North County Brewers – March Meet at the Old Boro

A cold night for a meet but there were some great beers, ciders, wines and even port to warm us up!

We were honoured by the presence of two gold medal winners from the recent competition. RichieH brought along his prize winning amber ale which was judged a worthy winner by all of us. Will’s cider was not available as it had gone off to be tasted on the radio. He brought his other cider and the silver medal German Bok Weissen.

All in all we tasted about 18 beers. We arranged them in a “flight” order and almost managed to stick to it!

Jacob brought along stout, a pale ale and a Belgian triple. ColmR brought 2 Weisse beers both from the same wort but two different yeasts. Nigel_c brought along stout. James (P9) brought along a Hefeweissen and the TOG extract SNAP clone. In true James style he also brought along two examples of his

“Proper Job” that were bottle conditioned. The difference? One bottle was shaken to make sure the sugar dissolved the other was not shaken!

The difference was quite noticeable: The bottle that was shaken was noticeably less sweet!!

Cahal brought his bottle conditioned AIPA and Richie also brought a brown ale and a Weiss.

Our latest recruit BrianC brought lots of enthusiasm and questions to the meeting. He had long discussions with several of us.

Ratsathome brought a strawberry Ribena wine and a golden mixed fruit wine – both were excellent.

The evening was rounded off by Will’s port.

But No, the evening tasting was not over! Jacob appeared with two glasses of what looked like and tasted like lager but the difference between then was palpable – one was a bit bland and tasteless the other hoppier, rounder, better mouthfeel – interesting.

The better one was eventually revealed as being bottled Heineken, its blander cousin was the draught! An excellent blind tasting experiment to round off the evening!

Will had brought along hop plants for all and so in a few years time the North County area will have a new URL: “HopvilleCentral.ie”

Here’s till next month!

– Will_D