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| April 1999 | Fermental Order of Renaissance Draughtsmen | Vol. 7 - No. 4 |
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The next meeting will be held back at Sisko's in Taylor on Tuesday, April 27th. Sisko's is located on Monroe (between Telegraph and Southfield), just south of Vanborn. Their address is 5855 Monroe and their phone number is 313-278-5340. Sisko's also has a website at http://www.siskos.com/. The competition for this month is English Bitters. As usual, the thirsty hard-core who want dinner will start arriving around five, people will drift in for an hour or so, and by 6:00ish, we will start our meeting.
We had 5 entries for last month's Bitters Competition and they were all very tasty. And the winners are:
| Bitters Competition | |||
| Place | Name | Style | Points |
| 1 | Kerry Havener | Ordinary Bitter | 41/50 |
| 2 | Gary Shewchuck | ESB | 39/50 |
| 3 | Mike Arend | Best Bitter | 38/50 |
| HM | Jim Racine | Ordinary Bitter | 36/50 |
| Chris Cirino | ESB | ||
This month's competition will be the "Bockanalia" (AHA) Bock Competition, AHA Category #12 a (Traditional Bock), b (Helles Bock/Maibock), c (Doppelbock) & d (Eisbock). The judging time and place will be determined later.
Hello, from the librarian. Just wanted to remind everyone about all the wonderful books available in the club's library. We've got quite a selection of brewing (and wine making) books. In the past we've included a listing of the books in the newsletter, but some time ago the library grew too much to list each book and magazine. I carry a listing to each of the club meetings; and we now have the listing on-line. Check it out. If you are interested in a book, let me know, we probably already have it in our library. If we don't have it, we can get it. If you can't make it to a meeting, let me know and we can work out arrangements to get it to you. We recently picked up a few more books: Two Classic Beer Styles, Brown Ale (#14) and Alt (#12), as well as a replacement for a missing book: Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. If you are interested in any books or magazines, just call at 313-621-0917 or email me at marend@ford.com.
OK, the Big Brew Day is fast approaching. There have been several additions to the brewing ranks, and thanks to the generosity of my neighbor, we now have two sources for wort chillers. The following is a re-cap of both brewers and picnickers. As with the old adage "Every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square", I am assuming that every brewer is going to join in on the post-brew picnic, but not every picnicker is a brewer.* As the brew gets bigger, the administrator needed a little bit of flexibility. If anyone absolutely can not brew at the assigned time, let me know ASAP and I will see what I can do to move you around. If anyone else wants to brew, I will set up an additional brew time at 2:00 or put you in a volunteer's place.
Don't forget the tag sale! If you have anything brew related that you want to gloom off of people you have never met before, put a price and a name on it and stick it in the pile. If you see a piece of cra...er, a priceless addition to your brewing hobby, just find the owner and do stimulate the underground economy (I still have a 4 year old can of DME. Keep seeing these recipes when I started that asked for DME. Ha, I thought, it comes in a can. Someone stopped me before I added 3 lbs to a recipe. If you do not know what I am talking about, I will sell it to you for $2.)
There are still people who have not given me their side dish - you can see what is there and what is missing (veggies, salad, hummus, bagel chips, biscuits, etc.), so if you decide at the last minute to show up, grab one of the aforementioned items!
*Cords theorem: Named after David Cords (provider of the early & necessary doughnuts and bagels), he will be a brewer but not an evening picnicker. Proves that there are exceptions to every rule!
