Recent Events

Thanks for showing your Love of Beer!

January 14, 2015

Thanks to everyone who came out January 8th to Casket Cinema for the screening of “For the Love of Beer”! We had a fantastic showing from the club and were able to introduce a number of Casket Cinema patrons to some great examples of homebrew.

The movie provided a great snapshot into the brewing industry, presented form a female perspective. It was very well produced, entertaining and informative. After the movie, the discussion with Gera, Tara, Rachel and Kathleen was likewise entertaining, fun and informative. Thanks ladies for sharing!

A special thanks goes out to Mark Wojahn and Wilbur Ince, co-founders of Casket Cinema for inviting and hosting us.

2014 Holiday Party Recap

January 8, 2015

Thanks to everyone who came out to last month’s holiday party. We had a fantastic turn out with a great collection of food, beverages and people!

This year’s winners of the “Best Food” and “Best Beverage” awards went to Paul Illa and Tim Burman. Paul took best beverage with his triple IPA, brewed at Learn to Brew day at Barly John’s. Tim amazed us with “beer-amisu”, a beer version of tiramisu!

Thanks to everyone who made this past year’s party a huge success. Here is a collection of photos from the event.
(more…)

Huge Thanks to Bauhaus

November 19, 2014

A huge thank you goes out to Matt and Howard and the entire Bauhaus Brew Labs family for hosting us last week. We had a great turn out, with lots of newer and seasoned club members all stopping out to try some of Bauhaus’ beers and to learn about their process. We were able to sneak our tour in during their brew day while their IPA was boiling away.

Photo by Dave Royer

(more…)

Thanks for a great Learn To Brew Day

November 13, 2014

Thanks to everyone who took the time to join us for the MHBA Learn to Home Brew meeting on Saturday at Barley John’s Brewpub. Despite the cooler weather, we had an excellent group and a fantastic time!

Photo by Dave Royer

HUGE thanks to Barley John’s and their fantastic staff who allowed us to hang out on their patio again this year. Not only do they open early for us, but they also make sure we can get a hearty breakfast (egg bake is a special menu item for our event) and plenty of beer.

Even after all these years, it is surprising how much effort goes into making this event a success. It is not just one person, but rather a team working together. So thanks need to go to Gera Exire LaTour, Brett Glenna, Dave Royer, and John Longballa (who originally started working with Barley John’s to make this happen). (more…)

MHBA Visits Mighty Axe Hops

July 23, 2014

The Minnesota Home Brewers Association had a great turnout at Mighty Axe Hops this passed Saturday.

Eric Sannerud, a co-founder of Mighty Axe Hops played host and tour guide for the club. Eric showed the club the way their farm operates now and discussed how they hope to grow in the future. Currently Mighty Axe is growing exclusively Cascade hops and is working on trying to determine exactly how their plants behave on their farm. One area of the farm has hops attempting to grown diagonally, as opposed to the traditional method of growing them straight up.

In the main area of the farm, all the hope plants are in their first year and are showing great signs of growth. Eric discussed how even though all the watering and fertalizing is the same across all plants, some of the new plants are about 6 feet tall now and very poky while another plant right next door is over 20 feet tall and already showing signs of producing the ‘puff-balls’ that will turn into hop cones!

The photos below are from Dave Royer and Al Boyce

(more…)

A big day at Lucid

May 7, 2014

Saturday, May 3 brewers from far and wide desended on Lucid Brewing for a homebrew double header.

Close to 50 individual brewers from numerous homebrew clubs throughout the state started the day with the annual American Homebrewers Association Big Brew Day. Big Brew Day encourages brewers to come together and brew batches of beer, share homebrew and learn from watching each other brew. In addition to huge amount of homebrewed beer, mead and cider being shared, Lucid provided food and beer for sale. While the brewing was happening, several seminars were taking place on all things brewing. Several of the seminars were put on by MHBA club members.

In the afternoon, the brewing was wrapping up but Lucid hosted an American Homebrewers Association Wort Rally where brewers who pre-registered could pick up 5 gallons of unfermented wort, brewed by Lucid, for free! The wort given away was an Imperial Black IPA coming in at 18° Plato, or about 1.078 OG.

A huge Thank You goes out to the entire crew at Lucid for planning and putting on this spectacular event!

A Look Back at the Homebrew Fest

April 29, 2014

On Saturday, April 26th, Midwest Supplies graciously opened their doors (and their parking lot) to the MHBA for our fifth-annual homebrew tasting event. The skies were mostly clear, the temperatures mostly temperate, and the beverages mostly delicious. Approximately forty tasters showed up, and they were treated to myriad beers, ciders, and meads, as well as club-provided sandwiches, and a burgeoning tub of baker’s yeast-infused yogurt (more on that later).

The people’s choice award for beer went to Nick Tillemans, for his eighteen-month old English barleywine, and the award for meads and ciders went to the event’s wonderful organizer, Gera Exire LaTour, for her sweet mead with star anise and juniper.

Thank you to Gera for organizing the event, and also to Jerry, who brought the yeast/yogurt combination. Along with the yeasty yogurt, Jerry provided a copy of an article by Jim Koch (of Sam Adams), who claims that ingesting about one teaspoon of baker’s yeast for each alcoholic beverage you are about to imbibe will lessen the impact of the alcohol on your body. The theory goes that the yeast will metabolize alcohol in your stomach before it gets into your blood stream. A few brave souls did try the yeast-infused yogurt (the yogurt simply makes it more palatable), but a more scientific process should be employed at a future event to determine the idea’s effectiveness!

Lots of fun at the chili cook-off

March 19, 2014

Thanks to everyone who made it out to the March Meeting and Chili Cook-off at the CSPS Hall on March 15. We had a great turn-out with lots of fantastic chili and incredible beverages!

Chief Chili Pepper is back at his regular home, as of late, with Gera Exire LaTour taking first place again in the Chili competition. First place for beverages went to Jim Sogla with his Cyser made from Apples and Honey procured through the Minnesota Home Brewers Association! Below is a list of all the winners!

(more…)

Thanks to Sociable Cider Werks

March 19, 2014

Special thanks to Jim and the entire crew at Sociable Cider Werks for hosting the Minnesota Home Brewers Association on March 6. Jim gave us a fantastic tour and shared plans for what sounds like some very ambitious brewing plans in the upcoming years.

February 2014 Meeting Followup

February 26, 2014

On Saturday, February 15, the Minnesota Home Brewers Association met at Rock Bottom Brewery in Minneapolis. The primary focus of the meeting was to elect new leadership to run the club for the next year. In addition to this though, we had several fun extras!

Michael Agnew was on hand to talk about his new book, Craft Beer for the Homebrewer, a collection of home brew recipes of commercial beers, directly from the professional craft brewers’ themselves!

As we were at Rock Bottom Brewery, we had to try some of their brews! They provided us with samples of four of their seasonal beers to share, discuss and talk about.

For the meat of the agenda, outgoing president, Michael Cote ran the elections and helped ensure we have some terrific leadership to help run the club for the upcoming year!

Here is the club leadership for the next year:

Board Members – Elected