Last Meeting

April Fools! There, now I've said it, so don't expect any more surprises in this issue! Well, my taxes are safely in the hands of the United States Postal Carriers and God willing the Federal Agents at the receiving end look at my paperwork and say, "Nice penmanship, send it through" I can always hope, right!

Last months meeting was a condensed one and everyone was thankful for that I trust! Total attendance was about 45 and that's our last meeting with snow in the forecast, yet no sooner do those words leave my fingertips when I hear about snow tonight, sheesh, when will it end?

Neal Petty was out of town that week so Tim Tepatti stepped up to lead the meeting. There was a general introduction as there were so many new faces in the crowd. A special thanks to the distributor who dropped off the stack of Pete's Wicked Ale posters, most everyone at the meeting got one.

My copy of the agenda was missing by the end of the night along with my notes so the actual meeting stuff is a bit sketchy, sorry!

Sandy gave a verbal treasurers report and we will continue to do that at each meeting rather than in the news, Chris mentioned the new books that were in last months newsletter (lager, mead, dictionary). We also have a bit of a dilemma in our library, we subscribe to Zymurgy and Brewing techniques for free, but we have paid for a subscription to Brew Your Own for a year now and only one person has checked out 1 issue of this magazine, we just got our renewal notice and need to make a decision. I don't know if everyone realizes the scope of our library, we have about 2 years of brewing techniques and Zymurgy, a years worth of Brew Your Own and about 20 books. If these magazines are of no interest to the club, we will discontinue our subscription, just a suggestion!

With any luck all the coffee mugs and beer mugs will be available at this meeting, please make checks out to Eric Morris ($13 per beer mug/$8.50 per coffee mug) or have cash ready.

The coaster order will be placed as soon as some updated artwork is obtained and I hope to have those by the May meeting. If anyone wants coasters the initial offering is $6 per 50, please let me know ASAP!

Several T-shirts are still in my possession that should be on your backs instead, especially as the weather is warming up! Please stop by Chelsea's this month to pick those up, even if you can't stay for the meeting. A few of you still owe some $$ for extra shirts ordered, please arrange to remedy that this month as well, thanks! If you want to arrange to meet me at my building, QMP (The building formerly known as NAAO) to pick up your shirt just give me a call and a days notice.

National Homebrewers Day

Well folks, May 4th is right around the corner and for the first time ever we will be doing brew demos at 3 (yes three! Locations) Doug Wood/Mark Hansen and Tom Herron will be leading the all grain batches at Merchants Royal Oak, Bob Niemi will be leading the brew at Brew & Grow and I believe Tyler Barber or Ted Geftos will be leading the brew at Merchants Dearborn. Every site will have a Pico system and an extract system, if you're interested in helping out please call Rich Byrnes at 810-558-9844 for the Royal Oak location, Jim Bazzy at 313-277-5034 for the Merchants-Dearborn Location and Bob Niemi at 313-513-7158 for the Livonia Brew & Grow Location. Due to the fact we will have several brewers at each site it will not be possible to split the wort evenly as we have managed in the past. Instead we have proposed that a couple of people bring home full carboys and do the fermenting and then split the final product up between the brewers who were there, the rest of the club (yes, bring a 6-pack to the next meeting after the beer is ready) and save some of every batch for the Pig Roast so everyone has a chance to share this special National Homebrewers Day beer. We thought this year we would also be brewing at Wine Barrel Plus in Livonia as well but some misunderstandings and logistical problems arose and possibly next year we can brew there as well. For those of you new to the club who have no idea what I'm talking about, several times a year we work with local homebrew retailers and put on a parking lot "exhibition" of homebrewing using a full blown 15 gallon all grain pico™ style system and a boil pot for extracts, if you want to show up to help out and learn the fine art of all-grain brewing at the same time please mark your calendar accordingly! We generally start at about 10 in the morning and finish up at around 5. Every time we do this we have about 100-250 people stop by to watch an learn, it's a great opportunity and a lot of fun. The ingredients are donated by the retailers and I'd like to take this opportunity now to thank them for their generous support of our club and the hobby we all love!

