March 2016 – General Meeting: Cask Night

firkin-caskJoin us at our upcoming member meeting on Wednesday, March 23rd at our usual location Cliffords Supper Club in Hales Corners at 7:30pm.

We are exploring Cask ales this month with a presentation by our master-cellarman Bruce Buerger. Bruce will be giving us an overview about what Cask ale is, why we should care about it, and how to make it ourselves. We’ll have several Cask ales available to sample – along with a cask version of Josh Strupp’s ESB ramp-up with Milwaukee Brewing Company.

As always, we encourage you to let us know if you have a keg you’d like to share on the club Jockey Boxes this month. If you are interested, please email [email protected] in advance or let Josh know directly at [email protected].

February 2016 – General Meeting: Ciders

HardCiderIsInThe Beer Barons of Milwaukee invite you to attend our upcoming member meeting, Wednesday, February 24th at our usual location, Cliffords Supper Club in Hales Corners at 7:30pm.

We are going all-in on Cider’s this month with our very own Brian Joas (BJCP Northern Rep) and Bruce Buerger (BJCP Education Director) walking us through some tastings of homemade ciders.

If you haven’t completed your 2016 membership renewal, you can take care of that at the check-in desk as well.

We have limitied space on the Jockey Boxes this month, but if you are interested in bringing something to tap for the club, please email [email protected] in advance or let Josh know directly at [email protected].

Happy February, Barons!

(Image shared from drinkinginamerica.com)

January 2016 – General Meeting: Gadget Night

Jan2015GadgetNightThe Beer Barons of Milwaukee invite you to attend our upcoming member meeting, Wednesday, January 27th at our usual location, Cliffords Supper Club in Hales Corners.

The January, our gadget guru, Dave Campbell, will be back for Gadget Night Part IV.

We will also be handling membership renewals. If the meeting has started when you arrive, please be considerate of the speaker while you’re checking in and/or renewing your membership.

If you are planning to bring a keg to share at the meeting, please e-mail [email protected] in advance or let Josh know directly at [email protected] to let us know what you are bringing so we can have adequate serving equipment on hand.

Happy New Year, Barons!

December 2015 – General Meeting: Christmas Party

holiday-beer1The Beer Barons of Milwaukee invite you to attend our upcoming member meeting, Wednesday, December 16th at our usual location, Cliffords Supper Club in Hales Corners. Mark your calendars and don’t forget it is a week early this month in observance of the Christmas holiday.

December is our annual Holiday party. Cliffords will be serving broasted chicken along with sides. Please remember to bring a cold dish or dessert to share. We’ll have some great beers on tap, and will be holding out annual holiday raffle too.

To accomodate food service, we are starting the meeting at7pm. Food will be served buffet style, and we will be randomly sending tables to get their food.

The meeting fee is $10 for members and $15 for guests. Be sure to bring some tasting glasses and money for raffle tickets!

If you’d like to bring a keg to the meeting to put on the Jockey Box, please email the board ([email protected]) in advance to let us know what you are bringing and we will give you $20 for your ingredients.

Happy Holidays!

Novemeber 2015 – General Meeting: Belgian Night

BelgianNight2015The Beer Barons of Milwaukee MEMBER ONLY BELGIAN NIGHT is Wednesday, November 18th at our usual location, Cliffords Supper Club in Hales Corners.

Belgian night carries a $10 meeting fee and is reserved formembers only. Any guests wishing to attend will need to sign-up as a member, pay the prorated membership dues ($10) and the regular meeting fee.  The $20 charge will make their membership current up to January 31st, 2016.  At the meeting new members will receive a 2015 membership card.  Until supplies run out, all new members will be given two complimentary tasting glasses.

Belgian Night! This year we’re going to do things a little different. This year we’re taking the bottles away from you! Members will blind taste three beers from three different Belgian styles: Saison/Farmhouse, Tripel and Belgian Dark Strong.  We’ll be doing a short discussion following each style.  What did you perceive? Were there any flaws? What did or didn’t you like about each example?  Do you think this beer was brewed in Belgium or was it an American interpretation?  We’re going to find out what we perceive when we take away the labels. Discussion will be short and informal (no lectures, no guests). At the end of the night we may even have a couple specialty Belgian beers to enjoy for social hour.  You won’t want to miss this one as many of these beers are unavailable in Wisconsin.

As always we’re looking for homebrew for November’s meeting. We’d like each member who brings a keg to talk a little about the beer you’re sharing. This allows you to better showcase your homebrew as well as receive constructive feedback from the club.  If you bring a keg (or enough bottles to share) to the meeting and email the board in advance to let us know what you are bringing, we will give you $20 for your ingredients.  Please e-mail [email protected]  and let Josh know directly at [email protected] so we can have adequate serving equipment on hand.

