January 2025

Happy New Year!!! As we enter into 2025, we ask all members to please fill out our 2025 Membership Sign Up. The sign up form, there are also options for our new glassware, we have craftmaster pint glasses and belgian tulip glasses, which can be picked up at our January meeting. Note dues are not required to be a member or attend meetings, but they do help the club fund meetings and special events for the entire year.

 Monthly Meeting

This month's meeting will be Dry January, we will be presenting on some non alcoholic and low alcoholic brewing methods. In case you want to reduce your alcohol consumption, or just want something more easy drinking.


White Elephant Quarterly Challenge

If you were unable to attend our December meeting and would like to participate, email lakewoodfermentationclub@gmail.com, we will randomly assign you an ingredient that you have to incorporate into your fermentation.


Up Coming Competitions


Education Corner

Pasteurizing Home Brew

Pasteurization?! Isn’t that something the macro brewers do to make their terrible swill last longer on warm store shelves? Doesn’t it kill all the flavor? Well hold on a second. While pasteurization does make products more shelf stable and it can have flavor impacts, neither of those things are necessarily negatives. For example, if you’re packaging NA beer, many feel that pasteurization is required because NA beer lacks the alcohol (and sometimes the sufficiently low pH) to be food safe. In terms of regular beer, the flavor effects I have observed have been minor - a slight increase in sweetness and a rounding out of the malt flavors. Granted, I have not experimented with any hoppy styles, but I have used this minor flavor impact to my advantage in a beer that I wanted to be just a hair maltier. There are many different approaches to pasteurization, but for beer a good rule of thumb is 5 minutes at 145oF. If you have a sous vide circulator, this is very simple. Heat the water to 165oF, add your capped bottles, and a dummy bottle full of water with a thermometer in it. Let the internal temperature of the dummy bottle reach 145oF, hold for 5 minutes, then pull out to cool on the counter. ¡Viola!