April Club Meeting and LABBC Ribbon Ceremony @ LA Ale Works

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Hey PG and happy Monday!

April’s Third Thursday is almost upon us, so this is a notice of where we’ll be meeting and what is planned.

ONE BIG REMINDER UP FRONT: This meeting is one of our scheduled charity drive events for 2017. Read on for more info and please bring whatever you can!

  • Kip and team have invited us to meet at LA Ale Works in Hawthorne again. Map and directions are at the end of this post.
  • We’ll start with the ribbon ceremony for this year’s Los Angeles Belgian Brew Challenge winners, and then move on to a few minutes of club announcements back behind the fermenters.
  • The style of the month for April is Belgian, and member Barry is all set to host the tasting. I’m looking forward to the best beer of the meeting competition too, because you know: I LOVE BELGIAN BEER!  😀 😀
  • Did you loan us a cooler for LABBC? (this year OR last)  We’ll have them available for pickup and they really need to go home. Kip has generously stored them for us over the past month, it’s time we get them out of his way!
  • LABBC left behind a ton of 2nd bottles that weren’t opened (didn’t make it to the mini best of show) and they’ve been “chillin” in my fridge at 34F. I’ll be bringing them too for random tasting and I’d like them to go home with a bottler who will clean and refill them.  If not, they are dumpster bound.
  • We’re also collecting donation items that will go on to people-in-need via our connection with the Ocean Park Community Center – The People Concern.

This is a great excuse to go through your closets and/or go to your favorite low cost stores to purchase donate-able supplies. You can shop stores like: Ross and other discount clothing stores, 99 cent stores, Costco and other whole sale stores, or even CVS, Walgreens, and Target. Want to give Money? Mimi your Charity and Special Event coordinator can take cash or checks (made out to: OPCC) for the OPCC.net organization. She’ll take it along with the purchase items for drop off.

If you have clothes & other items to donate, see the detailed list below. They are mostly in need of men’s clothing in large sizes. Clothing can be “gently used” and should be clean. Visit this link for other donations ideas: https://www.opcc.net/?nd=in_kind

Monetary donations will also be accepted – checks or cash. Special donation envelopes will be available at the meeting. Tax receipts for monetary donations will be sent to you by mail.

Below is a list of items that we can always use:

Clothing

Sweat socks – for men, women and children

Sweat shirts and pants for adults – all sizes especially larger sizes

Sneakers – men’s & women’s most needed

Shower shoes/thongs

Rain ponchos for adults & children

New underwear – men’s, women and children

Flannel and long sleeve shirts for adults

Personal & Household items

Hygiene Items

Toothpaste

Toothbrush

Teodorant

Shampoo

Disposable razors

Bar soap

Hand & body lotion

Sanitary napkins & tampons

Blankets (preferably wool)

Backpacks or duffel bags

Sleeping bags for adults

Diapers – all sizes

Bedding: Twin size sheets, comforters and pillows. Please note pillow must be new.

Gift Certificates

Supermarkets (Ralphs, Vons,Albertson’s)

Fast food restaurants

Book & music stores

Movie passes

Clothing stores, department stores (Marshalls, Target or Ross)

Art Supplies

Markers, finger paints, facepaints, crayons, watercolors, glue, glitter, collage materials, coloring books,

activity books, stickers.

These charity drive events are an excellent way for us to give back to the local community. There’s something satisfying in knowing that our donations go to people in our own city who need help. Thank you each in advance for bringing out whatever you can afford.

Until Thursday! 🙂   Cheers!

Michael

20apr7:30 pmApril Club Meeting7:30 pm LA Ale Works

 

Reminder: Membership Dues Renewal

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This is just a reminder that club membership dues are still being collected. Thank you to the many of you who have already renewed your membership recently.

If you still need to pay, there are a variety of ways to submit payment.

  • Follow this link ( http://pacificgravity.com/renewals/ ) to pay electronically via Paypal. No Paypal account required.
  • Also, cash or checks (payable to Pacific Gravity) can be left on your next visit to Culver City Homebrewing Supply.
  • Want to drop it in the mail? No problem, send to PG at PO Box 2451, Culver City, CA 90231. Of course you can also pay in person at an upcoming club event such as the upcoming club meeting at LA Ale Works in Hawthorne on Thursday, April 20th.

