FuzzyBrew

Want to learn to make your own beer?

On Saturday (Nov. 12), Memphis’ homebrew club, the Bluff City Brewers & Connoisseurs, will host “Learn to Homebrew Day” at Overton Square in Midtown.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the parking lot next to The Bayou Bar & Grill on Madison. It takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Attendees will learn about hops, malt and yeast, how to brew from an extract kit or from grain, and how to bottle or keg beer.

Bluff City Brewers members will conduct homebrewing demonstrations and answer questions.

Homebrewing kits from Midsouth Malts will be for sale and several varieties of homebrew will be available to sample.

The American Homebrewers Association founded “Learn to Homebrew Day” in 1999 to introduce people to the hobby of homebrewing and to promote relationships with local homebrew shops. The event has since been held annually each November.

The American Homebrewers Association's new logo

The American Homebrewers Association, a national organization that promotes the homebrewing community, unveiled a new logo Monday.

The image, the first new design in over a decade, features graphic elements that represent the fundamentals of the hobby. The logo takes the shape of a bottle cap and includes a hop cone, a barley stalk and a tall glass of beer.

It wasn’t easy, and the AHA staff and our graphic design team took the redesign seriously. We’re thrilled with this new visual representation of the AHA, our members and the broader homebrewing community,” said AHA Director Gary Glass. [source]

The AHA was founded in 1978 and is a division of the Brewers Association, a non-profit trade association dedicated to promoting and protecting amateur and professional craft brewers.

The cover of the latest Zymurgy magazine

It’s a glorious day when the latest issue of Zymurgy arrives in my mailbox.

This is the magazine that the American Homebrewers Association puts out six times a year.  Obviously one benefit of being an AHA member is a subscription to the magazine.

This issue had the results of their 9th annual survey where they ask members to rank everything from your 20 favorite beers to top imports.

Apparently, they received a record 3,259 votes for over 1,300 beers from over 430 breweries.  I’m always too lazy to vote but find it interesting to see where people rank their favorites.

The five top-ranked beers were:

1. Russian River Pliney the Elder (for the third year in a row)

2. Bell’s Two Hearted Ale (the mag also had a clone recipe for this.  Grant?)

3. (tie) Dogfish Head’s 90 minute IPA

3. (tie) Founders’ Breakfast Stout

5. Bell’s Hopslam

These guys were so infatuated with Pliney the Elder they decided to write a song about the beer. Check it out:

Sadly, I’ve yet to try the Breakfast Stout or Hopslam. Grant was kind enough to share some of his Two Hearted Ale the other night from a recent trip north.

For a complete list of the survey rankings, click here.

How does this list compare to your favorites?  Leave us a comment.

Jeff Kinzer passed along this interesting article about the kind of homebrewers who spend thousands on high-end equipment.

It’s an interesting read about the folks who spend all their extra cash on brewing beer, and who even buy their homes based on dedicated brewing space.

Compared to what some of these folks spend on homebrewing, I’ve burnt through chump change.

An interesting tidbit:

The American Homebrewers Association, based in Boulder, Colo., had just 11,724 members in 2006; that has since more than doubled, to 26,000.