We had a good turn out for our July meeting. It was good to see Steve, Collin and his family and to meet Simone. Simone is a first time attendee to a MASH meeting and a perspective member. By the way Steve and Collin are the only paid member of MASH as of the writing of this message. This leads us right in to my next point, membership dues are due this month. The dues are $35.00 a year. Bob Beard or I will be collecting at this month's meeting or you can send it to me.
Mead day was a big success with thirty gallons of mead made, lots of food eaten and many meads tasted. By far the most interesting mead made was the official recipe which used raspberries and tart cherries. I can not tell you which one of the meads was the most interesting but that is a different story. All the meads tasted great. We did not have the second round of the Guitar Hero battle but we now have some new Mario Cart drivers.
We discussed the up and coming first Coast Cup which will be held in Jacksonville on 08/30/08. We need to send as many entries as possible to this competition and any of you that are interested in judging or stewarding should consider going up.
The BOTY style this month was India Pale Ale category 14. We had seven entries; five American IPA, one English IPA, one American IPA with jasmine and one Imperial IPA. First I would like to say that all the entries where good and I thank all of you for entering. Drum roll please and third place went to the Imperial IPA brewed by me. There was no second place awarded because we had a tie for first place between the English IPA brewed by Simone and an American IPA brewed by me.
As many of you will be watching the summer Olympics and having some homebrew for the next two weeks I bet you will be wondering what your smoked or wood aged beers will taste like, so are the rest of us. So make sure you bring them to this month¢s BOTY competition. That is right this month style is Smoked / Wood Aged beers.So if you have smoked them or wood aged them you should bring them.
We will be having a tech talk this month on the Hydrometers. Peter will be giving an informative talk what they are and how to use them.
Well that is it for this month. I will see many of you at the Titanic through out the month and all of you at the August meeting.
Be happy, stay healthy and keep brewing!
Darryl Hickey