Last Meeting
July's meeting was a record setting meeting
for attendance for a summer month, with golf and boating and bar-b-cues
all over, I was astounded to see so many people there, (26 members
plus guests!) especially with summer being a traditional down
time for many brewers. The other astounding thing was how many
new members joined since June's meeting, more on that later!
The meeting got started about 6:30 with Tim Tepatti giving a last minute rundown on the Pig Roast, Neal then announced a few changes to our charter that FERA wanted before admitting us as an official club (ah the wonders of bureaucracy. The changes were all voted on and they were as follows:
The last item was deemed too restrictive,
FERA will ask all clubs to meet this requirement, we will offer
70% as this is such a fast growing hobby. If they balk at 70%
we will have to decide whether we want to pursue our relationship
with FERA.
I had a quick meeting with everyone involved at the Rivertown Beer Festival, going over some details.
We had one last 50/50 raffle for the pig
roast and congrats to Scott Henry who walked away with $40 that
night (although we met later in the parking lot and 6 big guys
got it back ).
One thing to note that happened at Traffic
Jams that the night manager brought to our attention was that
someone brought in their own wine coolers, we are welcome to bring
in our own beers and even commercial examples of beers for contrast
and comparison, but no other beverages should be brought in. The
other thing to point out for the benefit of all the new members
is there is no separate bills at the end of the night, you are
responsible for bringing cash to cover your portion of the bill,
thanks!
CLUB EVENTS
The Stroh's Rivertown Beer Festival on July
28th was a huge success, total attendance was 1300
plus or minus a few. 15 F.O.R.D. members were on hand to help
the distributors keep the beer flowing to the thirsty patrons.
At a follow up meeting with the volunteer coordinator from the
Rivertown Business District our club was highly praised, both
from the actual distributors and the sponsors. We will be invited
back next year with at least double the amount of people needed
as this year. For those of you who were there, but didn't get
a glass, they did run out and more glasses are being printed.
The only problem reported that night was overpouring of the 2oz.
Sample limit, but it wasn't clear if it was our members or the
distributors and their crew.
August 5th saw our 2nd annual Pig Roast,
known as the Home-Brew-B-Cue this year. The event was a great
success, and there are many people to thank for making this event
a reality. First off Tim Tepatti and Tony Treusch who were the
pig roast committee, they printed and sold tickets, printed the
flyer (Tim worked on that until 3:00am one morning!) requested
and collected donations from many sources, kept track of all the
food being brought, and generally ran the show on the day of the
roast. Tom & Tammy Herron whose backyard became a restaurant/
brewpub/ playground again this year (Who are still putting up
with a Porta Potty in their driveway , Doug LeCureaux who started
the pig at midnight the night before (No wonder he was a zombie
that day!) and all the people who pitched in and help setup and
clean for the event. If I missed anyone, it's not on purpose,
consider yourself thanked. The prize raffle netted just enough
money to help us break even (I think?!) there were a lot of neat
prizes, and some goofy ones, but there are many people to thank
for donating prizes; Brew & Grow, Merchants Warehouse, St.
Clair Brewing Co, Motor City Brewing Co, the individuals who donated
beer signs, Bech's Mustard, various distributors from the beerfest
and again, if I forgot someone off this list, I apologize. The
"spirits from the past" contest was extremely interesting,
everyone blindly tasted Stroh's, Miller, Budweiser, Coors, Michelob,
and Busch and tried to identify them, many people got all 6 wrong
(congratulations!) 4 people guessed 3 right and a winner was randomly
drawn (Congrats to Tammy Herron!) Start thinking ahead to next
year for different ideas.
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
rich.byrnes@e-mail.com
CompuServe 75113,411
RECIPES
Here is the recipe for the Pretzel
Jell-O, the recipes for the Baba Ganooj, the Bread Pudding and
the Hard Cider will be coming next month.
Pretzel Jell-O
(Al & Cathy Czajkowski)
2 cups crushed pretzels
3/4 cup melted oleo
1 Tbs. sugar
9X13 Pan
put oleo in pan and use microwave
to melt. Add sugar and pretzels. Bake in 400 degree oven for 8
minutes
8oz cream cheese
1 1/2 cup sugar
12oz cool whip
Mix ingredients and spread on cooled
pretzels. put in freezer to solidify
6oz strawberry Jell-O
14oz boiling water
20oz frozen strawberries
Mix boiling water and Jell-O until
dissolved. stir in strawberries and continue stirring until mixture
starts to thicken. Slowly spoon mixture onto cool whip, do not
melt the cool whip. Put in freezer or refrigerator to set.