Executive Meeting

Unfortunately this months executive meeting only had 40% attendance so without a quorum nothing official could be done.

Issues: National Homebrewers Day; several logistical issues were ironed out as Jim Bazzy was in attendance at this meeting as the site coordinator for Dearborn.

Coasters: the board made the decision last month to purchase an additional 500 coasters for giveaways at public events with our club info on the back of each coaster. We will buy SOME additional coasters to meet our minimum quantity to place an order, but we will need orders for 2000 to place the next order so if you're thinking about it, act now, don't wait!

Constitutional Change: Charter Revisions

Article IV Section 2

Currently: Secretary ­ This officer keeps the minutes of the meeting (if necessary), edits and publishes the club newsletter. The secretary also maintains the club membership list. The secretary also corresponds with other clubs and appropriate bodies.

Proposed Change: This officer keeps the minutes of the meeting (if necessary) and DISTRIBUTES the newsletter. The secretary also maintains the club membership list and corresponds with other clubs and appropriate bodies.

This change would allow for a full time dedicated newsletter editor and free the secretary up to spend more time helping elsewhere. The change would only benefit the club and the newsletter.

Competition News by Tim Tepatti

As of the printing of this newsletter no information was available.

There were approximately 18 entries for the porter contest last month.

Aprils contest is Bock and is an AHA contest, May's contest is wheat beers and will probably be broken up by American Wheat/German wheat.

Local News

Although it's too late to actually enter the Great Baraboo's first homebrew contest, you can always show up to cheer our members on. This is a unique contest in that it was free to enter, and you MUST be present for the judging. As far as I know Mike Preston, Tyler Barber, Bill Cole and maybe a couple other members have entered the contest. The Great Baraboo is located at 35905 Utica in Clinton Township (15½ mile?) Call them at 810-792-7397 for more info. The contest is Monday the 22nd at around 7pm I believe.

Merchants Royal Oak is sponsoring their second tasting of the year at the White Heather Club in Ferndale on May 7th. The menu will be German Sausages/cheeses and other foods. The beers will be German lagers, wheat beers, Maibocks and Pilsners.

Dearborn Homecoming: It doesn't look like we will brewing at the Dearborn Homecoming after all, the promoters felt it presented the wrong image (hmmm, yet how many hundreds of gallons of beer will they actually sell that weekend? Image, what image?)

Attention handy welders! Brinkman Burners, $12 plus s/h 800-527-0717, ask for replacement burners for the big 170,000 . This is the big ring type burner, very fuel efficient. Now for $12 all you get is the burner itself, no hose or regulator or stand. But if you're handy you could weld a keg stand out of tube steel or angle iron and weld the burner right to your homemade stand. I'm not offering up any plans or recommendations but if you're handy with the welding equipment, you could save some $$ (Thanks to Mike Preston for that tip)

Techno-tip from Alternative Beverage

If you add water to your wort to top up to 5 gallons, allow about a half hour before taking a hydrometer reading, the temperature difference and gravity difference of water to wort will most often give a false reading. After a half hour give the fermenter a good shake to make sure everything is mixed, then

take your reading.

(reprinted from the Blotarian Brewing League newsletter, the Blotarian Bulletin. Contributed by Ed Westemeier, original author unknown.

Hi there! I'm C. Jim Cook, owner, president, and CEO of the Patrick Henry™ Boston™ Brewing™ Corporation™, and I have great news about a wonderful new product we're now offering. For a long time I've wanted to find a way to turn a buck on every possible beer style, but we were always stymied by those weird Belgian styles. We tried to make an American version, our famous Cranberry™ Lambic™, but it hasn't caught on like we hoped it would. Finally, we realized that it simply wasn't authentic enough.

