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Our annual picnic will be on Saturday September 9th at Picnic Area 3 on the Root River Parkway (see map below) rain or shine. We kick off about noon with a food provided (burgers, brats, chicken breast, salads) along with all our drafts lines pouring homemade beers, meads and ciders. We encourage you to bring a dish to share, chairs, pop-up tents, towels, yard games or any other summer-outdoor-type-of-thing.

Bring your best beer, mead, or cider for a chance to win our ‘best beverage’ get your name etched on the Jerry Hetzel Memorial Mash Paddle. There is also a ‘food-made-with-beer’ competition for any edible you bring that includes beer/mead/cider as a recipe component. Both competitions are popular-vote style, voted on by our guests.

We will be holding our annual picnic pay-to-play giveaway again this year. We will have a lot of great things in the pay-to-play giveaway and will update this post with more details as they become available!

Get your tickets now!

Timeline: We’ll be there at 11am. Food starts around 12:30pm. Giveaway starts at 5pm.

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It’s that time of year again and if you’ve bought tickets through the Barons, the times listed below are for the pick-up locations.  The tickets will be handed out once we get to Madison so please don’t ask.  The beer lists are posted on the Great Taste website (https://greattaste.org/) and the apps are live.  Remember to drink plenty of water and make sure to eat.  This is truly one of the best in the country and we are all looking forward to another year!

The first pick up will be at the Red Zone Bar located 6247 S Howell Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53207
The bus will arrive at 9:45 and will depart at 10:00.

The second pick will be Water Town Plank Road Park and Ride Main Lot
The bus arrive at 10:15 and will depart at 10:30.

The third Stop will be I- 94 & Hwy G Park N Ride
The bus will arrive at 10:45– and depart at 11:00.

The last stop will be a quick pick and go at Hwy 26 the Pine Cone truck stop at 11:30

This month we welcome John Rocco of Farmhouse Brewing Supply out of Janesville, Wisconsin to talk about all thing Hops!

John recently donated 6 varieties (24 ounces) of newer hops to the Barons. A few of our members volunteered to brew a batch of beer with these hops. We used a modified Zombie Dust clone and scaled the quantity of hops required to get all of the IBUs within +/- 2pts. The base recipe will be available in this month’s Baron’s Mind.

The hop parallel includes the following hop varieties:

This months general meeting we welcome Solemn Oath Brewery’s president, John Barley and Production Manager, Paul Schneider to discuss their beer and their SOB Story. Solemn Oath Brewery (SOB) is located in Naperville, Illinois and after a several year hiatus, has just recently began distributing in Wisconsin again!

SOB first opened in May of 2012, quickly became one of Chicagoland’s greatest startup breweries and through a half-decade of operation they have seen tremendous demand and a significant amount of growth that goes with it. SOB focuses on West Coast, barrel aged, and Belgian beers. Please remember to bring your own tasting glass for the meeting.

As a reminder – if you plan to bring homebrew to the meeting you must notify the officers of the club to ensure we have ample space on the Jockey Boxes. Last month (May’s General meeting) we had such a great turnout of homebrew we had to turn some of your delicious beer away.

As usual the meeting will begin at 7:30pm, with our BJCP Judges Beer Evaluation panel available at 7pm so bring a bottle or two of your homebrew if you want to get some realtime feedback from the judges.

Hello Barons the May Newsletter is available !

check it out:Baron-Mind-2017-05-May

This month we welcome Jackson Borgardt of Eagle Park Brewing Company. Eagle Park is one of the new breweries to open their doors to the public in Milwaukee. Those of you who went on the bus trip might remember their brewery as the unplanned stop to the brewery above Enlightened. Following the bus trip I heard many positive stories from the Barons about their experience, we decided to reach out and have EPBC join us.

Photo Credit Eagle Park Brewing Co.

March’s general meeting will be a hybrid Homebrew/Commercial night featuring a yeast parallel collaboration with Good City Brewing Company.

About 1 month ago, several Barons collected about 60 gallons of Irish Red wort from Good City and brought it home to ferment it with different yeasts or different conditions. Using the same wort, we can eliminate all of the variables associated with the brewing process itself and focus on fermentation characteristics.

Join us while we get an opportunity to sample all 12 of the examples side by side and discuss the differences from the yeast and comparing it to the commercial example. The meeting will start at 7:30 at Clifford’s.

We will also be welcoming Andy Jones, Owner and Brewmaster of Good City, to discuss his beer and sample what he has to offer. Andy is a graduate of UC Davis, has worked at Goose Island and most recently spent about 8 years working for Lakefront.

Heads Up!

• Will not have room for member beers on the Jockey Box this month. Please bring some bottles to share instead!
• The March Swap Meet will be happening before the meeting. It starts at 6:30. If you want to bring stuff to trade, please get there by 6:00. See the Swap Meet post for details.
• Starting at about 7p we will have about a half-dozen BJCP judges available to give you immediate feedback on your homebrew. This is a great way to get feedback on your brews, without waiting for the next competition. The judges will give you constructive criticism, suggest ways to make improvements, and if any flaws are detected, they will help diagnose the source.

^{Photo: Good City}

On February 22nd, we will welcome Sara Brauer, the Sales Manager of 3rd Sign Brewery and Octopi Brewing companies, and Sam Green the header brewer for 3rd Sign. Please join us at Clifford’s at 7:30pm for a fun-filled and educational evening as Sara and Sam introduce us to 3rd Sign and lend insight into the new contract-brewing outfit in Madison: Octopi Brewing.

Both 3rd Sign and Octopi are relatively new. Octopi was created as a one-stop contract brewing resource to help smaller breweries with everything from brewing, packaging and distribution. 3rd Sign is the in-house brand of the Octopi team.

We look forward to seeing you at the meeting. If you would like to bring a beer for the Jockey Box, please email the officers and let us know.

Lastly, if you would like to get some helpful feedback on any of your beers – without putting them on the Jockey Box – we will have a few of our club’s BJCP judges available to provide one-on-one feedback during social hour. Feel free to bring and bottle and find the judges!