Annual membership dues remain at $36 (standard) and $54 for a couples membership. Renewals are synced to March each year, so if you joined the club since last March, a prorated amount would be due to get you paid in good standing through March 2018. Please contact me, club treasurer Tim Bardet at treasurer@pacificgravity.com with any questions on your dues or membership status.

As our main source of revenue, membership dues help cover many of Pacific Gravity’s operating costs for things like commercial tastings, club meetings, the Summer & Holiday parties and more.

 Please renew and stay in the loop for another year of PG fun!

Thanks!

Tim

Hotel Booking Info For Anchor Trip May 19th & 20th

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Hey PG!

 

I’m happy to announce the details for booking a room to stay Friday May 19th and Saturday the 20th with us in San Francisco.  Now that we’re finished with the early RSVP list, booking is open to all.

 

Not surprisingly, as in years past, The Carlton Hotel  gave us the best deal on rooms at only $199 per night plus taxes, fees, and parking if needed. There are public pay lots nearby to store your car, and the Carlton has a paid valet parking option too ($35 per day).

 

To reserve your room for Friday and Saturday, you have options.

  • By phone, call Camisha Green at 415-292-1181 and let her know you’re with PG.
  • Via email, email Camisha at cgreen at jdvhotels.com
  • Online, via this special link.    This worked for me, but it wasn’t super easy to figure out honestly. Might be easier to call.

 

The last time I checked, 10 of the 20 available rooms were booked so don’t wait. I’m here for questions if you have them and I am really excited to FINALLY get to Anchor for this party!

 

Thanks!

 

Michael

 

Quick Anchor Trip Update

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Hey PG!

VERY quick update to get you all ready to book rooms for our trip to Anchor on May 19th and 20th.

  • We have 20 rooms reserved with a group rate of $199 per night plus taxes & fees.
  • I’ve reached out to the members who have indicated they definitely want to go via email, survey responses, or in person. Those early RSVP’ers gave us the base on which the confidence of contracting the 20 rooms was built (almost an $8000 commitment), so they get early access to book.
  • The early RSVP crew will have today to book their rooms before I unleash our deal to the general membership (and other clubs who want to come with us) TOMORROW.

Prepare! Tomorrow, I will post again with booking information.

Michael

Competition Corner – April 2017

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Friday April 7th is the last day to enter the 2017 Mayfaire competition. Entries can be dropped off at the Culver City shop. 2 bottles per entry are needed. The Falcons will need help with judges and stewards as well. There will be two main sessions: Friday evening April 21, and Saturday morning, April 22. Both will be at St Martin in the Fields Church 7136 Winnetka Ave, Winnetka CA, 91306. Registration for all of the above can be found at http://competitions.maltosefalcons.com/ . In addition, we will be trying to set up a preliminary round several days earlier at the Culver City shop. Check back here for details.

Congratulations to all the winners of the 3rd annual Belgian Brew Challenge.  Awards will be handed out at the club meeting April 20th at Los Angeles Ale Works.  Top honors within the Club goes to Parker Waechter with his L’Estivale, a Belgian Specialty Ale, which took 4th place in the Best of Show round!  Way to go Parker!     Overall, Pacific Gravity earned the most ribbons.   A complete list of winners can be found at  http://belgianbrewchallenge.com/.   Best of show this year was a Belgian Dubbel, brewed by Joe St. John of Yeastside brewers.  His beer will be brewed at Los Angeles Ale Works.

I would like to thank the dozens of folks who helped make this the smoothest LABBC ever.  Brian did an outstanding job as head organizer, Kip stepped up with the facilities of LAAle Works, Michael collected a bunch of sponsors and arranged the tee shirts.  Dean made sure all the beers were cold, and Tim kept track of all the entries and scores.  Finally, keeping with the Belgian theme, Ian kept us fueled with an awesome batch of Beef Carbonnades.