| Brewer | Time | System | Side Dish / Keg style |
| Rick Carr | 8:45 | 3 ½ barrel (AABG) | Taco Salad |
| Sonny Stanley | 8:45 | 3 ½ barrel (AABG) | ? |
| David Cords | 8:45 | 3 ½ barrel (AABG) | Doughnut/bagels |
| Tom Sutphan | 9:30 | 3 ½ barrel (FORD) | Chili |
| Tony Schafer | 9:30 | 3 ½ barrel (FORD) | Munchies |
| Ron Broadwell | 9:30 | 3 ½ barrel (FORD) | disposable bowls, plastic spoons, crackers |
| Tony Treusch | 10:15 | 3 ½ barrel (FREY) | Salsa, guacamole & chips |
| Gabrielle Palmer* | 10:15 | 3 ½ barrel (FREY) | Fruit salad |
| Mike Arend | 10:15 | 3 ½ barrel (FREY) | Chili |
| Bob Scholl | 11:00 | 3 ½ barrel (SCHOLL) | Homemade pretzels, Pepsi keg |
| Tony Tantillo | 11:15 | 3 ½ barrel (BABCOCK) | Potato Salad |
| Jerry Garner | 11:15 | 3 ½ barrel (BABCOCK) | Dessert |
| Chris Frey* | 11:15 | 3 ½ barrel (BABCOCK) | Chicken |
| Marc Hansen | 12:00 | 3 ½ barrel (HANSEN) | Corn, butter |
| Tom Ciesla | 12:00 | 3 ½ barrel (HANSEN) | Corn, butter |
| Mike Ciesla | 12:00 | 3 ½ barrel (HANSEN) | Corn, butter |
| Tyler Barber | 12:30 | Personal System | ?, Pepsi keg |
| Randy deBeauclair | 1:00 | 3 ½ barrel (AABG) | ? |
| Bill Pfeiffer | 1:00 | 3 ½ barrel (AABG) | ? |
| Doug Geiss | 1:30 | 3 ½ barrel (FORD) | Chips & homemade salsa |
| Rene | 1:30 | 3 ½ barrel (FORD) | Potato salad |
| Aaron Dionne | 1:30 | 3 ½ barrel (FORD) | Chili. |
| * Brewer has offered to drop out if there are additional brewers who would like to participate | |||
| Picnic Only | Side Dish |
| Steve Darnell & Family | Saffron rice |
| Joanne Wilson | Dessert (w/Jerry G.) |
| Brian, Kristi and Ari Nault | 7 layer Mexican dip |
| Brian & Janet (Friends of Tony T's) | ? |
| Kathy Loftus | homemade salsa & chips (w/Doug Geiss) |
| George Adams | Cole slaw |
Weather: It don't matter what the weather is. I have plenty of space in the garage and back screened in porch to keep everyone dry. Hoping to have the systems all out in the driveway that day if the weather cooperates.
Parking on the street is legal, so please keep the driveway open. Feel free to pull in, drop off anything and then please park on the street. I share my driveway with my neighbor, and in the interest of good relations we need to keep it available. Can't miss my house, light yellow, front porch, widows lookout up top, bunches of kegs in the driveway/garage.
Things that everyone could bring that would be helpful: Chairs!, cd's of your favorite tunes, powertools and paint brushes (just kidding), hose, propane tank, powerstrip and long extension, camera and film, portable table.
Saline is south of Ann Arbor and east of Rt. 23.
Directions from the east: Take I-94 west, past Ypsilanti. Take the Route 12 Saline exit and head west 7 miles to downtown Saline. Take a left at Saline-Ann Arbor St. and go approx. ¼ mile south (down the hill, up the hill to the top). At the first light, Crestwood Ct. will be on your right, my house is 275 S. Ann Arbor Saline Rd. on your left.
Directions from Ann Arbor: Take N. Ann Arbor St. south, cross over Michigan Ave. (Rt. 12) in downtown Saline. Go approx. ¼ mile south (down the hill, up the hill to the top). At the first light, Crestwood Ct. will be on your right, my house is 275 S. Ann Arbor Saline Rd. on your left.
You will not see a road sign for S. Ann Arbor St. at the intersection with Michigan Ave. But some pretty obvious landmarks are Dans Tavern (NE corner), Mac's Acadian restaurant (SE corner) and two banks on the other corners.
OK, this is my proposed Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone recipe. I put it out to the collective for review and comment. Management encourages thinking "out of the box". Any suggestions will be taken as an attack on my brewing skills and manhood.
SNPA is an American Pale Ale. Information from their web site indicates:
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is a delightful example of the classic pale ale style. It has a deep amber color and an e xceptionally full-bodied, complex character. The fragment bouquet and spicy flavor are the results of the generous use of the best Cascade hops.
| Alcohol Content: | 4.4% by Weight |
| Bittering Hops: | Perle |
| Beginning Gravity: | 13 Plato |
| Finishing Hops: | Cascade |
| Ending Gravity: | 2.8 Plato |
| Malts: | Two-row Barley Malt, Caramel Malt |
| Yeast: | Top Fermenting Ale Yeast |
Yeah, I like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, but I like a bit more of what it offers in a brew, so...
Crispy's flagrant rip-off clone recipe:
I will be setting up systems to end up with 12 gallons of wort. Because of capacity constraints, the need for 1.5 gallons + of evaporation and the need for a little space for a rolling boil, I find this is a comfortable amount for the 3 ½ barrel PICO systems. Because every batch is going to have 3 brewers on it, I am contemplating adding an additional 4 lbs. of pale 2-row malt to this recipe, thereby boosting the gravity 8-9 points to about 1.062. Then we could add 1 gallon of pre-boiled water at the end to top everyone's carboy off to 5 gallons. Because the hops are on the high side for an American Pale, I believe this will work fine, but I would like to hear everyone's comments.
Batch size: 12 gallons
Grains:
19 lbs. Pale malt (2-row)
1 lbs. Wheat malt - head retention
1 lbs. Crystal 50oL - color, body
1 lb. CaraPils Dextrine Malt - mouthfeel, body
Hops:
2 oz. Perle (8%) @ 60 min.
