July Minutes 2017

The July B.A.S.H. meeting was held on Sunday the 9th at B&J’s Pizza on Staples at Timbergate, hosted by Paul Holder. Incoming President Mike Wojdyla introduced the 2017-2018 officers – Jessica Fearn (Vice President of Policies and Plans), Daniel Fearn (Vice President of Competitions), Wild Bill Lehfeld (Secretary) and Tom Freund (Treasurer). We welcomed a record number of new members, eight to be exact – Greg Anderson, Corky Karcher, Rhonalin Middleton, Larry Sommers, Steven Spencer and The Three J’s from Mathis (Joel Bradley, Jay Poole and Jake Resio).

In new business, B.A.S.H. has been invited to participate in this years’ KEDT-TV Classic Brew fundraising event on Thursday, September 28. We will serve beers from our 5-tap portable bar. The theme this year is IPAs. Paul Holder passed around a sign-up sheet for those wishing to brew and donate a 5-gallon keg. Donors get into the event free of charge. A few IPA styles were still unclaimed at meetings’ end, so if you’re interested contact Paul. As always, volunteer tappers get into the event for half price.

Jessica Fearn is putting together a trip to a Corpus Christi Hooks baseball game. Contact Jessica if you’re interested. One of our past presidents, Jason Merry, is transferring to Cape Cod with the Coast Guard. We will miss Jason and family and wish them success in their new location.

Paul gave a presentation on the suitability of Corpus Christi water for brewing, based on the City’s 2016 water quality report. The measures of interest to brewers are calcium, magnesium, total alkalinity, sulfates, chloride and sodium. Desired/actual concentrations in parts per million are as follows -- calcium 100-150 ppm/60, magnesium 0-40/8.5, total alkalinity 0-100/141, sulfates 50-150 (malty beer), 150-400 (hoppy beer)/65, chloride 50-150/131 and sodium 0-100/75.

After the meeting adjourned, we gorged ourselves on B&J’s pizza, courtesy of Paul. We washed it down with the IPA from the Big Brew as well as B&J’s vast array of draft and bottled beers. New homebrews included Walt Crawford’s “Hank’s Hefe”/”Hop Head” Double IPA, Paul’s amber ale, The Three J’s Mexican lager/English IPA/American ale, Corky’s American lager/bock/European lager, Carroll Pate/Chris Swanson’s brown ale and Larry Sommers’ English porter/watermelon wheat. Leave it to Paul to come up with the quote of the night – “My tongue’s not sophisticated enough to tell the difference”!

Upcoming B.A.S.H. events:

• 13-Aug-17: B.A.S.H. meeting (Brad Klager, British golden ale/Australian sparkling ale competition, BJCP 12A-B)
• 10-Sep-17: B.A.S.H. meeting (Mark Woerner, brewing demonstration)
• 28-Sep- 17: KEDT-TV Classic Brew
• 8-Oct-17: B.A.S.H. meeting (Jack Heim, pale malty European lager competition, BJCP 4A-C)
• 4-Nov-17: Iron Mash XIV (team brewing competition)
• 12-Nov-17: B.A.S.H. meeting (need host, brown British beer competition, BJCP 13A-C)

Thanks again Paul and B&J’s, keep on brewin’ and we’ll see you next month at Brad Klager’s !