Speaking of volunteering, we will be running Pacific Brewers Cup this September and will need everyone’s support.  The balance of the official list of competitions for accumulating Brewer of the Year is listed below.  Check back frequently as exact dues dates become known.

If you are hard-core competition junkie, there are a bazillion other contests to enter.  The AHA has their master list at http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/competitions/aha-bjcp-sanctioned-competition/.

2017 Pacific Gravity Brewer of the Year Competition Schedule

Now:                   Entries due for Mayfaire competition, Culver City shop
April, TBD:          Preliminary judging round at Culver City shop
April 20                Awards Ceremony for Los Angeles Belgian Brew Challenge at LA Ale Works
April 21, 22         Mayfaire Judging, Winnetka up in the Valley
July                       Los Angeles County Fair
September          Pacific Brewers Cup
October               California State Homebrew Competition

April Events Lineup & Reminders

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Hey PG! I hope this message reaches you well. I’m sending out this update to make sure everyone knows what’s up for April and to remind of a few other things in the works.  🙂

This Friday is April’s First Friday at El Segundo Brewing Company, a night that was very popular with the hop-heads last year. I overheard some chatter in our Facebook group too, about stopping into Richmond Bar & Grill for food beforehand, which I highly recommend.  Tania and I will arrive at the brewery at 7pm. Show up when you can, we will likely be around all night.  Don’t forget to bring a growler!  ESBC pours are worth taking home.

April’s Third Thursday club meeting is on Thursday April 20th at LA Ale Works. We’ll start the night with the award ceremony to close out our 3rd LA Belgian Beer Challenge, and we’ll have a bunch of leftover (cold-stored) entries to taste afterward. Member Barry will be manning the tasting table too!  We will also be collecting donations at this event, that will go on to people in need via our connection (Dianne & Mimi) at The People Concern, based out of Santa Monica (formerly Ocean Park Community Center). We’re looking for clean clothing for men, women, and children, unopened personal & household items,  gift certificates to supermarkets, fast food restaurants, or retail stores, and books & art supplies. Anything you can bring will be accepted and appreciated.

Style of the month is Belgian (a personal favorite of mine) and I can’t wait to try all of the entries into our Best of Meeting competition.

Looking ahead, we’ve got the Southern California Homebrew Festival happening on the first weekend of May (5th & 6th). We still have a few campsites available, for more info or to reserve a spot for your tent click through to http://pacificgravity.com/schf

A few weeks later, on the 20th of May, we’re celebrating our 2016 club of the year win with Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco. Now that our Monster Brew w/ Smog City and LABBC are in the books, we’re in the process of gathering quotes for a group rate on 20 hotel rooms nearby. I’ll post instructions for booking on Friday. (Update: This took longer than expected, sorry about that!) Shout out to Ian F. for volunteering to help me canvas the area for quotes.   I don’t have final pricing yet but we are anticipating the nightly rate to be in the low $200’s and almost 1/2 of the rooms are already spoken for. If you want to reserve one of the remaining rooms right now, let me know via email at President at pacificgravity.com

Further on down the line, it’s our turn to host Pacific Brewer’s Cup homebrew competition. The details are just coming together now, but we’ll need a LOT of help. Reach out to Competitions at pacificgravity.com if you are interested and able to volunteer some time to help.

Lastly, I just heard that our friends at Smog City Brewing Company are hosting a fundraiser THIS THURSDAY April 6th for Jesse Esphorst Jr. who was killed in a tragic car accident in early March. A percentage of the proceeds of food and beers sales (Barley Hops Grill will be there) go to Jesse’s family. Silent auction, live auction, sodas and juice, plus commemorative pint glasses to celebrate Jesse Jr. will be available at the taproom.  If you can make it, please do. I’m sure Porter & Laurie and Jesse’s family will appreciate it.  Don’t forget to tell them you’re from PG!  More info here: http://bit.ly/2ozDwKw

If you made it this far: Thanks for reading!  Hopefully we’ll get to chat some of this stuff up on Friday together, over a hoppy pint of beer from ESBC.  See you there.

Michael

7apr7:00 pmFirst Friday - El Segundo Brewing Company7:00 pm El Segundo Brewing Company

Thursday Meeting @ LA Ale Works

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Hey PG!