Now, at last, I've figured out how to fill that niche-by selling a real, authentic Belgian gueze. Of course that's a really strange word, and nobody knows what it means anyway, let alone how to pronounce it, so we simplified it a bit.

Introducing Patrick Henry™ Boston Goose™ beer! Boston Goose™ is made (as far as you know) from the traditional artisan methods of the Belgian brewers of the Senne Valley. We spent many long hours and literally hundreds of dollars, researching the unique microorganisms that give this beer style its unique flavor and aromas. When we completed our research, we were stunned and amazed to discover the purest culture of these little critters existed right here in Boston.

That's right! I scraped some of the old goop from the inside of that famous trunk in my grandfathers attic (remember where our original Boston Lager™ recipe came from?) This unique culture, which has been in my family™ since at least the 10th century, turned out to produce the finest, most flavorful Belgian gueze you've ever tasted.

As a side benefit, this lucky find enabled us to avoid all that messy business with open air exposure in coolships over near Brussels. Anyway, who the hell knows what a coolship looks like? We have some pretty cool ships right here in Boston Harbor!

But we didn't stop there. Boston Goose™ is not only made with this traditional culture, it's also aged and blended in the most traditional way.

First we age the beer quickly using a unique, patented process that involves atomic clocks, high speed relativistic velocities, and other technical stuff that's too tedious to discuss here. Suffice it to say that we can achieve the equivalent of two years aging in a Belgian cask in less than four days in our new facility.

Next, we blend this "old" beer (over 4 days old) with the "young" (less than an hour old)beer. I traveled all the way to Lambeek (well, actually I only got as far as the Brussels Hilton) to learn the secrets of master Lambic blender Pieter Van Spruitjes. He was so pleased to learn of our plans, he told me everything about the traditional brewing & blending process.

Unfortunately, he was speaking in what I was told was Phleghmish, and I was afraid he was going to hawk one up on my $2000 suit, so I was getting more interested in getting out of there than in paying attention. But then in an incredible stroke of luck, I made another visit to my grandfather's trunk™ up in the attic at home, and found a tiny scrap of parchment stuck way back in a corner.

When I looked at it, I realized that it was a summary of the secret Lambic blending method used by my forefathers (on the Belgian side of the family). Now all the pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place.

Finally, we were ready to market our Boston Goose™ and listen to the cries of delight from Belgian beer lovers everywhere. There was only one thing to attend to. I figured the main reason why gueze is so expensive must be those fancy bottles with the corks and those wire thingies. We want Boston Goose™ to be available to everyone, so a little repackaging was in order. After experimenting with different methods, we decided on a simple, classic package design. Look for Boston Goose™ in Convenient 12 Oz. pull-tab cans, available by the 6-pack™ wherever fine beer is sold.

Food for thought

Reprinted from the Ann Arbor Brewers Guild newsletter, the Herald Tribune

On the way to the meeting I had a somewhat instructional experience with Ann Arbor law enforcement. I drive a hatchback and have no place in the back that is completely out of sight of a strong flashlight at night.

I was stopped for a burned out headlight. She noticed my bag of goodies on the floor in the back seat and asked me about it. Being basically honest and probably somewhat uninformed about my rights I showed her. It contained one unopened bottle of Young's Special Winter Ale, a clean tasting glass, and a half full bottle of homebrew.

She asked me about the homebrew and whether I had had any from it. I answered no (I'm not that dumb); she didn't ask if I had any while I filled it.) The bottle is a Grolsch swing top. She checked to make sure the glass was clean. She told me that technically that was an open bottle of alcoholic beverage in the car. This is a misdemeanor with a $100.00 fine.

I should add here in all fairness that she was courteous, professional and very serious throughout. (With one exception: when I showed her the homebrew and she held it up to the light and with a grin exclaimed curiously "oh, so that's homebrew" or something to that effect)

I asked her how I could transport the refilled bottle and stay out of trouble. She said something very interesting and this is what I pass on. She said if the bottle was in the back in a place where I could not possibly reach it while I was driving they could not say that I was driving and drinking from it.

