Last Meeting

Well, it would be repetitive if I started every newsletter off with a big capital WOW so I won't, but I feel like doing it anyway. For the original members of this club, the old fogies that go back to 93, this club has undergone an incredible change, it shows in club attendance, the energy at the meetings and the amount of volunteers we get anytime we ask for help, just in case you were curious I just gave out member ID card #83!

Last months attendance was about 45 members and guests, down a little from February but a great turnout none the less! The meeting started an hour late due to some miscommunications but not too many people seemed to mind given the level of conversations going on. Neal started the meeting with an introduction and the usual caveat about drinking & driving, wise words of advice! He then went over the changes to the charter that were highlighted in the newsletter (FYI, FERA has received the charter and had an initial reading so we are on our way!)

Tim or Neal touched on March's contest (porter, more later!) and Dave Dahl & Johanne Wilson gave a brief speech about the Judging classes recently started by Neal (Dave organizes the west siders & Johanne the East siders) The first meeting was at Tom Sieja's house where about a dozen people were in attendance. This class will teach the fundamentals of beer evaluation in preparation for the BJCP test. Please contact Dave Dahl (313-464-6254) or Johanne Wilson (810- 445 -3762) for more info. Volunteers to host meetings have been assigned up until June.

Tim spoke out on the importance of the committees within the club. Our prior experience has taught us that too many cooks would be a good thing on committees! We have never had enough people to make things run as smooth as they could, and it always seems that a handful of people do all the work, so, if you're interested in helping out with any of the special events (Pig Roast, Nat'l homebrewers day or Dearborn Homecoming) please see Tim Tepatti. We have a pretty good list but the more the merrier!

In my allotted timeslot I showcased some merchandise with our logo (coffee/beer mugs) and coasters. After this meeting I will place the order for mugs and coasters so if you're interested, speak out now or at the meeting. If anyone reading this newsletter (at Ford Motor Co only) has Microsoft Word and does not yet receive the news electronically, please see me as I wish to reduce the number of copies I make and increase the number of newsletters sent out electronically (currently 37) As of this writing I don't have the capability to send out the newsletter electronically to non Ford members, it's a systems issue, not a personal one, trust me!

Sandy Bruce (our treasurer) reported on the status of the dues and as of this writing there are still 6 people that haven't paid their dues for the year (existing members only) so we are statistically doing quite well. Sandy will start giving a live treasurers report at each meeting with the status of our account.

Chris Frey reported on a number of new books in the library (more on that later) and reiterated the library rules for the new members. The new books are as follows; Noonans Brewing lager beer, Papazian/Gayre Brewing Mead and the association of Brewers Dictionary of Beer & Brewing.

Pat Babcock spoke on the T-shirt issue and all but 12 T-shirts are in the hands (arms?) of their proper owners.

Steve Robertson closed the meeting portion of the meeting by announcing the grain bins are in, the walk in cooler is being stocked and the hop/yeast frig is now right next to the homebrewing area, YYAAAAAA!

(Note to retailers, if you wish to attend a meeting and speak to the club please contact me to be put on the agenda, thanks!)

IN THE NEWS.......

Our club has a new friend in the media, Free Press reporter Matt Davis (a freelance political writer AND homebrewer) ran an article on homebrewing in general back on March 6(?) in the Wed. Food Section. The article was a brief introduction to the hobby accompanied by several food recipes from different beer-n-food recipe books. Matt interviewed a handful of retailers and myself for the article and has let me know that he has petitioned his editor to do a bimonthly article on beer/brewing/homebrewing stuff. He has promised to keep in touch with the club for future articles (National home brewers day!) Matt has a lot of enthusiasm for the hobby and a lot of ideas lined up for future articles.

SHOP TALK

Wine Barrel Plus now carries liquid extract in bulk, John Bull Light, Amber & Dark extracts are available for $1.49 per pound (introductory price, discount does not apply) You bring your own container!