2 oz. Cascade (5%) @ 30 min.
2 oz. Cascade (5%) @ 1 min.
1.5 oz Cascade dry hop in secondary one week prior to bottling or kegging
Mash:
I plan on pre-heating the mash water to 163°-165° and adding the grains in to hit 150°-152°. I want 1
qt/lb., so I anticipate preheating 6.5 gallons (1 gallon for false bottom-does this work for everybody? Or do I not add
the additional gallon? What say yea?). Single infusion mash @ 152° for about an hour, raise to 170° and hold
15 minutes, then sparge 1+ hour to get 14 gallons to boil.
BIG Wyeast 1056 slurry
I will send every carboy home with ½ oz. of cascade flowers to use for their dryhopping.
Are you sure what temperature your refrigerator is set to? What is the temperature hysteresis? What was the fermentation temperature of your last batch of beer? Maximum? Minimum? How can you tell?
The smallerLogger is the ideal instrument for easy, inexpensive monitoring of fermentation and storage areas for brewers of all sizes. It is a small (2.125"x1.375"x0.6") self-contained temperature monitoring system sold by Extend Computer and Instrument. It runs off a small battery for up to three months. It is easily configured to measure the temperature from 1 second to every 255th hour. Logged data is stored in memory along with the time that the data was taken. Data is retrieved via a built in serial port that is connected to any computer or PDA. It is ideal for:
I have just completed a battery of tests on the smallerLogger that would be representative of the needs of homebrewers.
Beer Fridge: I have a dedicated beer fridge, purchased from a restaurant salvage company, that has a 3 tap tower and holds 4 corny kegs. It has a full-time evaporator fan that circulates air inside the unit. Since this was second hand, I have not had much confidence in its ability to hold temperature. So I put the smallerLogger inside and logged some data. Figure 1 shows several days of data collected. Figure 2 zooms in on the data to show the detailed temperature profile. As you can see, this fridge has about a 6 degree hysteresis band. It appears that the cycle is about 2.5 hours in length. Furthermore, the cycle is very consistent even though the ambient temperature changes by at least 10 degrees over the course of 24 hours. I am now confident that the fridge works properly.
Fermentation of a batch: After I pitched the yeast into the wort, I placed the smallerLogger on top of the fermenter (6 gallon bucket). As you can see in figure 3, the temperature of the fermentation area, my insulated basement beer storage room, remained constant within one or two degrees for the duration of the fermentation. Note the two spikes at the far right of the graph. These capture the warming of the beer storage room that occurred on consecutive evenings when I did some work in the room. While I was working, I left the door to the room open. The room directly adjacent is a heated room so the warmer air moved into the beer room.
Office temperature: In between uses, I just tossed the logger on the desk in my office. When experimenting with the downloading, I pulled this data in figure 5 out of the datalogger. I thought at first that it was broken, figuring that there was no way my office was 85 degrees in February. Then I looked closer at the data and thought for a moment. The logger was on the desk in my office, my office faces east, the trees are south east of my office, and February 24th was sunny. Well, it just so happens that at about 11 am the sun was low enough to shine under the porch overhang and between the trees directly on my desk! The 23rd and 25th were cloudier, but still show temperature peaks at 11am. Further confirmation is that I have an electronic furnace thermostat set to 60 degrees at night and 68 degrees during the day.
Well, testing can be brutal too. While the logger was in the fridge, I was cleaning out the drip tray. Unfortunately, I did not know that the drip tray waste hose had come loose and all the cleaning solution and rinse water poured into the fridge and all over the smallerLogger. After a quick rinse under clean water, blow dry with my handy shop vac, and re-inserting the battery - voila! Good as new.
I am impressed at how much you can get into such a small package. I will bring the unit to the next meeting to show anyone who is interested. You can also visit www.extend.org to see for yourself. And in case you were wondering, the president of Extend is my old college roommate. So obviously, I have given you an unbiased opinion of his product!
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Beer Events, Meetings & Competitions
Gabrielle Palmer |
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Fermental Funny Jonathan Rosenberg |
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| Ye Olde Brew News
published by the F.O.R.D. Homebrew Club |
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| Editor:
Gabrielle Palmer Contributors:
Club Officers:
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F.O.R.D. is a private, non-profit organization of homebrewers. The main goal of this club is to
promote awareness and appreciation of the quality and variety of beer; to share information regarding technique, equipment and skill
required to brew quality homemade beer; and to encourage responsible use of beer as an alcohol-containing beverage.
Correspondence should be directed to:
Work: 313-390-9369
(w) rbyrnes2@gw.ford.com
Visit our website at: http://www.be.ford.com/brewers/
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