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.

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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.

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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.)

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By Stuart Whytcross

Thumbnail Scotland has a rich beer history with evidence of brewing dating back to 3000 years ago. The Celtic tradition of using bittering herbs remained in Scotland longer than the rest of Europe, and although they soon followed the rest of the brewing world, a recent revival of bittering with herbs is re-emerging amongst many brewers in Scotland.

Traditionally in Scotland, brewing was done by the “broustaris”, or alewives, and monasteries. Records show that in 1509 Aberdeen had over 150 brewers – all women!

By the mid 19th century Edinburgh had forty breweries and was “acknowledged as one of the foremost brewing centres in the world“, the success of Scotland’s brewing industry was partly due to the fact that Tax on beer was held at a lower amount than the rest of the United Kingdom, there was no tax on malt in Scotland…and I’m guessing their beers must have tasted alright as well!

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