Our last meeting of 1996 was at Chelsea's on Tuesday, December 17th. A good turnout arrived and the master of ceremonies, our president, Mr. Rich Byrnes, began the meeting.

There was a reminder that the club dues for 1997 are now due. Benefits for paying members include receiving this publication, discounts at most of the local retails of homebrew supplies, the annual beer-b-que, etc. Anyone who does not pay their 1997 dues by March will be dropped from the distribution list and will not receive their discount card. Please see any of the club officers regarding club dues.

Our vice-president, Johanne Wilson, reviewed some of the ideas that were surfaced at the last executive meeting. There will now be award ribbons for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishing beers for each months competition. There will also be an award and prize (yet to be determined) for The Brewer of the Year. This individual will have submitted the most winning entries during the year.

Other ideas that came up included have a label competition and brewing a commemorative beer as a club. Because of Johanne's commitment as VP, she has handed the reins over to Gabrielle Palmer to continue the Beer Judging group. If you have any interest in taking the BJCP exam this February, contact Gabrielle as soon as possible. Gabrielle will also take over the duties regarding the monthly competitions.

Our librarian dedicated the 50/50 raffles proceeds to go to the resurrection (or should I say the perpetuation) of the Home Brew Digest (HBD). These funds were to help Pat Babcock pay for the hardware necessary to take the HBD over. Steve Rowley was the lucky winner, pocketing $30.50 as his share of the loot.

Jim Bazzy, our Special Events Coordinator, is seeking volunteers for any and all committees. These include the Beer-B-Que committee, the 1997 AHA convention and other activities that come up during the year.

Someone (sorry, can't remember that far back) gave the two thumbs up for the Box Bar and Grill in Plymouth. They have over 150 beers on tap and they have an application into the state to become a brew pub. If you haven't visited this establishment as of yet, it is really worth it. However, as a relatively frequent patron, may I humbly suggest that you not stray far from the hamburgers with regards to your dinning selection.

Mr. Gadget (AKA Rich) demonstrated how, with a little ingenuity, one can make homemade carbonator caps for approximately $1.50/cap. Look for his write-up elsewhere in this newsletter.

The next meeting will be held Wednesday, January 22nd, at Chelsea's. Chelsea's is located on Vanborn between Telegraph and Southfield (midway, on the North side). Their address is 22120 Vanborn and their number is 313-278-0888.

This month's competition is Pale Ales. They had to be judged prior to the meeting because the winner will have theirs sent on to the AHA club-only competition. The winning brewer will be announced at the meeting.

Which leads me to the next item. Tyler won the November competition with his Belgian Ales He took both 1st and second prize. He entered his winning brew and entered it into the AHA competition. I will attempt to wrangle a recipe from him and publish it in the next newsletter.

Last months Holiday Spice beer winner was Crispy (good spicing). Second prize went to Brian Shepard (good flavor_) and third prize went to Rich Byrnes. Crispy brewed a basic ale and then in the secondary he added 3 oz. of fresh ginger (diced in the coffee grinder), six sticks of cinnamon, one tablespoon of nutmeg and approx.. one foot of vanilla bean. Take these ingredients and boiled them for about 5 minutes in about 3 cups of water. Chilled this mess until it got to about room temperature and then added it to the secondary carboy when racking the Ale over from the primary.

The Beer-b-que will be on Saturday, July 12th. Try to mark your calendar now as this is one of the club's highlights and we have a generally kick-butt time.

The 1997 competition schedule is:

Month Style: AHA*

January Hail To Ale 1/27

February Luscious Lager 3/10

March Stout ---

April Bock Is Best 5/19

May Brown Ale ---

June Kölsch ---

July Extract Extravaganza 8/4

August Lawnmower Beer ---

September Weiss is Nice 10/20

October Oktoberfest ---

November Bitter Mania 12/1

December Holiday Beer & Barley Wine

and entries for AHA National "Hail to Ale"

* Entries with a date under the AHA category indicate that the winning club beers will be entered into the AHA sponsored contest to be held on these dates.

Here's the club schedule for 1997.

Wednesday, January 22nd

Tuesday, February 25th

Wednesday, March 26th

Tuesday, April 22nd

Wednesday, May 28th

Tuesday, June 24th

Wednesday, July 23rd

Tuesday, August 26th

Wednesday, September 24th

Tuesday, October 28th

Wednesday, November 19th*

Tuesday, December 16th *

* Holiday season

The club officers meet on Wednesday, January 7th to continue brainstorming and to determine the scheduling for the rest of the year. The results are the finished club and competition schedule that you now have.

Johanne Wilson shared with us the costs of purchasing the ribbons that will be awarded for the winning entries for the club competitions and the officers unanimously approved the expenditure.

Rich Byrnes informed us that the F.O.R.D. coasters are in and they look great! Remember, they are $5.00 a sleeve and each sleeve has 50 coasters. They will be available at the next meeting.

