Last Meeting

Well gang, what can I say about last months meeting? I believe it will go down in history as one of our finest meetings ever. The location was perfect, for those of you who missed it, you really missed it. The upstairs room at Berkley Front had leather (or incredible vinyl) couches and chairs in the corner and plenty of space to spread out. We had our own private bartender who was happy to pour us fresh beer all night, or just hand over a clean glass (he even inspected each glass for gack/fingerprints/dust/ soap molecules etc...) There was quite a handful of new members and old alike at the meeting (about 28), and some alewives were even in attendance (no offense intended, that's a colonial compliment!). The meeting started with Neal passing out an agenda, an agenda you say? Yes, an honest to God, bonafide agenda, which we actually stuck to. We had quite a few things to go over on the agenda and did so as fast as we could without taking up the whole evening. The first thing covered was the club charter and the FERA issue. Neal covered the main points of the charter and a copy was passed out to everyone there. We went ahead and voted to join FERA, the list of benefits being quite large. The charter is not set in stone, everyone that had a concern was urged to review the charter before next meeting and bring up any potential changes in April. Once we are accepted into FERA we can still change the charter if needed, but we needed to have a charter to submit to FERA before the review process. For those of you who are non-Ford employees, FERA stands for Ford Employee Recreation Association, it is a collection of clubs and travel groups at Ford Motor Co. A benefit of joining FERA is falling under the FERA tax except umbrella, we're not quite sure what this will do for us, but we do (or will) have a tax id number for wholesale purchases. We will find out more what this tax id# actually can do for us. The vote was unanimous to join FERA with no dissenting votes. The FERA review process can take up to a couple of months so we won't know anything definite for a while yet.

The second point of discussion centered on changing meeting days, many people had a conflict with Wednesdays, some couldn't make it altogether. The new plan is to alternate between Tuesdays and Wednesdays, every other month. So the meeting this month is Tuesday the 25th, and next month goes back to Wednesdays. The vote was taken and only 1 person voted to keep things as is.

The next point was National homebrewers day being May 6th, and what, as a club, could we do for it? A committee was formed consisting of John Habermann, Chris Frey, Fred Rubarth and Al Czajowski. These people exchanged ideas and plans through profs until they met up face to face over a cold one (or two) to finalize plans. Our original plan of working with the Berkley Front fell through for a few reasons, but never fear we will be doing the following.:

On Saturday, May 6th, the F.O.R.D. club will be putting on a Pico brewing demonstration at Merchant of Vino's in Royal Oak. Merchants is located on Main street just North of 11 mile. The demonstration will go from 12-5 with the actual preparation and setup beginning at 10:00. Merchants will be providing all the ingredients and space in the parking lot for this event. We need volunteers to commit to actually being there brewing and also to bring equipment. If enough people with Pico systems each bring 1 piece, we're all set. Please contact Chris Frey at 313-390-5462 or 313-397-7001 to enlist. We will also be making a couple of extract brews. The brewers will pick out the recipe they want to make and keep the wort at the end of the day. Can you think of a better way to spend a Saturday then hanging out in Royal Oak making beer outdoors?

The other committee that was formed that night was the 2nd annual Pig /Roast-Beer B-Cue . Tony Treusch and Tim Teppatti eagerly volunteered to organize and implement this years pig roast. All we know for sure this year is that it will be August 5th (mark your calendars now!), it will once again be at Tom and Tammy Herrons home in Warren (11 mile & Ryan) and this year will not be free like last year. But rest assured, the charge will be minimal and will definitely be worth it! If anyone wants to help out please contact Tony or Tim directly, I'm sure they can find something for you to do! We will be keeping you informed as August approaches with all the details.

Jeff Grillo from the M.U.G.Z. club in Illinois was a guest that night and talked about his experiences of opening up a brewery. Jeff managed to find some incredible deals at salvage yards and dairy farms. Jeff estimated his entire startup costs including the building at under $30,000. The M.U.G.Z. club is now on our newsletter exchange list so we will know more about Jeff's brewery as time goes on. Jeff was also kind enough to bring a party pig full of porter from a brewpub in his town that donated it to Jeff for his long stay away from home in the micro-brew wasteland of S.E. Michigan, thanks Jeff!

