By Stephen Norrie

Thirsty_crowOn ANZAC day weekend this year, my wife and I were in the Hunter region for a wedding. We decided to stop in at the Potters Brewery in Nulkaba, for the Sunday night, for a spot of two-up and a look around the brewery.

Craig Wealands, one of the brewers at Potters, showed me around and also kindly shared some samples of Potters beers, including their Kolsch, Pale Ale and their excellent Porter.

It turns out that Craig is soon moving back to his home town of Wagga Wagga, to open the towns first craft brewery, The Thirsty Crow, at 31 Kincaid St. The Brewery has just received its 500 litre brewery and the development application has been approved, with the doors to open around July this year.

The Thirsty Crow’s line up will include a Red Light Ale, Kolsch, American Pale Ale, an ESB, Robust Porter, Batlow Apple Cider, a Hefeweizen (which I was lucky enough to sample) and some seasonals. You can follow the progress of the Thirsty Crow on Facebook.

By Tom Dixon, Social Secretary

Authorbox_social G’day brewers. Well the 2010 events calendar is quickly filling, with the Wig and Pen Brew Day set for 5 June and the Sydney Bus trip departing on 15 May. The Bus trip is sure to be popular with Rob Freshwater of Malt Shovel Brewery kindly offering to take us through their macro-brewery in Camperdown. Following the tour, I’m hoping to write-off all that we’ve learnt with a comprehensive pub-crawl of Sydney’s finest including; Lord Nelson, James Squire Brew House, The Australian, Harts Pub, Belgians, Redoak, Macquarie and The Local Taphouse.

Other upcoming events include the Presidents Brew Day in late April/early May, where Darryl plans to pop someone’s All Grain cherry. We’re also working towards a Zeirholz brew day, so keep an eye out on the Social Scene forum.

Read more »

By Darryl Barbour, President

Authorbox_president G’day brewers, last month was a busy one for the committee, with sponsorship arrangements and moving forward on a few of the purchases we talked about at the last meeting. In particular, I’ve been hunting down the oxygen equipment for the proposed club buy. I’ve now sourced a good price on the needle valve and flow-meter assembly, and appropriate airstones so we should be ready to kick this off. Check the forum for more details in the next few days.

Of course, brewing leads to beer which leads to club competitions. The judging on Sunday 28 March was great – not so much in that we, the judges, were great (though feel free to tell is that), but rather the quality of the beers was on the whole superb. It was especially great to see a few new names amongst the brewers at the top of each category. I’ve said it before, but we’ve got a National’s title to defend and looking at the number of brewers producing great beers, we’ve got to have a good shot at it. No resting though, it’s time to get those strong lagers and strong ales in the fermenter, to get them ready on time.

Read more »

By Paul Haesler, Treasurer

Authorbox_treasurer Hey all, it's your friendly neighbourhood treasurer Mozzie here. Well – all friendly now we've done the big account switch off at any rate. If you can no longer log on to the forum, it means you haven't paid. You should be aware of this anyway, because it's the most important $30 you'll spend all year (and our web-minion will have sent you an email when he deactivated your account).

At cutoff we had 82 paid-up members, with another 2 paying immediately on receiving their cutoff emails. This is a very healthy membership for this time of year, and I expect that this year we will easily break the highly symbolic 100-member barrier for the first time (We just missed it last year.)

Read more »