The next meeting will be held back at Sisko's in Taylor on Tuesday, June 22nd. 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 Meads and Labels. 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 Wheat Beers Competition, and the winners are: Wheat Beers Competition Place Name Style Points 1 Gary Shewchuck Dunkelweizen 37/50 2 Chris Cirino Weizen 36/50 3 Jim Racine Weizen 32/50   Tony Tantillo       Jim Racine

This month's competition will be the Label Competition and "It's a Mead, Mead, Mead, Mead World" (AHA) Mead Competition, AHA categories #25-27. Judging will take place at the meeting, so be sure to bring all your labels and meads to the meeting.

D.G. Yuengling & Son Inc. is buying the shuttered Stroh plant in Tampa so it can make and sell its Yuengling beer in Florida. Dick Yuengling Jr., president of the Pottsville, Pa., company, said he hopes to hire many of the 154 people put out of work when Stroh closed the facility in January. With sales thriving in its market area of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey - Yuengling has quadrupled production in nine years to 635,000 barrels a year - the company is building another plant near the original site. That facility is set to open in 2001. The Tampa plant will also add to production and help the company grow geographically. "We will grow our production carefully in Tampa," Yuengling said. "We will send some of the beer back north, but also hope to sell a lot of it in Florida."

A researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center reports that men and women who consume moderate amounts of beer (one to two a day) have a 30-40% lower rate of coronary heart disease compared to men and women who didn't drink. The positive health effects of light to moderate consumption of beer match that of previously released studies regarding red wine and provides more benefits than white wine. The report states that "per drink, beer contains a similar amount of polyphenols (antioxidants) as red wine and 4-5 times as many polyphenols as white wine." A Texas beer distributor partially funded the research by Margo Denke, M.D., Associate professor of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern.

Beer Events, Meetings & Competitions Gabrielle Palmer

• June 22 (T) - FORD Meeting, Label Competition and "It's a Mead, Mead, Mead, Mead World" (AHA) Mead Competition, Categories #25-27.
• July 24 - Michigan Brewers Guild Summer Festival at historic Greenmead in Livonia. Don't miss this all Michigan, all draft beer tasting festival!
• July 28 (W) - FORD Meeting, Lawnmower Beer Competition, All light-bodied beers will be accepted.
• August 1 - Entries due for the Michigan State Fair Homebrew Competition. Contact Bill Holmes, Competition Director, at 734-761-5315 for more information. Also looking for volunteers (judges, stewards, grunts), contact Chris Frey at 734-944-6618 if you'd like to help.
• August 24 (T) - FORD Meeting, Porter Competition (AHA), Category #9 a & b.
• September 18 - FORD Beer-B-Q at Heritage Park in Taylor.
• September 22 (W) - FORD Meeting, Oktoberfest Competition, Category #17 a & b.
• September 25 - FORD Homebrew Demo at Wine Barrel Plus in Livonia.
• October 26 (T) - FORD Meeting, "Winter Warmer" Competition (AHA), Category #10 a & b.
• November 17 (W) - FORD Meeting, Stout Competition, Category #11 a, b, c, d & e.
• December 14 (T) - FORD Meeting, Spiced Holiday Ale/Barleywine Competition, All Style Categories.

Fermental Funny Jonathan Rosenberg