In the future it sounds like a good idea to keep those refilled bottles, especially the swing-tops, out of arm's reach, if not out of sight, both to and from the meetings.

One last thing: no tickets and no fines were issued(whew!)

-Stephen Krebs, Ann Arbor Brewers Guild.

Librarians Report

Chris copied many articles from the 1987 Zymurgy special issue "troubleshooting your beer" and passed them out last month, this month he will l be distributing the 1993 Special Issue of Zymurgy which has articles focusing on Traditional German, British and American Brewing Methods.

I will also have for distribution the new 1996 Beer Score Sheets and Style

Guidelines. Of course, I am not distributing the entire Zymurgy, but the bulk of it.

Be Famous!

Thanks to Mike Preston for sending this one in!

Dear Homebrew Club member,

Three years ago, Mark Stevens and I (Karl Lutzen) collected recipes from homebrewers across the Internet, as well as from homebrew clubs and homebrew supply shops. The result was Homebrew Favorites, which since its release in 1994, has become a respected collection of recipes. Now we are announcing that we are seeking recipes to build a sequel to Homebrew Favorites. We plan on the sequel picking up where Homebrew Favorites left off and be an even more comprehensive, if not exhaustive, collection of homebrew recipes.

We are asking clubs to help out in creating this book as they were an

intregal part of producing Homebrew Favorites, and we would like to get as

many clubs involved as possible. Every recipe printed will have the club named printed with it, so both the author(s) of the recipe and the club will receive some fame.

How do you go about submitting a recipe? If you have a web browser,

point it to:

http://alpha.rollanet.org/~lutzen

and you will find all the info you need. If your web browser cannot use forms, there are two submission forms that can be downloaded at the site.

If you cannot browse the web, send an e-mail note to:

lutzen@alpha.rollanet.org

and state either PostScript or Text version, and I'll get you a copy of

the form.

FREE BOOK!!!!!

All contributors who get a recipe (or more) published, will receive a

free copy of the book, so get those recipes in. The deadline for

submissions is MAY 31, 1996.

EDITORS NOTE

See me at the meeting for printed recipe forms or send me a profs note at Rbyrnes2 to receive the form electronically.

Member News

New Members:

Joe Carulli, Ken Klingel and Don Parisot have all joined the ranks of the Fermentals since last month, a hearty slap on the back and a pint of our finest for our new friends!

Tyler Barber & Bill Cole got their Alt score sheets back from the AHA club only contest with a "disappointing" score of 28. Tyler noted that the judge complained of low hoppiness and then turned around in the next sentence and complained of over hoppiness, and similar inconsistencies with comments on maltiness, go figure! Congratulations to Tyler & Bill always for making it to the national level with their Alt (H-H-H-alt)

Special Interest

ANNOUNCING!

"A SIP THROUGH TIME, A COLLECTION OF OLD BREWING RECIPES"

Contains Hundreds of Old Recipes for Ale, Beer, Mead, Metheglin, Cider,

Perry, Brandy, Liqueurs, Distilled Waters, Hypocras, Wines, etc., dating

from 1800 B.C. to modern times.

335 pages, perfect bound. Only $20.00 US postpaid.

Please visit our new web site: http://www.alcasoft.com/renfrow/ for more information and sample recipes!

Thank you!

Cindy Renfrow

7 El's Way, Sussex, NJ 07461

E-mail address: renfrow@skylands.net

(Thanks once more to Mike Preston for this tidbit!)

Speaking of books, book 10 in the classic beer series "Stout" should be out any time now, and Noonan's all new Lager book should be out by now as well, what say Ye Mr. Librarian?

Next meeting

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, April 23rd at Chelsea's, our new favorite local meeting place. Chelsea's 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!

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