What's Brewing' in Cybeerspace...

Vol. I No 3

P.G. Babcock

"The postman always... ...brings non OV/VM mail."

Just what kinds of things can you 'get' from the net through e-mail services such as Profs? The answer may surprise you!

NOTE:

The following discussion is based on using IBMMAIL through OfficeVision (Profs). Other e-mail facilities may differ. If your e-mail facility has no portal to the Internet, this article is of no use to you. If your e-mail facility does not use IBMMAIL to access Internet, substitute the addressing parameters required by your system.

Anything that can be sent electronically can technically be received through Profs In fact, if you receive the homebrew Digest, the instructions for doing so are contained in the opening lines of the document (with the 'rules). You may recognize it::

ARCHIVES:

An archive of previous issues of this digest, as well as other beer related information can be accessed via anonymous ftp at ftp.stanford.edu. Use ftp to log in as anonymous and give your full e­mail address as the password.

Continued on Page 4

Last Meeting

Last months meeting was at Neal's house in Allen Park, and about 16 people showed up, Neal and Co. Fired up the Pico^® system, and kept it going even in the rain! Actually it didn't rain that bad, and the brewing was under the garage door.

15 gallons of Pale Ale (?) were made, with the wort being raffled off for the pig roast and the library, the lucky winners were , wait just a minute, my notes are missing, well, this section just got real short. I knew this wasn't going to be an award winning newsletter this month, and I apologize in advance, this has just been an off month, what with the heat wave (no a/c aarrggh!) and all the summer activities, excuses, excuses..

Always, our 50/50 raffle raised $34 for the library and pig roast fund, and 2 people won 5 gallons of wort.

The new logo was presented and ID cards were passed out, I did mail out everyone else's, so if you haven't received an ID card, please let me know.

Neal reported that our charter had been reviewed and a few suggestions for changes were made by FERA, these changes will be read one more time at this months meeting and then voted on, it was all trivial changes that were suggested, nothing to worry about.

New Members

New to the club since last meeting are Tim Dunn, Mike Munoz, Dick Rouston and Scott Henry, rumor has it there might be 2 more at this meeting! Welcome to the club guys, look forward to meeting you at the next meeting and definitely the Pig Roast.

Competition News

The competition last month was the classic, undefined, summer light beer, there were about 7 or 8 entries and Terry Petty won with a fruit beer (sorry, again my notes have vanished!) so no recipe this month.

This months competition is an AHA club only competition, Weiss is Nice, and includes Berliner Weiss, American Wheat, German Wheat (Bavarian) and Dunkel Weizen.

Next Month's competition is porter (a Pico favorite!) and the following month is the AHA club only Marzen & Octoberfest competition known as Best of the Fest.

Also coming up right around the corner is the Michigan State Fair competition, entries are due by August 11th and we have made arrangements to have your beers delivered to Ann Arbor my Mark Tenbrink, if you bring them to this meeting. The styles being judged are English Pale Ale/Bitter, American Ale/Common, IPA, Brown Ale/Scottish Ale, German Wheat, Porter, Stout, Strong Ale/Barleywine, Belgian Ale/Lambic, Light Lager, Amber/Dark Lager, Bock, Specialty (Standard AHA guidelines) Due to the zero submissions last year, I will fax upon request the entry packet (3 pages) to anyone that needs them, rather than including them in the newsletter. The entry fee is $8 for 1-10 entries (such a deal!) Judging is done on Aug. 26tth.

Member News

Congrats to Tim Tepatti whose wife is expecting a child next February!

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 a member of the American Homebrewers Association. F.O.R.D. encourages letters, opinions, articles for publication 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

Other Stuff

Michigan Fact: Brewing is one of the oldest manufacturing industries in the state, dating back to the first brewery in 1701. (Even loggers got thirsty!) On that note, Peter Blum, whom many of you met at TJ's in May, is writing a book detailing the history of breweries in and around the Detroit area, the book should be out this fall.

The Blotarian Brewing League is having their 7th annual Beer & Sweat summer party and keg only competition in Cincinnati at the Oldenburg Brewery, the party is Aug. 12th, call Tim Thomas at 513-221-3388 for more info, or call me and I'll fax you the entire announcement.

In The News..............

(From the Detroit News)

They hunch over steaming cauldrons of wet grain and pungent herbs in their kitchens, and they fawn over buckets of murky liquid in their basements. They're called homebrewers and there may be more of them today than during the "bathtub" days of Prohibition. As many as 1.5 million Americans are cooking up brewskis at home today. Several national magazines cater to them. Their bible, the 1984 book The Complete Joy of Home Brewing has sold a half million copies. Hundreds of home-brew clubs meet across the country, including Metro Detroit, every month. The Internet is foaming with home-brew topics. Not bad for a hobby that was illegal until a few years ago. Federal law was revised in 1979 to allow private citizens to brew up to 100 gallons of beer a year, provided they don't sell it. Industry profiles show homebrewers are generally professionals, with loose wallets. But the hobby doesn't have to be expensive. You can get top of the line equipment for just $100, says Mark George, owner of the Wine Barrel Plus in Livonia. That usually leaves plenty of money for experimenting with recipes, including unusual ones for beer made with coffee or fruit. Or pick from more than 400 varieties of malt extract. Add hops, water, yeast and wait for fermentation. Then decide if your beer has more taste or is less filling than the canned stuff.