Competition News by Tim Tepatti

Last month's AHA's Club-Only Competition was for the Ultimate Alt. For the second month in a row, the brewing techniques of Tyler Barber and Bill Cole overwhelmed the competition. Out of four entries (come on people, we need more!) Tyler and Bill's Dusseldorf-style Altbier scored the highest. Jim Bazzy came in a close second, and Tim Tepatti finishing last(Better Luck next Time) (Tyler's recipe will appear later in the newsletter)

This month's contest, "The Perfect Porter", will be held at this month's meeting. The style guidelines are as follows: 9a) Robust Porter-- Black. No roast barley character. Sharp bitterness of black malt, without high burnt/charcoal like f flavor. Medium to full bodied. Malty sweet. Hop bitterness medium to high. Hop flavor and aroma: none to medium. Fruitiness/esters OK. Low diacetyl OK. 9b) Brown Porter -- Medium to dark brown. No roast barley or strong burnt malt character. Light to medium body. Low to medium malt sweetness. Medium hop bitterness. Hop flavor and aroma: none to medium. Fruitiness/esters OK. Low diacetyl OK.

Next months contest will be another AHA club only competition "Bock is Best" with an entry deadline of May 13th. For categories and questions, contact Tim Tepatti - work (313) 845-1503 home (810) 442-0874 Our club judging for this contest will be at our April 23rd meeting.

An anecdote from the Westminster Review 1846

"Men, Englishmen too, have been heard of, who do not know the taste of porter. This cannot be credited; though it may be readily believed that many are quite ignorant of the taste of water."

Competitions.....

The Great Baraboo in Fraser is sponsoring their first contest. The rules are simple, pre-registration is a must! Call 1-810-792-7397 for info on pre-registering. The entry fee is $0.00, yup, this is a freebie. The judging is April 22 and you must be present, there are no early drop-offs. The winning beer will be brewed by the Brewmaster at the Baraboo and the homebrewer, all styles are accepted, 2 bottles, no labels or cap markings (pretty standard stuff) I would like to see some participation from our club, I know this is an East Side brewpub but as of today (3-18) there were only 8 entries, yup, 8 so right now the competition is pretty slim.

The Ann Arbor Brewers Guild is holding their annual Small & Tiny competition. Small beers have an OG of 1.035-1.043 and Tiny Beers have an OG of < 1.035. The contest entry deadline is April 12th, please see me for entry forms or call Spencer Thomas (Spencer@umich.edu) at 313-994-0072 for more info.

Tyler Barber & Bill Cole received their score sheets back from the January AHA club only contest, their beer scored in the high 30's with some really positive feedback from the judges. Their were 80+ entries for this national competition.

Member News

Dawn and David Peters proudly welcomed Marissa Daniella Peters into the world on February 16th at 10:36 PM. She weighed in at 7 lbs. 4 oz and was 21 inches long. Mother and child are doing well.

New Members:

Dan Riling

Larry Wikel

Neil Ferraro

Mike Beckwith

Joseph Brown

Steve Robertson

Chris Cirino

A very special thanks to our friend Steve Robertson at Merchants Warehouse in Dearborn for donating a ticket to the Schoolcraft Tasting last month. The ticket was raffled off an Larry Wikel was the lucky winner.

Winning Recipe...

Tyler Barber & Bill Cole

The winning recipe is as follows:

H-H-H-Alt

6.5 gallons, extract with specialty grains

One can 6.6 lbs Ireks light malt extract (unhopped)

1 lb. Munich malt

1 lb. Crystal (44 L)

1/3 Oz Northern Brewers 7.8% AA for 75 minutes

1 Oz Hallertau 3.9 % AA for 45 minutes

1 Oz Tetteng 3.1 % AA for 30 minutes

1 Oz Hallertau 3.9 % AA for 20 minutes

1 Oz Tetteng 3.1 % AA for 15 minutes

1 tsp. Irish moss at 15 minutes

Mash at 160 degrees

Starting gravity of 1.042

Finishing gravity 1.008

1/2 tsp. of Fermaid (added to the fermenter)

W-yeast 1007 German ale yeast

fermentation 3 weeks at 55 deg(?)

