Club meetings are held on the third Tuesday of each month at 7:30PM in Shrewsbury, MA to discuss the latest home-brew and microbrew news, share home-brewing advice and sample each other’s home-brew. Feel free to stop in and join us. We will be there every month except maybe December when we often go a local pub or brewery to celebrate the holiday season. Please Note: For meeting location and directions, please reach out to the club via the WIZARDS Facebook page or email us at wizardshbc@comcast.net..
January at Monthly Club Meeting
New Brewers Night – The January meeting will be targeted towards all those new brewers who received brew kits over the holidays. Special new brewer brochures will be added to all brew kits sold at area homebrew stores in November/December. The purpose of the meeting is to attract new club members. One special event to go with New Brewer’s Night is “Bring Your Favorite Piece of Equipment” where you bring what excites you and a potential new brewer!
April Pub Crawl
Our annual pub crawl, usually through the streets of Worcester or Boston.
May – National Homebrew Day
Join the WIZARDS for a National Homebrew Day! The day features a club brewing day. Location to be determined each year.
July/August at Monthly Club Meeting
Summer Swill-Off – This fun event looks at the best (??) beer that the commercial world has to offer. For more information on this annual event, please see this write-up from Pat G. on the 2017 Summer Swill-Off.
September at Monthly Club Meeting
Octoberfest – Every September the WIZARDS host an Octoberfest. The goal is to sample and enjoy as many homebrewed Ofests as we can. But, as we do not always have enough homebrewed examples, we encourage everyone to bring a commercially made bottle or two – from wherever they can get it!
December/January – WIZARDS Holiday Party
The annual holiday party is usually held at one of our club member’s house or at a local tavern. The exact date will be set in the fall of each year.
February/May/August/November Mini-Comps at Monthly Club Meetings
Mini-comps are club only competitions that help hone brewing and judging skills. Competition Styles are picked three to six months in advance, allowing plenty of time to perfect your brew. Style talks are given the month after a style is picked to aid the brewer and sampling is done the before the mini-comp to aid the judging.
Here are some of the other events that the club has held over the years
Fall Brew Day
A club brew day, always held on the first weekend of October. Location to be determined each year.
Cider Night
Details of this event still need to be defined as we are looking for an event coordinator.
Quarterly Styles Brewing
Each quarter the club will determine a quarterly style. All club members are encouraged to brew a beer in the quarterly style and share it with other club members at a club sharing meetup (which may or may not be a monthly meeting). Prior to the quarterly style sharing meetup, there will be a group discussion of that style which will be either led by one individual or a free-form group discussion.
Intro to Homebrew Competitions and Judging
An informal session about how to enter your been into area Homebrew Competitions and an opportunity to learn about judging and/or stewarding homebrew competitions. Topics discussed may include: what to expect at a Homebrew Competition, how to judge homebrew, how to judge the quarterly style, how to register to become an official homebrew judge and/or learning about homebrew scoring sheets.