March Meeting -March Madness “Sweet 16”

Since it’s March- it means brackets.  Our meeting centered on selecting the best beer from the 16 beers.

Chris Siegman chose 8 commercial beers to compete with club members beers.  We had 9 club members bring beer so we dropped a commercial beer and used that as the prize for the evening.

The brackets were drawn putting a homebrew up against a commercial beer.  The beers were poured into pitchers and assigned a number.  Non-judges knew the numbers and kept the brackets moving.  Judges were blinded.  In the first rounds, no judges were judging their own beer.

Members were divided into regions (tables) and the beers were judged against each other.  All the judges knew was the base style of beer: porter, session IPA, Pilsner, ect.

Each region sent the best beer from there table to the final four.

These were Kelly Pendergraft’s Imperial Amber against Rheingeist’s Knowledge- Double IPA

And the other bracket sent Mike Florez’s Madagascar Vanilla English Porter against Lucian Florea’s Cream Ale

The final two were: Rheingeist’s Knowledge- Double IPA vs Mike Florez’s Madagascar Vanilla English Porter

The winner was Rheingeist’s Knowledge- Double IPA

Homebrews made a fantastic showing with 3 of the final 4.

Click on the PDF to see how the brackets went down.

Let’s do this again next year!

march madness CMI sweet 16

April 13th CMI Meeting

Our club meeting for April will be a discussion of short turn around beers.  Short turn around beers are beers that can be made in two weeks or less.  This discussion will include beers that fit in this group, recipes and secrets for brewing these beers.  Come join us for this great program, beers shared by are members (many who are award winning brewers) and meet some great people.