We decided to try the Beer Exchange again, only this time instead of a six-pack, all you have to contribute is a single bottle. This will be a blind grab-bag. Label our beer t with at least your name and the style, and preferably a recipe.

Starting next month the newsletter will begin a regular feature highlighting on of the merchants that participates in offering our club a discount. Personnel information about the employees and what each merchant sees as their particular strength will be part of the regular story.

F.O.R.D. is a private, non-profit organization of home brewers. Its main goal is to share information regarding technique, equipment and skill required to brew quality homemade beer.

Correspondence should be directed to:

Chris P. Frey

42686 Woodbridge Road

Canton, Mi. 48188

Work 313-337-1642

Home 313-397-7001

(w) chris.frey-ford@e-mail.com

(h) crispy@worldnet.att.com

Visit our website at: http://oeonline.com /~pbabcock/ford.html

current circulation.....130, and growing!

By Ted Geftos

Nothing like sitting down after a long day of work and opening one up, all comfy and cozy in the favorite chair. It may be bitter cold outside, but everything is just dandy here in the Barcolounger. Yep, sometimes

I open up several in one night, sometimes all at once... Of course I am loosely

referring to Beer Books. Crack one open and you'll get a good head, but it won't be a foamy one (hopefully not flat either)! Drink from the tap of brew knowledge! Come slake thy thirst for know-how in the cellar-temperature waters of your club library!

As the new club librarian, my first duty is to tell everyone to SHHHHHH! (little library joke there). Next is to make sure everyone knows that we have a club library, and to encourage everyone to check it out (another little library joke).

The library procedures will be similar to those administered by Librarians Emeritus Geiss and Frey. The library will be at all meetings, and all material can be checked out there. They will be due to be returned at the following meeting. If a book is needed between meetings, just contact me by phone or profs so that a pick-up can be arranged (TGEFTOS, work (313) 84-59278, home (313) 441-4246).

The new thing planned for this year is to post a listing of the available materials on the club Home Page on the net, as well as the PROFS bulletin board. More titles will be added until the library is too heavy to move. If you have a particular book that you would like to see us purchase, please let me know!

There are some materials that are lost or not returned. Please review the list and check out your brew books to make sure that you do not have them. There are no penalties for late returns, except for a bottle of your homebrew payable to me....

MISSING BOOKS: AUTHOR(S)

Continental Pilsener

Homebrew Favorites Lutzen and Stevens

Making Beer Mares, William

Pocket Guide to Beer Jackson, Micheal

The Home Brewer's Companion Papazian, Charlie

AVAILABLE BOOKS: AUTHOR(S)

50 Great Homebrewing Tips; Weisberg

Belgian Ale; Rajotte

Bock; Richman, Darryl

Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy; Line, Dave

Brewing Lager Beer; Noonan, Gregory

Brewing the World's Great Beers; Miller, Dave

Cider

German Wheat Beers;Warner, Eric

Great Beer From Kits; Fisher, Joe & Dennis

Great Cooking with Beer; Erickson, Jack

Lambic

Marzen-Oktoberfest Vienna;

Fix, George & Laurie

Pale Ale; Foster, Terry

Porter

Scotch Ale

Stout

The Beer Hunter CD ROM Jackson, Michael

Victory Beer Recipes; AHA

MAGAZINES:

Zymurgy Magazine (Fall '93 to the present)

Brewing Techniques (Winter '94 to the present)

Brew Your Own (Selected issues)

By Rich Byrnes

For those of you that know me this column will come as no surprise, for those of you new to the club you will quickly learn. Almost as strong as my love of brewing is my love of tinkering. I like several other members of the club have built my own Pico^® style system, and have made several modifications (improvements?) to the original design. I will not use this space to talk about recipes, beer, hops, etc, I will instead use this space to talk about equipment. I hope to put out a column each month talking about different equipment: draught systems, kegging systems, filtration, all grain equipment etc. Much of this info may not be truly original, some of it comes from different publications, some from other homebrewers, and some right off the net. I will always try to credit the source of my column wherever possible. For those of you who are tinkerers (OK, gadget freaks) there is a new book on the market by Karl Lutzen called Brew Ware(s?) a book of home-spun tools, gadgets and innovations.

My column this month will feature the stainless steel tire valve Carbonator® style cap I presented last month. There was an article in a previous issue of brewing techniques that explained this nifty cap, and both Bob Zukosky and Doug Lacureaux in our club have made these caps so I'm not exactly treading on new ground, but there is a difference. Both the article and Bob & Doug's (G'day eh!) caps used the standard rubber tire stem. Whilst perusing the aisles at my local Pep Boy car care centers I noticed a package of shiny stainless steel tire stems right next to the rubber ones. The difference in design is that the rubber ones are merely pulled through a hole and they are supposed to seat themselves, the stainless ones actually have a nut that tightens down to firmly and securely lock and seal this whole piece. So of course I bought the more expensive shiny ones (for those of you that know me this comes as no surprise either) To start, the tire stems are marked "for .453 holes" This translated to a 29/64 drill bit. I merely grabbed an empty 2l bottle with the cap still attached and drilled a hole in the middle of the cap. I used a center punch to mark a small indentation so the drill bit wouldn't chatter, but I didn't mark the precise center, I just eyeballed it. I felt the hole was a tad too small so I moved up to a 31/64 and that worked better. It's possible a 1/2 would work just fine but I haven't tried it yet.