Recipe Book

Last call for recipes. In January I announced plans to create a club only version of winners circle, I planned on including all past winning recipes but I also need recipe submissions from everyone! To date only 5 people have submitted recipes, if you think this is a worthwhile project PLEASE send me your favorite recipes, otherwise this project is scrapped, thanks!

What's New....

Michigan Homebrewing Supply in Roseville (open since 1/1/96) is mainly a mail-order business but offers will-call pickups for local area residents. Joe Bronski (810-774-5619) has a 8 page catalog for the asking and great prices! He is offering club members a 5% discount on all items and a 10% discount on orders over $500.

Tyler Barber has located a new source of Belgian Candi Sugar (amber grade) from a mail order firm. I don't have exact prices but if anyone wants to get in on a bulk purchase please see me & I'll coordinate this with Tyler. This supplier just imported 2 tons of this sugar and is eager to cut some deals!

Thanks to Brian Davis for this news bit. Ford has released a fleet of natural gas delivery vehicles (full size Econoline vans) to Heartland Brewery in New York City for an extensive 6 week test. Ford is conducting aggressive testing of fleet vehicles in 10 major markets and New York already has 20 Natural gas fueling centers and about 2,200 existing natural gas fleet vehicles already on the road.

Crispy Fry's Book Review

MAKING BEER, William Mares, 1984

Making Beer travels through time with William Mares, starting from his first prohibition style recipe using Blue Ribbon Hopped Malt Extract and Fleischman's bakers yeast up to his decision in the mid-eighties not to pursue devoting his life savings to create a micro-brewery in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont.

Less of a how-to book, Mr. Mares stresses the realities faced by the early pioneers of micro-brewing. He describes his homebrewing by using the Oxford Universal Dictionary definition for "hobby" - "an individual pursuit to which a person is devoted out of proportion to it's real importance". Sound like anyone you know? He argues that the AHA motto of "Relax, don't worry. Have a Homebrew" should be modified to say "Pay attention. Worry intelligently. Have a homebrew when your done."

Making beer is not the best resource to learn recipes or techniques, but it is a must read for those who quietly harbour the dream of creating their own micro-brew. The cold shower he received when he began getting serious can be somewhat avoided by thinking through areas where he had not prior to seeking capital and investment.

Contact Chris Frey at 313-397-7001 to check out this book or any one of 19 others from our library.

Merchandise Mania

OK folks, this is the last sales pitch for merchandise, for a while at least. The T-shirt deal is done, now it's time to look ahead for other things we can slap our distinctive logo on. Right now there are 2 projects going on, coasters & mugs. The coasters will be 4" round, brt white with our logo in the center in black (obviously) and perhaps a circular border. Estimated cost is $6 per sleeve of 50, if you miss this order you will have to wait until we are ready to order another 2000 and that could be a long while so someone will be coming around at the meeting soliciting orders, if you're not going to be at the meeting contact me to get on the list.

As far as mugs our first glassware purchase will be for white ceramic 11 Oz. coffee mugs and/or 19 Oz. Beer mugs. The coffee mugs are $8.50 and beer mugs are $13. You can have your name or saying put on the flip side of the logo in several different fonts, again someone at the meeting will be asking about that, or again if you're interested contact me directly. I will have sample mugs at the meeting for your viewing pleasure. In the near future we may investigate actual glassware for our logo to reside on. If anyone has ideas for promotional items, please let me know and we will investigate them. Orders for both Mugs & coasters will be placed after this meeting so don't delay act now, yes now, but wait, there's more.........

EXECUTIVE MEETING

On the second Tuesday of each month the executive staff gets together and discusses any issues that need to be brought up. If anyone has anything they would like discussed at this meeting and reported on please contact any officer and we will review your issue.

3-12-96

Our charter was signed off by the exec. Staff concurrent with a copy being sent to FERA for review, the charter has read once and no issues were raised. We were promised that our bulletin board would be reinstated priour to our charters final approval this fall.