Neal then talked about intermediate brewing, giving good advice such as using unhopped extracts such as Northwestern, to develop your own hopping schedule. Also talked about was adding specialty grains such as crystal, wheat, carapils, toasted etc to your extract batches by using a grain bag to hold the grains while the water comes up to temp. A very good tip was not adding extract to a vessels of boiling water on the stove, the syrup tends to sink right to the bottom and scorch, instead, take the pot off the heat source and then adding the syrup.

NEXT MEETING

Next meeting will be back at Traffic Jam & Snug on Tuesday the 25th at 6:00. If we have more than 20 people show up we will move the meeting back to the back room, which still has a $40 price tag on it so be prepared to kick in a couple of dollars for the cause. If possible, please show up early if you plan on having dinner, I know that maybe a bit of an inconvenience, but the bill always always gets goofed up because people can't remember what they had or for whatever reason, so if at all possible, please plan on eating early, thanks!

COMPETITIONS

Last months competition was a stout competition and 3 people entered beers, actually 2 and a ringer. Neal took 1st with his Royal Rubbish Stout and Don Sawchuk took a close 2nd with his stout. The ringer was Bells Expedition Stout which took a dismal 3rd.

Neals recipe is as follows:

Royal Rubbish Stout ™
(Imperial Stout)

¾ Lb. Dark Crystal
1 ½ Lb. Pale Malt (?)
1/8 Lb. Roast Barley
¼ Lb. Chocolate Malt
1.8 Kg. Munton & Fison
Export Stout Kit
3 Lb. Dark DME (brick)
½ Lb. Amber DME
¼ cup molasses
1 Tsp. Burton salts
22 Oz. Soured oatmeal stout in boil
1 Oz. Mystery hops (yellow) 60 mins.
2 Oz. 6.1% Cascade (60)
6" cinnamon sticks (60)
½ Oz. Fuggles (30)
½ Oz. Fuggles (5)

Australian Ale Yeast (Yeast Lab)

OG=1.078 FG=1.024

Mashed Grains at 150-165 degrees for 35 Minutes, added extracts, boiled for 60 minutes, hopped at times shown. Two stage Fermentation. Once fermentation complete, racked stout into keg that still had approx. 2 liters of rodent Bock (sweet, chocolate like dopple bock, 8% alc.)

This is (was) a one time only beer, never to be recreated or duplicated. The intent was to clear my shelves and freezer of old and unknown ingredients. What I got was an interesting, super complex, rich, alcoholic sweet yet bitter, Imperial stout.

Aprils competition is Rauchbier which is an AHA club only contest. May brings us up to the Scottish Ale competition and June will be our annual light summer beer contest.

Hey! Our prize bank is almost gone, for those of you who do any traveling, please don't hesitate to buy the club a t-shirt or something from a brewpub or micro brewery you visit, th club WILL reimburse you for what you spend (try to keep it at around $10 though, thanks!)

CLUB BUSINESS

Well, most of the club business was covered in the "last meeting" section.

I have included the finalists in the club logo contest, there are 4, 2 of which have already been rendered on the computer, 1 which is a sketch and I photo montage. Please vote on the concept of the logo, we will have an artist do the finish detail work.

LIBRARY CORNER

Our library has expanded a little, we now subscribe to Brewing techniques (every other month) and Brew Your Own, a new monthly homebrewers magazine due out in May. There is still about $30 in the library fund so if anyone has any suggestions about a book they would like to see, please contact Doug Geiss at this meeting.

New also to the library is shareware! We now have our very own disk available, The disk contains SUDS, a windows shareware recipe logger and formulator, a nifty program that has all 415 recipes from the Cats Meow, Cats meow text file, Cats Meow Windows help file, several AHA text files, and several dozen pieces of clip art. The disk will cost $1 and contact Doug Geiss for more info. The $1 covers the cost of the disk and copying time. Doug should also have extra copies at Aprils meeting.

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.

F.O.R.D. is an associate member of the American Homebrewers Association. F.O.R.D. encourages letters, opinions, articles for publicat- ion and information from members and friends of the club.

Correspondence should be directed to:

Rich Byrnes,
30972 Cousino
Warren, MI 48092
Voice/Fax 810-558-9844
usfmczgm@ibmmail.com
CompuServe 75113,411

CLASSIFIEDS

For Sale:

1 corona grain mill, never used! Comes with high hopper. Please call Patrick Babcock at (number removed). Asking price is $20.

