THANK YOU to all who braved the cold last night for our February meeting – our 30th anniversary!

We enjoyed a fabulous evening at Barleys with great friends, great food, and of course great beer! As it was our 30th anniversary, we had some extra fun to help commemorate.

First, we had renowned beer journalist, Josh Bernstein, talk to us about his experiences and his books. It was fun learning about Josh’s journey from Ohio University in Athens to New York to professional beer journalist and some of the fun experiences in between. Josh had a few of his books available for purchase and he was also signing books that we had brought. Josh was super entertaining and he is actively enjoying the Columbus beer scene – good chance you’ll see him out and about!
www.joshuambernstein.com

Next, Angelo – renowned Brewmaster at Barley’s (and all around great guy!) brewed up a special coffee-infused Russian Imperial Stout on cask for the club. Barleys’ Russian Imperial Stout is celebrating its 30th year as well, and so it was rather fitting to have on hand. Regrettably, Angelo experienced some travel delays and was not able to attend, but we were certainly still able to enjoy his brewing talents!

Third, we started to take orders for our 30th anniversary shirts. We have 2 options: a long sleeve black T and also a gray Dickies work shirt. We will take orders until the March meeting. Please reach out to a board member by 3/17/25 if you’d like to order.

Finally, lots going on as the 2025 beer season is off and running! Here are some key announcements:

March 17, 7 pm – SODZ club meeting at 2 Tones. Club competition is Cider and Mead. Super excited to meet at 2 Tones – they do great beers and Anthony and Tony are great guys! REMINDER also – this is the deadline to get your shirt order in.
April 21, 7 pm – SODZ club meeting at Rockmill. While this may be a slight trek for folks on the north side, Rockmill is well worth the trip! Club competition will be Hop-a-palooza (any beer over 40 IBUs).
April 26 – British Beer Fest. Be sure to get your entries in soon and paid to be assured of your spot. BBF will start getting promoted more and more and we want to make sure everyone in our local club has a chance to compete. Also, please consider singing up to help set up or steward or judge if you haven’t already.
May 19 – SODZ Club meeting at Ill-Mannered in Powell. Club competition will be Fizzy Yellow Beers.

See you soon! CHEERS!

Thanks so much for making a great February meeting! What a pleasure to be at Barley’s Brewing Company yet again. We enjoyed classic Barley’s beers and a brewery tour from Angelo. 

Board Elections Coming Up

It is the time of year for SODZ elections! Minimally, we need someone to fill the roles of secretary, treasurer, and membership coordinator, but all board positions are accepting nominations. Feel free to contact any board member if you have questions about board membership or want additional details about a role. 

Also, keep in mind that there are more ways to be involved in the club than board participation, so feel free to hop in on other projects as well.

February Club Competition–11 Entries, British Invasion

The club competition for February was British beers (prepping for April!) and those winners are as follows:

1st Place: Jeremy Eberle, St. Brigid’s Feast, Irish red
2nd Place: Jim Sudduth, ESB
3rd Place: Brad Reardon, Nut Brown
The March Club Competition will be SMASH beers (single malt and single hop brews) and April is Hopalooza (beers over 40 IBUs).

Upcoming events

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, we have a bunch of great stuff on the docket! Stay tuned to email and social media for more details. 

March Meeting: March 18th, Hoster Brewing Company in Columbus (near the airport)

April Meeting: april 15th, Thunderwing Brewing Company in Columbus

British Beer Fest: April 27th at Olentangy River Brewing Company in Lewis CenterMarch 

Big Brew Day: May 4th, additional details forthcoming

May Meeting: May 20th, Ill Mannered Brewing Company in Powell (club comp is yellow, fizzy beers)

June (unofficial meeting): June 17th, Restoration BrewWorx in Delaware

SODZ Off-Flavor Training Seminar

Last Monday, February 26th, SODZ hosted an off-flavor seminar. We had 35 participants! Thanks to everyone who came out and participated. Events like this don’t work if they aren’t attended, so we appreciate it! There were 35 participants in total. 

Special thanks to:

-SODZ VP, Sandy Hugill for organizing and running this event

-SODZ Treasurer, Jason Wing for hosting the event at Thunderwing

-Volunteers: Ron Sleppy, Bill Otis, Jim Sudduth, Victor Aume, Sue Fryer, and Sara Taggart

Keep an eye out for more educational content like this in the future, and let us know what other types of content you’d like to see.