Saturday’s monster brew with Smog City was another seriously fun day. My batches are burping away here near my desk as I type this message, I hope yours are going well. 😀      Shout out to the Smog City team and our PG board for such a well executed event.

Coming up this Thursday the 16th we have our March Third Thursday club meeting at LA Ale Works in Hawthorne.  

One important update to our plan: LA Ale Works is absolutely fine with us bringing our corny kegs of homebrew so please disregard the previous messaging limiting us to growlers & bottles. We’ll be hanging out in the back of the brewery away from the taproom, just like we’ve done at Smog previously. As always, we want to have a good time without disrupting business for LAAW so your best behavior is requested. Also…

  • By all means, rinse out a growler to bring. Kip’s pricing on fills is mighty fair and there are more than a few beers on tap that I’d take home on a Thursday night.  😉
  • Thursday is a perfect time to drop off your entries for LABBC. The window for drop off ends Friday and they’re headed for LA Ale Works eventually either way. Bring them!
  •  We’re also still short on coolers for organizing entries too so if you can lend one out until April 1st or so – Please bring it!

Looking forward to seeing you Thursday!

Michael

16mar7:30 pmMarch Club Meeting7:30 pm LA Aleworks

Monster Brew, March Club Meeting, and LABBC 2017

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Hey PG!

I hope everyone is doing well and brewing like crazy. We have had some decent weather for it. Here, I’ve been over to the shop and put together a few batches recently that should make SCHF and PBC a lot of fun. 😀

March is an exciting month for us, so I think it’s best I send around an outline of things to come. I also have some great news to share so read on.

Our monster brew with LABBC Gold Level Sponsor Smog City Brewing Company, which is quickly becoming an honored PG tradition, is THIS weekend and I hope you’re ready. Culver City Home Brewing Supply reports a stash of fresh new fermenter buckets at the ready, if you need one or two. More info, including PayPal purchase link here: http://pacificgravity.com/2017/02/smog-city-monster-brew-march-11th/     I’m looking forward to seeing you all there and I’m hoping for another smooth brew day.

Next up, we have our monthly club meeting scheduled next Thursday March 16th at LA Ale Works. They’ve been really hospitable and club friendly so far, and it should be a memorable night.

A couple things to note before coming down to Hawthorne for this meeting:

  • March is dues collection month. Treasurer Tim will be setup to get renewals and new memberships going.
  • To keep our footprint smaller (and cleaner) this is a NO KEGS event. Bring your homebrew, including entries into the best beer of the month competition, in growlers or bottles. We’ll make a space for them, and make sure each one gets a label, and exposure for tasting, etc.
  • Best Beer of the Meeting style is: Irish and Stout beers, in honor of St Patrick’s Day.
  • Submissions for our Los Angeles Belgian Brew Challenge are due, so bring your entries to this meeting. We’re storing and judging the beer at LAAW, so it’s super helpful if you bring them down directly.
    • Also, we could use a few more coolers for the competition. If you have a cooler you can loan until March 26th, bring it too.
  • Barley Hops Grill food truck will be there so bring a few bucks for food. Out of respect for the food truck workers, we’re going to forgo providing outside food and encourage everyone to patronize them instead. Sorry 🙂 No corned beef and cabbage this year.
  • Remember, we’re guests at LAAW. Have an excellent time but keep it respectful and positive. It’s a privilege to be invited in the first place and I absolutely want to be invited back!

Finally, I’m extremely happy to share news that our party with Anchor to celebrate our winning the 2016 Anchor’s California Homebrew Club of the Year award has been scheduled!   The party will be during the day on Saturday May 20th, 2017 at the Anchor brewery in San Francisco. As we discussed earlier in the year, transportation to and from the event will be up to you each to figure out individually but we are going to work on securing a club rate at a hotel. I will post more on the hotel subject as soon as I have something worth sharing.  In the meantime rejoice! The party is scheduled! 😀 😀 😀

So we’ve got big plans together this month and beyond! Reach out if you have any questions, especially if you can volunteer to pitch in and help.

Thanks!