October 2015 – General Meeting: Biloba

biloba-brewing-86225938The Beer Barons of Milwaukee invite you to attend our upcoming member meeting, Wednesday, October 28th at our usual location, Cliffords Supper Club in Hales Corners.

The October meeting will be a commercial meeting ($10) featuring Gordon Lane from Briess Malt/Biloba Brewing.  Gordon will be discussing brewing-related malt topics. In addition, yeast handling has also been a hot topic on our Baron’s forum and Gordon will field any questions regarding yeast handling so make sure to bring your malting/mashing/yeast handling questions with you. We’ll have Biloba Brewing Co. beer on tap as well as samples of Elysian Brewing and 10 Barrel Brewing provided by our own Rich Heller.

As always we’re looking for homebrew for October’s meeting. We’ll be sampling several hop-centric commercial beers this month so malt-forward homebrews would be much appreciated. We’d like each member who brings a keg to talk a little about the beer you’re sharing. This allows you to better showcase your homebrew as well as receive constructive feedback from the club.  If you bring a keg (or enough bottles to share) to the meeting and email the board in advance to let us know what you are bringing, we will give you $20 for your ingredients.  Please e-mail [email protected]  and let Josh know directly at [email protected] so we can have adequate serving equipment on hand.

Sepetember 2015 – General Meeting: BJCP 4-7

Lager-CloseUpThe Beer Barons of Milwaukee invite you to attend our upcoming member meeting, Wednesday, September 23rd at our usual location, Cliffords Supper Club in Hales Corners.

The September meeting will be a homebrew meeting ($5) featuring more lager beer deliciousness. Our own Brian Joas will be talking European lager BJCP categories 4 – 7.  We’ll have ten different homebrew examples from these categories for you to sample including some styles you may have never tasted before.  Each brewer will talk a little bit about their beer so make sure to ask any questions or provide feedback.  We’ll be providing placemats and sampling cups for anyone who would like to do a side-by-side evaluation of each style.  We want this to be as interactive as possible so I encourage anyone who is interested in these styles to read up on them before the meeting.

This month we are specifically looking for a couple of non-malt-forward homebrews for the meeting.  If you have something hop-forward, barrel-aged or otherwise non-European lager like we would encourage you to consider bringing it to the meeting. As alway we’d like each member who brings a keg to talk a little about the beer you’re sharing. This allows you to better showcase your homebrew as well as receive constructive feedback from the club.  If you bring a keg (or enough bottles to share) to the meeting and email the board in advance to let us know what you are bringing, we will give you $20 for your ingredients.  Please e-mail [email protected]  and let Josh know directly at [email protected] so we can have adequate serving equipment on hand.

August 2015 – General Meeting: Metropolitan

metropolitianThe Beer Barons of Milwaukee invite you to attend our upcoming member meeting, Wednesday, August 26th at our usual location, Cliffords Supper Club in Hales Corners.

The August meeting will be a commercial meeting ($10) featuring Tracy Hurst of Metropolitan Brewing Company. Tracy and her husband, Doug are Wisconsin natives brewing in Chicago.  Metropolitan began distributing into the Wisconsin market this spring.  Bring your lager process questions to the meeting as Tracy and Doug brew lager beers exclusively! As a bonus, we’ll be sampling Metropolitan’s not yet released Oktoberfest among others.

As always, we encourage you to bring your homebrew to share. We’d like each member who brings a keg to talk a little about the beer you’re sharing. This allows you to better showcase your homebrew as well as receive constructive feedback from the club.  If you bring a keg (or enough bottles to share) to the meeting and email the board in advance to let us know what you are bringing, we will give you $20 for your ingredients.  Please e-mail [email protected]  and let Josh know directly at [email protected] so we can have adequate serving equipment on hand.

Meeting Podcast – Usingers Sausage and Beer Pairing

Dave Mueller from Usinger’s Sausage will be our guest for our first ever “Usinger’s sausage and Milwaukee craft brew pairing.”  We’ll be sampling various Usinger’s sausages along with beers from Milwaukee area craft brewers.  The brewers at Sprecher, Lakefront, MKE Brewing Co., Brenner and St. Francis Brewing have been gracious enough to hand select the beers for this pairing.  In addition, Chef Don Walsh Jr. of The Blue Heron Supper Club in Big Bend, WI. and Chef Scott Mattfeld of Quarry Catering in Lannon, WI. are busy designing prepared sausage samplers around these beer selections (does chicken sausage wrapped in apple wood smoked bacon sound good?).

Podcast – Dave Mueller (10MB)