Cheers to a new year of SODZ! We are looking forward to sharing a great 2024 with all of you. Below are some upcoming events to get on your calendars as we kick off this year.

January Club Meeting: Our January meeting will be held at Forbidden Root Restaurant and Brewery at Easton Town Center in Columbus on January 15th. We are thrilled that (weather permitting) we will be joined by Randy Moser, who will give a talk. The club competition for this meeting is Beermageddon (aka, big beers), so any beer with an ABV over 8% qualifies.

February Club Meeting: Our February meeting will once again be hosted in the Underground at Barley’s Brewing Company in downtown Columbus on February 19th. A classic location for SODZ, and for quality beer in Columbus. In preparation for our spring hombrew competition, the club competition for February will be British Beers.

British Beer Fest: SODZ will once again be hosting our British Beer Fest on April 27th at Olentangy River Brewing Company. This competition needs judges, stewards, and (of course) entrants! The website is live and accepting entries. Click here to be taken directly to the competition website. The Lucci Cup beer this year is Category 17A1, Burton Ale.

We are very excited to have kicked off this next season of SODZ with our September meeting at Pretentious Barrel House in Columbus! 

President Mitch McGreal started the meeting off with general announcements from this past summer as well as all the things we are looking forward to this fall! We also got a great talk about Pretentious’ blending program.

Summer Highlights:

SODZ had an excellent summer picnic in July, thanks to our friends at Zachrich Hp Yard. In addition to some fresh hop brews and excellent food, we also judged the beers from the Iron Kettle Competition. 

This year’s Iron Kettle winner was SODZ Treasurer, Jason Wing! 

We also announced the winner of last year’s Brewer of the Year, who was Bill Koeppen. 
Be sure to congratulate Bill when you see him next and get brewing to keep the competition up this year!

Fall Announcements:

Beer for Boobs

SODZ is busy preparing for our annual Beer for Boobs homebrew competition, which will be held on Saturday, October 14th at Parsons North Brewing in Columbus. 

While entries are all filled, we still need help the Thursday before (checking in beers), and day of (judges, stewards, and assistance with the silent auction). 

If you are planning to volunteer the Thursday before, please indicate this as a staff shift for Thursday in your volunteer form, as this will help the competition organizers know how many folks to expect. 

If you are interested in helping keep the silent auction running, you can contact a competition organizer (Scott Elliot or Sandy Hugill), any board member, or Buddy Fryer (currently organizing the silent auction). 

October Meeting

SODZ is thrilled that our October meeting, featuring a Best of Germany-themed club competition, will be held at Hofbrauhaus Columbus! We hope to see everyone on October 16th at 7 pm!

Learn to Homebrew Day

Hard to believe it’s time to think about this already, but National Learn to Homebrew Day is coming up on Saturday, November 4th! We don’t have all the details of our event sorted out yet, but stay tuned to email and our social media, as we will have updates coming out over the next month or so!

November Meeting

We’ll be meeting at Grove City Brewing for our November 20th meeting! More details on that meeting as we get closer!

First and foremost thank you to everyone who showed up! This was one of the largest gatherings we’ve had in quite some time and we hope everyone enjoyed themselves!The meeting started off with Eric recapping the month that was. From a successful canning day with Nocterra to put Learn To Dunkle in cans. We also had 21 members show up to Nocterra for Learn to Homebrew day!Next month’s informal meting will be at Lineage for our Christmas party. There will be a dirty elephant (commercial beer exchange). As well as our December Club Competition:

• Christmas/Winter Speciality (21B)
• Belgian Specialty (16E),
• Wood Aged (22C)
• Speciality (23, convince us it’s Christmas)

After the announcements Ryan Torres talked about two of his most recent award winning beers. Toasty which won bronze in the English Mid or Bittter category! After describing the brewing process and answering members questions he moved into explaining Big Dog IPA. Big Dog IPA was named the best hoppiest beer in the nation by winning the Alpha King Challenge sponsored by Yakima Chief. Move over East Coast, Columbus would like to enter the game. Big Dog IPA uses CTZ, Mosaic, and Idaho 7 hops. Ryan also took questions from members on about the process of creating Big Dog IPA.

Congrats to this month’s club competitions stand outs!