MEMBER NEWS
Congratulations to John & Nikki Goodpasture.
Madison Marie came into this world on 8-3 weighing in at 8½
lbs. Mother and child are doing fine, dad however....
If you have anything you want published
in this space, please see me .
New Members
Since the June meeting we have had several new members join, welcome to...
Jim Anderson (Our logo artist), Mark Hansen, Steve Kelley, Tim Millner, Blake Ross, Linda Sieja, Scott Williams and Jeff Yaroch.
Last months competition was wheat beers
and we had 2 entries, both from Lyle Doerr. He declined to enter
the AHA competition, but here is his winning recipe:
Here goes;
this is an extract recipe:
1tsp. Burton Water Salts in 1.5g water
4.4lb Irek's Weizen extract - unhopped
3.0lb Dry malt extract - Extra light
1.5oz. Hallertau hops - 3.9%
Boil 60 Min., adding 1/2 tsp. of
Irish moss at 45min.
Weihenstephan Weiss - Liquid yeast (#3068)
O.G. 1.050
Primary Fermentation, 7 days at 68 deg F
Secondary F (glass) , 5 days at 68 deg F
F.G. 1.010
Bottled w/ 7/8 c corn sugar
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The competition this month is porter (A club favorite!) and the style guidelines are as follows......
8a) ROBUST PORTER - Black. No roast barley character. Sharp bitterness of
black malt, without high burnt/charcoal like flavor. Med. to full bodied.
Malty Sweet. Hop bitterness med.
to high. Hop flavor and aroma: none to med. Fruitiness/esters
OK. Low diacetyl (butter /butterscotch) OK.
8b) BROWN PORTER - Med. to dark brown. No roast barley or strong burnt malt character. Lt. to med. body. Low to med. malt sweetness. Med. hop bitterness. Hop flavor and aroma: none to med. Fruitiness/esters OK. Low diacetyl OK.
"Porters" were the forebear's
of "Stouts", and a style until recently nearly doomed
to extinction. It was Mr. Guinness that came up with his tasty
brew using soured beer and unmalted roast barley called Guinness's
Stout Porter. It wasn't long before the Porter was dropped from
the name. If you sinned and used roast barley in your stout, it's
OK the recipes are not made known to the judges until after the
contest is won. The winner of the contest will get their choice
of a tee shirt or two pint glasses.
Cheers,
Neal E. Petty
Brew News
Aug. 7/Detroit Free Press
"HAVE A BREWSKI, THEN GO VOTESKI!"
political ambitions are brewing in the Russian Beer Lovers Party. "Our goal is to reduce the stress of society and to make people feel better with the help of beer," party leader Konstantin Kalachyou said at a Moscow news conference Sunday. Party Secretary Dmitry Shestakov called the Kremlin a den of vodka swilling bureaucrats.
"People that drink vodka are harsh
and mean, while people that drink beer are soft & nice,"
he said. "We want to put beer drinkers in the Kremlin, and
everything will be all right." The party which claims 50,000
members, said it planned to field 12 beer lovers candidates in
next years elections for the lower house of parliament.
Hopunion USA of Yakima Washington has developed
"Columbus" a new hop variety that possesses both high
oil content and high alpha acid content. This new hop is intended
as a substitute for Centennial which is in short supply. This
years harvest has yielded hops with 14-16% Alpha acid.
Pete's Brewing Co. Of Palo Alto Ca. Is selling
220z. Pop-off bottles directly to homebrewers since they have
switched to using twist off's for their product line. A case of
12 22oz. Bottles sells for $3.50 plus shipping/handling.
Samuel Adams Triple Bock finished first in the super strength ale category at the first London International Beer & Cider Competition. Triple Bock beat out Thomas Hardy's Ale.
Kalamazoo Brewing Co. Will be opening its'
30 barrel brew house soon.
Labatt's will no longer appear in the U.S.
in green bottles. From now on it will be in the Canadian packaging
(brown bottles) and labeling.