July's Meeting

July's meeting will be held at Traffic Jam & Snugs, corner of Canfield and 2nd in Detroit. See you on Wed the 26th at 6:00. I will be bringing the T-shirts for the Rivertown volunteers, so try & make this meeting if you're working at the beer festival, call me if you can't and we'll make alternate arrangements.

.....Cybeer cont.

look under the directory /pub/clubs/homebrew/beer directory. AFS users can find it under /afs/ir.stanford.edu/ftp/pub/clubs/homebrew/beer. If you do not have ftp capability you may access the files via e­mail using the ftpmail service at gatekeeper.dec.com. For information about this service, send an e­mail message to ftpmail@gatekeeper.dec.com with the word "help" (without the quotes) in the body of the message.

Sending the help message to this address yields up the ftpmail instructions. I'll not include these instructions as part of this article, but as an attachment to your brewsletter - it doesn't lend itself well to columns. (Editors note: due to the size of the help columns, if anyone is interested I will forward these files to you electronically, thanks!)

Refer to the attachment for all referenced commands below.

Okay. You've got the instructions in your hot little hands, and are itching to pull down some goodies. Good. Er, um - where do you go from here?

STEP 1 Determine what it is you're looking for. You have to know a little about where it is you want to go. Keeping in mind that ftpmail, by it nature, will only access ftp sites, we'd like to send it into the archives. The HBD tells us the directory to go to, but not the specific information that is available there. We need to request the 'directory' or 'file list' for the listed location. Make the Subject: line as informative as possible as this will come back with your ftpmail results.

Here's what we need using IBMMAIL through Profs :

To: ibmmail(Internet)

From: <filled out by Profs with your info.>

Subject: Directory of ftp.stanford.edu/pub/clubs/homebrew/beer

/Internet

/to ftpmail@gatekeeper.dec.com

/end

reply <put your IBMMAIL ID here>@ibmmail.com

connect ftp.stanford.edu

chdir /pub/clubs/homebrew/beer

ASCII

Ls

quit

The forward slashes (/) are not to be confused with the back slashes (\) DOS uses to change or annotate directories.

Pay particular attention to the section of the instructions that begins 'ftpmail is not a supported service.', and ends with 'Outages of a week or more are not abnormal.' This, unfortunately, is an understatement. The wait can be extremely long; rarely less than a week. Don't be in a hurry...

Any 'typos' in the commands will usually result in failure of the ftpmail session. Watch fat-fingering the keyboard.

If you're successful, after processing, you will receive a document showing what ftpmail received, and how it interpreted it. Sometime after that (seconds, minutes, days, or weeks), you will receive a document showing how the connect target (ftp.stanford.edu in this case) interpreted your commands. Ultimately, this will contain a listing of the directory contents. The one of interest here is /digests.

STEP 2 Get to the directory of interest and get your file(s). Jumping ahead (to save space), I'll spoil the suspense by telling you that under /digests are several other directories: /1988, /1989, ... ,/1994, /1995. Under each one of these are the year's digests, plus an index file (Except for 1995 which will not get an index file until some time in 1996). We'll assume you've muddled your way to the proper directory (same procedure as above, just append /digests/19XX to the end of what follows the chdir command in STEP 1. Replace XX with the year of interest.), and go after an index file. Let's visit 1990, shall we?

To: ibmmail(Internet)

From: <filled out by Profs with your info.>

Subject: Index of 1990 HBDs

/Internet

/to ftpmail@gatekeeper.dec.com

/end

reply <put your IBMMAIL ID here>@ibmmail.com

connect ftp.stanford.edu

chdir /pub/clubs/homebrew/beer/digests/1990

ASCII

get 1990.index

quit

Note that, though your ls directory listing showed files carrying a .z extension (if you have ftpmail call in the directory for 1990, you will see this), we did not include it here when requesting the file. The result of this apparent oversight is that the file(s) will be 'decompressed' at ftp.stanford.edu before being sent through ftpmail. This simplifies life since few people have to .z compression routines though they're not difficult to obtain. I you can get one, I recommend WinZip. Files received under .z compression will consume much less space in you e-mailbox than will an expanded file.

Again, if you're successful, after processing, you will receive the acknowledgment from ftpmail, followed later by a document cross-referencing the digest names (numbers) for 1990 with the publication date, and listing the titles of each post (the index file).

Step 2 can be repeated for any directory, and any filename listed within a directory. Up to ten 'gets' can be sent per ftpmail request; however only one chdir may be sent (as chdir command is the first thing ftpmail will execute following connection. If you have multiples, you'll end up in the last directory referenced before any get command will be executed.).

And that's all there is to it...

Again, The fine print: PROFS/OfficeVision is provided as a means for Ford employees to conduct Ford's business. Other uses, such as that outlined above, are generally not condoned. If participation in the Internet is desired, you are urged to subscribe to an Internet Services Provider outside of Ford Motor Company, and pursue your hobby at home and outside of regular business hours. Ford Motor Company Internet guidelines specifically prohibit the use of outside Internet services providers on a Ford-owned computer. The author and The Fermental Order of Renaissance Draughtsmen assume no responsibility and/or liability for any losses, consequential or otherwise, resulting from the use of information contained herein.

Next month: Data gets his emotions...

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© 1995, 1996 by Pat Babcock

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Last updated 11/14/96