1 Modified Half Barrel.
Top cut off (could use filing!), drain hole threaded for pipe fitting, 10" perforated stainless steel false bottom. In mint condition, hardly used.
Call Chris Gerou at (number removed) for more info. Asking price is $30.

HELP WANTED

The club has an opening for a business manager. This person would handle all advertising in the newsletter and facilitate the purchase of T-shirts and other promotional items. Experience not necessary. Contact Rich Byrnes or Neal Petty.

IN THE NEWS...

Astronomers have discovered huge quantities of alcohol in outer space, enough to make 400 trillion pints of beer, a British newspaper reported.

Geoff MacDonald and Rolf Habing of the Univ. of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology stumbled on the alcohol cloud while studying star formation using a powerful telescope in Hawaii.

"The alcohol is thinly spread out over a huge area. MacDonald estimates that in the cloud as a whole, there is enough to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer," the Times newspaper reported.

The cloud is around a newly formed star called G34.3 in the constellation of Aquila, 10,000 light years away from potential drinkers on Earth.

Contributed by Tony Treusch

This is from a post by Mary Samuels, Compuserve sysop, in the spring of 1994.

Here is some information I extracted from the Home Brew Digest, volume 1359, contributed by Spencer Thomas.

Background: obviously, the question is how much gyle to use, and the assumption is that it's actively fermenting gyle...

First assumption is that you will achieve 75% attenuation of the gyle.

Second assumption is that you want 2 volumes of carbonation. A point was made that approximately .9 volumes of CO2 is already dissolved in the beer at 60F. Thus, approximately 1 additional volume is desired.

You want about a .002 rise in SG for priming. This is 1/2% sugar by weight, leading to 1/4% CO2 by weight if it all fermented. 1/4% by weight is 2.5 g/kg, or about 2.5 g/liter. 2.5 g of CO2 is roughly 1.25 liters at STP, so you're getting 1.25 "volumes" of carbonation. With 75% attenuation (typical for most yeast/wort combos), you'll get just under 1 volume.) If you want higher carbonation, add more.

To get fermentable sugars left in the krauesen, take the OG-1, multiply by 25 (to get the presumed unfermentable content) subtract from the SG-1 of the krauesen at the time of addition to get remaining fermentable extract.

An example:

OG = 1.040

SG = 1.030 at time of krauesening

UG = (OG-1)*.25 = .040*.25 = .010
SG-1-UG = .020
.020 / .002 = 10

Thus, you want to dilute the krauesen 10:1. For a final quantity of 5 gallons, add 1/2 gallon of krauesen

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Georgia Peche Wit
Klugh Kennedy 8/93

Grain bill
5# Belgian pale ale malt
3# Malted Wheat
1# Caravienne (17L belgian crystal malt)

Mash: Protein rest at 122'F for 30 minutes
Saccharfication at 152'F for 60 minutes

Sparge: 5 gallons 170'Fwater

Hops Kent-goldings plugs (5.2%aa)
0.5 oz for 60 minutes
1 oz for 15 minutes
0.5 oz at finish
2 tsp Irish Moss for 15 minutes
1 Tbs coriander for 5 minutes

10# peaches (blanched, peeled, pitted, chopped, frozen)
Wyeast #1056 american ale

Prime with 3/4 cups glucose
added 1.25 cups lactose at bottling to adjust sweetness

OG = 1.042 (before peaches) (and after boilover <g>)
FG = 1.006 (after peaches but before lactose)
Estimated IBUs = ~20

Primary fermentation for 7 days at 70'F. Secondary for 12 days on peaches at 70'F. Tertiary for 7 days at 50'F then 5 days at room temp (80'F). Added 1 tsp gelatin 1 day before bottling.

Comments: Tastes sour and peachy. The hops are just right. The coriander adds no noticeable flavor. I don't know what the alcohol content is but there must have been a lot of sugar in those 10# of peaches. It tastes a little dry. Next time I'll mash at a higher temp and use a different ale yeast trying for more maltiness and some fruity esters.

Another page by BabsTech Enterprises. Can we do yours?

Last updated 10/17/96