Michael

Pacific Gravity February 2017 Recap

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(From Terry M)

Our Homebrew Style of the Month was Amber & Brown Ales.  Kegs included:

  • Tim / Ian / Larry’s Cider;
  • Parker W’s Peanut Butter Porter;
  • Michael Patterson’s Saison and German Lager from the same wort;
  • CCHBS’s Melrose Mild; and
  • Ruben’s Oatmeal Stout in a mini freshman keg that stood tall with all the senior kegs.

Bottles/Growlers included:

  • Eli’s Doctored Porter right out of the fermenter;
  • Andrew W’s Evil Monk Belgian;
  • and a few others that I did not get to sample.

Thanks to all that brought beer to share.

Education Corner: Michael Patterson led a Single Hop tasting session. I hope everyone there was able to take advantage of Michael’s creative learning presentation.

Commercial Tasting:  Andrew W. led the commercial tasting, starting with some interesting Ambers (Dude’s Blood Orange Amber, Mission Brewery’s Amber, and Alesmith’s 2015 Decadence Belgian Amber) before launching into some interesting Brown Ale examples (Los Coast’s Raspberry Brown, Alesmith’s Nut Brown, and Port Brewing’s Board Meeting Double Brown).

An additional thank-you to Andrew for the thoroughness of the tasting session. Each commercial beer is evaluated, along with its vital stats, and the tasting itself had an interesting twist: the first example from each style had fruit, followed by a classic example, then a higher gravity example. Well done.

Raffle swag included lots of hops from the Corley Cellar (congratulations Larry) and some classic PG Glass-&-A-Beer specials.

Welcome New Members:

Josh M.

Damien S

David S.

March Activities:

First Friday will be held at our traditional March First Friday site: Irish Times Pub, 3267 Motor Ave, Los Angeles.

The 9th Annual Monster Brew will take place at Smog City Brewing, 1901 Del Amo Blvd in Torrance. Each 5-gallon pour will cost $30. Brewing starts at 6:30a, with wort distribution around Noon. See the Monster Brew section for more details and hints on how to modify the wort for your style of choice.

Our next club meeting is Thursday, March 16, 7:30pm at LA Ale Works, 12918 Cerise Avenue in Hawthorne.

March Style of the Month is Irish Ales and Stouts, in recognition of St. Paddy’s Day. Please bring your homebrew in growlers or bottles only; due to CA Alcohol & Beverage Control (A.B.C.) regulations, homebrew kegs will NOT be allowed on site.

You can drop off your entries for the 3rd Annual Los Angeles Belgian Beer Challenge at the meeting. Entry deadline is Friday, March 17. Judging will take place at LA Ale Works on March 26.

SCHBF Update:  22 of the 30 camping slots for the May 5-7 festival have been reserved. Cost is $30 per camper. Please pay at any upcoming club event. Don’t forget to follow the registration process at the California Homebrewers Association website so you can get into the festival itself.

Competition update – AHA NHC, Jeff Sanders Memorial

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For those of you who have been allocated entry slots for the American Homebrewers Association National Homebrew Competition in the San Diego region, I have successfully negotiated beer transportation to Alesmith Brewery.  You can drop off your entries at the Culver City shop by close of business Tuesday, February 28th.   You can think of this as giving up beer for Lent!

For all other locations, you are on your own to ship entries to the respective sites.  If you miss this deadline, you will need to ship your entries for arrival no later than March 8th.

Also now hitting the radar is the 2nd annual Jeff Sanders Memorial homebrew competition, hosted by Strand Brewers. This small competition celebrates the beers that Jeff loved. Registration and complete details are now available at http://www.jeffsandersmemorial.com/ . This is a limited styles competition, so check the rules carefully. Entries are due by April 1st, and can be left at the Culver City or Southbay brew shops.

 

March 17th:      Drop-off deadline for Los Angeles Belgian Brew Challenge
March 26th:      Judging for Los Angeles Belgian Brew Challenge
April 7th            Mayfaire entries due
April 22nd        Mayfaire Judging
July                     Los Angeles County Fair
September        Pacific Brewers Cup
October              California State Homebrew Competition