Anyways, after drilling the hole (making sure the rubber liner is intact) I used an exact-o knife to deburr and clean up the hole. I used a dab of keg-lube (a food grade silicone lubricant) around the edge of the rubber flange and pulled it through the hole, and then tightened the lock nut on top of that. The article in Brewing Techniques recommends backing out the valve on the inside with a valve removal tool and giving that a dab of keg lube too and reseating that, this will be the weak link if any. At that point you are done! To build the filling hose You need the following, a short section of ¼" gas hose, a ¼hose-barb to male ¼ flare adapter (available at homebrew supply shops that carry a lot of kegging equipment), a ¼:" hosebarb to male ¼" pipe adapter, and an air-chuck with a female ¼" opening on the back side.

Connect the airchuck to the female adapter, then slide that in the hose and clamp to secure. Slide the other hose barb adapter in the other side and secure with a clamp. Viola! You are done.

This system assumes you use removable cornelius fittings for your kegs, if you use fittings that are barbed and permanently secured to your hose you will have to install a splitter. Anyways, to use merely fill a one or two liter bottle with fresh beer right from your keg, squeeze as much air out as possible and then screw the cap on, hook up your air chuck hose to your CO2 tank and proceed to inflate the bottle with CO2, I generally use about 12-14 Lbs of pressure. This system allows you to bottle fresh beer for portability with as little bother as possible.

To buy a commercially made Carbonator brand cap costs between $12 and $14. I purchased a pack of 4 S.S. Tirestems for less than $5 from Pep Boys (I haven't seen these stems at any other store) and the components to make the hose cost less than $5 as well. Enjoy this cap and if you have any innovations you would like to share please contact me and I will feature it in an article!

You know you're a homebrewer if...

you measure beer in gallons.

if you don't think 10 gallons of beer is a lot.

If you have ever used a mop on a ceiling.

if you have a large stove pot that no one else is allowed to use.

If there is a bottle in your fridge with an airlock on it.

if you ever bought a 6-pack just because you liked the empties.

and as a twist on this theme... you know your a redneck if you think frogs say "bud".

1996 The Taste of the Great Lakes

Congratulations go to both Jim Bazzy and Tyler Barberfor their winning brews in this competition. Jim won seconfd place in the Pale Ale category with his Half Soldier pale ale Jim also won second place in the India Pale Ale category with his King Me IPA won second place

Tyler Barber won second place in the Specialty category with his Lonely Man Vanialla Stout. Tyler, you'll never be lonely with all those great brews of yours! Congratulations, gentlemen!

The BCJP/tasting group meet on January 14th to judge the entries for the AHA "Hail to Ale" competition. Crispy knocked out his second winning brew in a row with his American Pale Ale. Obviously, neither Tyler nor Jim entered their brews from the Great Lakes competition! At 44 out of a potential 50 points, Crispy eked by Dan Riling's Pale Ale (42 points). The Wood/ Hansen team took third place with 41 points.

The winning recipe is:

(Ingredients for a 10 gallon all-grain)

14 lb Briess two-row malt

1/2 lb 60oL Crystal Malt

1/2 lb six-row CaraPils malt

6 lb Munich Malt

2 lb Vienna Malt

3.5 oz Cascade Hop pellets 4.4 aa (60mins)

1 oz Cascade Hop pellets 4.4 aa (45mins)

1 oz Cascade Hop pellets 4.4 aa (30mins)

3 oz Cascade Hop pellets 4.4 aa (15mins)

2 oz E.Kent Goldings Hop pellets 6 aa (also15mins)

Wyeast American Ale No. 1056 liquid yeast

(I stepped it up twice with two cups of boiled and cooled H20 and 5 tablespoons of light DME)

2 oz Cascade Hop pellets 4.4 aa and 1 oz E.Kent Goldings Hop Pellets 6.0 aa for dry hopping in the secondary. After the krausen fell, I racked to the secondary carboy and added the dry hops about five days later. Another five days and I bottled.

I mashed the grains @ 154o for 75 minutes and I spent about an hour sparging the grains. I boiled the wort for 90 minutes and began adding the hops after 30 minutes of boiling. The S.G. was 1.050 and the F.G. was 1.011.

At the last meeting it was correctly pointed out that the National AHA convention in Cleveland begins on a Thursday (July 17th), not a Friday, and therefore anyone who wants to attend the entire event will need to take an extra day off from work. By the next newsletter I hope to have the day-today schedule so that people can determine if they want to attend the entire event or perhaps just part of it.

Another page by BabsTech Enterprises. Can we do yours?

Last updated 1/16/97