* 1st Place: Thomas Babb – Chocolate Porter

* 2nd Place: Mike Noonan – Smoked Amber

* 3rd Place: Brad Reardon – Barrel Aged Porter

* Honorable Mention: Bill Bopp – Russian Imperial Stout

* Honorable Mention: Stacy Groene – Schwarzbier

We can’t wait to see you all at Lineage for some holiday fun!

Thanks again to Edison Brewery for hosting us this week! Victor Ecimovich and Wil Shulze were gracious enough to show us around the brewery with a personal tour. Club members enjoyed their hospitality and the fantastic beers on tap.

Events & Meetings to put on the calendar:

• November 4th – 10am Canning of Collab beer, Dunkleweizen @ Nocterra
• November 6th – National Learn to homebrew day at Nocterra: Base Malt and yeast and mash water provided
• November 15th Monthly Meeting @ Brew Brothers
• December 20th – Xmas Party @ Lineage

Here are some Important Dates to remember for October / November

• Oct 9 brew day at Nocterra
• Oct 18 October meeting at Edison
• Date for canning Nocterra collab beer coming soon ( will be on a weekday, in the AM)
• Oct 24 Beer for Boobs at Seventh Son
• Nov 6 NLTHBD at Nocterra

It was great seeing everyone who was able to attend. Huge thanks goes out to Brew Dog for allowing us to come out and receive a tour of their brewing facilities. While Steve was unable to make it because of a delayed plane, we were still able to get a tour from the brewer on duty and he even spent time after the tour answering questions from our members.We announced that Ron will be vacating his board Membership position due to some personal issues and that Mitchell McGreal will be taking over his position.We then talked about the hospitality that Zachrich provided us over the summer, allowing us to head over to their hop farm and brew 40gallons of beer using around 10pounds of their wet hops! We had a tasting event at Jason’s house in August, and we then distributed what was left of the beer to the club members in attendance. If you can show some love to Zachrich by purchasing hops or just following them on FB or instagram any little thing we can do to help them would be a great gesture from our members.We are also in need of judges for Beer for Boobs on October 24th. We are providing a $15 gift card at Bud Dairy Hall to every judge as a thank you! We recommend BJCP but you do not need to be BJCP certified to help out with this event. This could be some great practice for anyone who is interested in getting BJCP certified.If you are interested in helping out judging please register here: https://beerforboobs.sodz.org/Hope you have a great rest of September and look forward to seeing you all at Edisons Brewery for our next meeting!

Thanks to all the members (including new members) who came out for last night’s club meeting. Here’s a brief recap:

December Meeting
The club had looked at possibly having an in-person meeting for December, but the board decided that in the current environment it wouldn’t be possible, so we’ll hold it again via Zoom.

Learn To Homebrew Day
The Learn to Homebrew Day event at Nocterra Brewing was on November 7th. It was great to see several new faces (potential new homebrewers) in the crowd and also that Bruce and Bryan spent the day brewing a batch along with everyone else.

Barrel Project
Mitch McGreal gave the update on the project. This Saturday, the Imperial Stout will be removed and the English Barleywine will go in. Members who have beer in the barrel now or in the upcoming batch should be there Saturday or make accommodations to have their beer delivered to Mitch in time to be included.

Instagram / Social Media
Greg Lindeman was introduced to the club and will be taking over some social media duties, first of which is Instagram. He talked a little about the effort to reach out to members and non-members of the club and also to spread awareness of our local breweries.

Roundhouse Depot Brewing Company
Ron Troyer and his wife Kathy introduced us to their brewery, located in Bellefontaine OH. He gave a great introduction to his homebrewing background, prior experience in Virginia, and some details about starting up the brewery, it’s name and tie-in to local history, and his equipment. His wife Kathy talked about brewing on their pilot system and also their cider and winemaking. Ron was a great storyteller and obviously enjoys what he does. He encouraged SODZ members to come visit the brewery and when you do, let him know that you’re with the club.

Please join us for the upcoming club meeting on Monday, November 16th on Zoom.

Most of you have experience using this, but some don’t. If you don’t, download the Zoom app or visit the Zoom.us website to sign in and get oriented prior to Monday.

Closer to the meeting, we’ll send out a link to members to join into the meeting.

Approximate Schedule:
Social time 6:30-7:00pm
Announcements/Club Business/Discussion 7:00-8:00pm
Social Time 8:00-9:00pm

We’ll run through brief announcements and give everyone an update about what’s going on.

If there are any more details to share between now and then, we’ll update via the club Facebook page.

Hope to see you next Monday.