Beer Tradeoff; Tim Tepatti wants to start a beer tradeoff function similar to a cookie exchange, a number of people would each contribute a quantity of beer into the kitty and from everyones entries select a like number of beers to adopt & take home and nurture and well, drink! No definite plans have been mapped out, if anyone's interested in running a function like this please see Tim.

I raised the issue of community involvement projests. I will contact Channel 56 for future consideration of a volunteer crew manning the phones, this is a very optional thing for anyone interested. Channel 56 holds fundraisers and auctions all the time and different organizations help run the phones to take calls and pledges. Perhaps they would run Michael Jacksons Beer Hunter while we're on the phones. Anyway, if anyone has any other ideas for community projects please see me and we'll investigate it.

We made the decision to copyright our logo, we have a member in the club who specializes in in doing just that so in the very near future our logo will have the distinctive © symbol attatched to it!

In the near future we will be distributing a member survey with many different questions on it that will help shape the club, the meetings, events we participate in so keep an eye on your mailbox for this very important survey, thanks! This survey will also help determine the A-plan eligibility status of the members for FERA purposes.

On The Lighter Side...

Thanks to Gabrielle Palmer & Pat Babcock for sending this one to me.

Homer Simpsons Beer Song

DOUGH... the stuff that buys me beer

RAY..... the guy that sells me beer

ME...... the one who drinks the beer

FAR..... a long run to get beer

SO...... I'll have another beer

LA...... I'll have another beer

TEA..... no thanks, I'm drinking beer

And that will bring us back to DOUGH...

Brewing Techniques

I had hoped to present an article on First Wort Hopping but that will have to wait until April as the article is on my desk, DOH!

Instead I present data from Northwest Extracts.

Gold

Solids: 97%

Color: 5-10 deg L

OG: 11.5 deg P

FG: 1.6 - 2.0 deg P

Sparkling Amber

Solids: 97%

Color: 10-15 deg L

OG: 11.5 deg P

FG: 2.0 - 2.6 deg P

Trad Dark

Solids: 97%

Color: 15-20 deg L

OG: 13.5 deg P

FG: 2.6 - 3.3 deg P

All of the above is 100% barley malt

Specific gravity is determined by beer style and desired alcohol level. Example if using 32 lbs of Gold Dry Extract for one barrel of beer the specific gravity would be 1046.

Weizen's specs are identical to Gold except: FG is 1.6 - 2.2 deg P and the ingedients are 65% Wheat Malt, and 35% Barley Malt

Gold

Solids: 80%

Color: 5-10 deg L

OG: 11.5 deg Plato

FG: 1.6 - 2.0 deg P

Sparkling Amber

Solids: 80%

Color10-15 deg L

OG: 11.5 deg P

FG: 2.0 - 2.6 deg P

Trad Dark

Solids: 80%

Color15-20 deg L

OG: 13.5 deg P

FG: 2.6 - 3.3 deg P

All of the above is 100% barley malt and water as ingedients.

Specific gravity is determined by beer style and desired alcohol level. Example if using 40 lbs of Gold extract for one barrel of beer the specific gravity would be 1046.

Weizen's specs are identical to Gold except: FG is 1.6 - 2.2 deg P and the ingedients are 65% Wheat Malt, 35% Barley Malt, and water.

March's Meeting

Our next meeting will be Wed. March 27th at Chelseas, our new favorite local meeting place. Chelseas is located in Dearborn Heights at 22120 Vanborn, midway between Telegraph & Southfield on the North side. Please call 313-278-0888 for more info on the location. The meeting will start at 6 (I hope!) and there is always a crowd earlier dining so feel free to show up early to start socializing! Special thanks to owner Mary McCurry and the distributord for providing some beer samples for evaluation including the new line from Coors, Blue Moon. This evaluation helps Mary decide what to stock.

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:

Rich Byrnes,

30972 Cousino

Warren, MI 48092

Voice/Fax 810-558-9844

usfmczgm@ibmmail.com

CompuServe 75113,411

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

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Last updated 8/25/96