This month’s meeting was held jointly with Short Finger Brewing Company’s Homebrew Hangout. Regular attendees of SFBC’s homebrew hangout were welcomed to join True Grist members to hear about our club, and sample some gruit that the club collaboratively brewed with SFBC earlier in the month.
Attendance at this event was excellent by both members, and non-members. We filled up the back room at SFBC quite handedly!
Rob Hern (owner at SFBC) was handling fermentation and packaging of our collab brew. He ended up splitting the three gruit variants into two more variants each using lemon juice and raspberry puree. The brave sampled all six! It seemed that 1c, the gruit fermented with lacto was a favourite amongst the groups. Overall the gruit was quite bitter, that wormwood was potent! It was very interesting to see the impact of different fermentations on gruit character – for instance there was a huge difference in Omega Hot Head vs. Escarpment Cali Ale fermented variants. While the gruits may not have been anyone’s favourite samples during the evening, they were certainly an educational sensory experience 😆
Speaking of samples, there were no shortage. There was a table full of bottles which the homebrewers brought around the room through the evening to share and discuss with eachother – meeting new people easy when there’s homebrew!
Next month we return to a member’s residence for our meeting. It’s being held on March 15th, hope to see you there!