Background Information About The Worts of Wisdom


Activities

Projects

The club organized a Hop Analysis Brewing with hops supplied by Mark Garetz of HopTech. We brewed 15 batches of beer in one day, each using a different hop variety for flavor and aroma. This was a useful, as well as entertaining project, and was well received by the club members.

The Worts of Wisdom is planning a Yeast Analysis Brewing in which a large batch of low hopped/low gravity wort will be divided up and inoculated with a different culture of yeast from our yeast bank. We performed this test a few years ago and it resulted in the biggest meeting we've ever had. People LOVED this meeting and it is still revered today.

Club Activities

Annual Events

The Spring Bay Area Pub Crawl is how we reward ourselves for the hard work we do at the Small Brewers Festival. Last year, we started our day with an 11AM appointment at Anchor Brewing for a tour, tasting and sausages. 20 Tank followed and then we crossed the bay. Triple Rock and Jupiter were our Berkeley stops and we headed south after a tour and tasting at the Tied House-Alameda. Our last stop was Buffalo Bill's and then back to Mountain View to end our 10-hour tour. We had great raffle prizes donated by Celebrator Beer News, Triple Rock Brewery, Beermakers of America-San Jose, author Jack Erickson, 20 Tank and Buffalo Bill's. The trip was sponsored by the Tied House and Brewing Techniques Magazine.

This year the tour started at Tied House-San Jose. The first two stops were microbrewery tours at El Toro in Morgan Hill and Coast Range in Gilroy. The three Santa Cruz brewpubs finished things off: Seabright, Live Soup, and Front St./Santa Cruz Brewing Co. All of these places kicked in prizes for the "raffle" (everyone won something, no purchase required), as did Microbrew Express, Beermakers -- the new brew-on-premises in Mountain View -- and others. The trip was sponsored by the Tied House.

The club Summer Camping Trip is always a fun time when a little excess is okay. Nobody is going anywhere, so we kick back, cook up our best recipes and keep the cool stuff pouring. Our members always look forward to this event. This year this may become the summer boating trip.

We have a booth at Small Brewers Festival where we talk to the public about homebrewing and beer. The response we get is fantastic! Last year we had over three hundred people sign up on our mailing list.

The club held our first Oktoberfest held at Hochburg Von Germania Restaurant in San Jose. We had our monthly meeting while sampling a great selection of German beers. The consensus was to make this an annual event.

An annual "Holiday Cheer" Party is held every December. The club buys a ham and a turkey and members bring side dishes. We have a gift exchange and last year we added a raffle which included a Grand Prize of a two-day Advanced Homebrewers course from the American Brewers Guild.

Throughout our History

The Worts of Wisdom has coordinated five homebrew competitions in four years (1992 & 1993 San Mateo County Fair, 1993 Gilroy Brewfest, 1994 & 1995 Small Brewers Festival). Applying our experience has allowed us to refine the competition and judging and we had several judges comment that the 1994 Small Brewers Festival Amateur Brewing Competition was the most organized and smoothest running judging they had ever participated in.

WOW Meetings

We hold meetings on the last Wednesday of every month, except in December when we have a holiday party on a weekend day in the middle of the month. The meetings typically alternate between members' homes and local sites of beer-related interest, such as brewpubs.

Brewpub meetings consist of a brief run through of club business, followed by a tour, talk, or other site-specific event. After this formal part of the meeting there is an informal networking time.

Home meetings also start off with club business. This is followed by an educational talk. These are usually either "tech" talks on subjects like yeast culturing, kegging, and mashing, or style talks on a particular style or styles of beer, with tasting of commercial and/or homebrewed versions. The last order of business is a tasting/judging education activity, like beer doctoring sessions or a beer round table where people can take part in either side of a semi-formal judging of members' beers. Networking and sharing of beers takes place during and after this activity.


Membership Information

Membership dues are $20/yr. Cohabitating brewers may join together for $25/yr. Membership benefits include participation in club activities, access to all of the club resources, and a subscription to the newsletter. If you would like to join or would like more information, please contact us.


Club Documents

Our bylaws define the purpose and methods of operation of our club and is an integral part of our achieving Not-For-Profit status. These may be interesting to you if you are setting up your own club. You may take a look at them.

You may also look at our Articles of Association.