend before on April 11.
- HomebrewCon: This year’s AHA HomebrewCon is on June 18-20 in Nashville, TN. It’s probably a bit far for a strong BURP presence, but the Guild may organize a booth there for those interested. More to come!
- Big Brew: I think maybe for the first time ever, our Chili meeting will not conflict with the Guild’s Big Brew event. Big Brew will be on Saturday, May 2 at Maryland Homebrew.
- Guild Picnic: The Guild Picnic will be on Saturday, May 30 at Patapsco Park. More details to come.
Merch for Sale!
We have merch! Please reach out to Dave White via email or at a meeting if you’d like to buy anything. Thank you to everyone who participated in the Merch Survey last month–we’ll be using the results to guide what we stock. Expect to see some fresh new merchandise in the coming weeks!
That’s all for this month…I look forward to seeing everyone in DC!
Cheers, Prost, & Sláinte,
Mike
2020 Calendar
| Date | Host(s)/Location | Theme | Competition | Enlightenment |
| February 22 | Washington, DC | JamBEERee Joint Meeting | Best of the Americans(any American style) | Process Improvement |
| March 21 | Janet & Pat | St. Patrick’s Day | Stouts | Off Flavor Training |
| April 18 | Silver Spring, MD | Spirit of Free Beer | Spirit of Free Beer | N/A |
| April 25 | Trish & Larry Silver Spring, MD | Free Beer! | None | Judge Training |
| May 16 | Andrea & David Fairfax, VA | Chili | Best Beer With Chili | TBD |
| June 13 | Jim Silver Spring, MD | None | None | SMaSH Beers |
| June 26-28(tentative) | Popenoe Mountain | BURPOUT | N/A | N/A |
| July 11 | Clint Silver Spring, MD | TBD | Session Beers | TBD |
| August 8 | Manuel Rockville, MD | TBD | None | Group Recipe Brew |
| September 26 | Gaithersburg, MD | Oktoberfest | German Beers | Blind Tasting |
| October 10 or 17 | Jeanne & Mike Falls Church, VA | TBD | Harvest Ales | TBD |
| November 7 | Aaronridge Pub Rockville, MD | Real Ale | Real Ale | Real Ale |
| December 3 or 10 | TBD | Holiday Party | Barleywine/Strong Ales | None |