Media Write Technology Inc. Is releasing
The New Complete Joy Of Homebrewing and The
Homebrewers Companion on CD ROM in October. Both books
will include text and graphics from the original books and audio
and video of author Charlie Papazian.
Arkansas finally legalized homebrewing and
as of July 28th all the clandestine homebrewers can proudly and
legally practice their hobby.
The city of London now sells several different
bottles and cans of beer from Bass vending machines.
A Danish study indicates that some drinking helps prevent heart disease. Researchers at the Danish Epidemiology Science Center in Copenhagen studied more than 6,000 men and 7,000 women from 30 to 70 years old. Their findings conclude that wine in an amount of 3 to 5 glasses per day has as overall healthful effect. Although hard liquors produced a negative impact, they did find beer helpful, but to a lesser degree. Results were not as conclusive concerning whether the choice of alcohol was linked to a diet or lifestyle, or whether the moderate drinkers were just more relaxed.
Next meeting
August's meeting will be back at Traffic
Jam & Snugs, corner of Canfield and 2nd. At 6:00. Please contact
me if you will need a map or directions.
Neal will not be at the meeting due to his
Mother having surgery and Neal will be with his family, we wish
his mom well and pray for an uneventful operation.
I will be demonstrating how to make a 50'
wort chiller out of parts from the hardware store for about $30.
Some of you may remember the demonstration I did in January of
how to coil a wort chiller in under 2 minutes, but this
time we will take a chiller to completion.
Pat Babcock will discuss the differences
between Immersion chilling and counterflow chilling.
The competition will be porter, and next
month's competition will be Marzen/Vienna / Octoberfest (Best
of the Fest, AHA club only competition)
If you have completed the crossword puzzle
from last months newsletter, bring it in and give it to Tom Herron
for grading and entry into the contest.
Since there is a recent plethora (ooh, big
word alert!) of new club members I will throw out some old news
that even you seasoned veterans should be reminded of:
Newsletter:
I accept any and all donations to the newsletter, if you go to
a new brewpub, write a review, if you see something interesting
in the paper, send it to me. I can't guarantee that I can use
everything, but I will thank you none the less. If there's any
suggestions you have, let me know, if I screwed up, let me know
too. If you work at Ford and have Microsoft Word at your PC and
would like to receive the newsletter electronically rather than
on paper, let me know and I'll send you the fonts and graphics
you need to print the news.
T-shirts:
It appears that we will be going with a black logo on a white
shirt, extra shirts will run about $5, so if you think you would
be interested in ordering an extra shirt, let me know soon so
we know how many shirts to order.
We have an extensive library of books and
magazines, the listing is on profs, and will be made available
to non Profs users. The library is too big to bring to each meeting
so requests must be made in advance of the meeting.
Age:
30
Years Brewing:
8 months
Batches Brewed:
5
Outside Interests:
This is supposed to be a "non-beer"
related section, so here goes: I like to golf, especially with
my friends because we drink a lot of...err, no, that can't go
in this section. OK, I like to hang out at my pool in the summer
and barbecue because we sit around and ...nope, that won't work
either. MY GOD, MY LIFE REVOLVES AROUND BEER! (Does FERA have
an AA listing?)
How Started:
I first heard about the club on FERA in December, 1994. Then a
co-worker of mine joined (the infamous Crispy Fry). I had just
a general interest at first. Then I brewed my first batch, and
got myself hooked!
First Batch:
Actually, my first batch went pretty well. I was over-cautious,
as most probably are. Reflecting back, I can't believe how long
it took to go from stove to carboy!
Worst Batch:
Definitely my India Pale Ale. I probably had my hands in the brew
too much on this batch (novice siphoning problems), and boy did
it turn out nasty!
Best Batch:
My last batch was probably my favorite. Just a simple recipe of
two cans of Munton's American Light, and oz. of Brewers Gold Hops,
with Wyeast American Ale yeast. It turned out to be a nice, light
summer beer.
Favorite Commercial Beer:
I like the entire Pete's
line.
Favorite Style to Brew:
All of my batches so far have
been brown and lighter ales.
Advice to Beginners: Brew at least three batches, as follows:
First Batch - Follow a recipe, and do it by the book.
Second Batch - Experiment, and wing the procedures!
Third Batch - Find a happy medium
between your first two batches.
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Last updated 11/14/96 |