October 1998

Fermental Order of Renaissance Draughtsmen

Vol. 6 - No. 10

In this issue:

Next Meeting Competition Results - Lambic and Fruit Beers Beer Events, Meetings & Competitions Notes From The Prez

The Brew Review - Strong Scotch Ales Fermental Funny - Beer Troubleshooting Guide Little Brew 2 Dearborn Homebrewing

The next meeting will be held at Sisko's in Taylor on Tuesday, October 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 Scottish Ales. 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.

Remember to mark your calendars ahead for the next two months, Novembers meeting is the 18th and Decembers meeting is the 15th due to the holidays.

On behalf of the entire executive staff we thank you for electing us to serve you this year but it is with regret that we all announce our retirement. We all have many obligations in our lives including family, graduate classes, an outside life (is there such a thing outside homebrewing?) but we will all retire this year. This leaves every position open for the first time in our clubs history. You must ALL think about the potential of being an officer, without the leadership of the officers and the support of all the members, this club wouldn't exist. The duties of the positions are listed below. Elections will be held in November so please contact me if you will consider running for an office, we will publish ballots, or possibly voting on the web, but certainly plan on showing up in November if you care about the future of the club.

Office of President

Article 8 of the Fermental Constitution (9/11/96 revision) covers the duties of the club officers, I will paraphrase and add in the other duties of the Chief Executive Officer not found in the chapter.

The President is the chief executive officer and chief administrative officer of the club. The president establishes the meeting sites and presides as chairperson during the meetings. The president has authority to execute contracts based upon Executive Board approval, and co-sign drafts against the treasury. The president also has authority to appoint committees within the club (i.e. Pig Roast committee).

The president represents the club at the monthly (except summer months) FERA General Council meetings. FERA provides a free meal to entice attendance, and a formal Christmas party in December as a reward. The great part of the job is the title, and the knowledge that you are the Big Cheese of one of the countries premier homebrewing clubs. You get your name in lights, a handful of business cards...and if you join right now (oop's too many info-mercials!) Based on recent IRS rulings, the president of FERA clubs must be an active, full-time Ford Motor Company employee.

Vice President

The most important role of the VP position is to perform the duties of the president in case of absence. The VP is a voting and active member of the executive committee. The Fermentals have also added the duties outside of the constitution such as scheduling and organizing the clubs homebrew contests. This includes maintaining the prize inventory and locating judges. The VP has also historically spearheaded the coordination of the annual picnic (Beer-B-Que).

The vice presidential position has been an excellent way to be involved in the shaping of the club, without all the publicity as the president and secretary.

Secretary

The person that will hold the position of secretary should be prepared for a multitude of different tasks, taking minutes at executive and regular meetings, writing up minutes and articles for the newsletter, copying and distributing the newsletter via intercompany mail, US mail and profs.

Treasurer

The treasurer collects dues from new members and collects yearly dues from the active members. Deposit moneys into the savings account. Dispense moneys for various expenses (to secretary for newsletters and postage, etc.), for various equipment bought for club use, raffle items bought and shortages for club meeting bills (hopefully won't be too many of these in the year). Keeps balance of savings account and makes sure the account is up to date. The Treasurer MUST be a full time Ford employee (same reason as the president)

Librarian

The librarian position is really three duties. First; maintain the library and ensure that you keep a record of where the various journals and books are. Second, raise funds (currently through the 50-50 raffle) to purchase new titles. All of the library has been funded separately from the rest of the clubs dues. Third, bring the library to club meetings and ensure that members are aware of their benefit to use this resource. That is the basic duties, the rest is up to the individual to determine what they see as the best method of disseminating important homebrew information to the club members.

September's contest was Fruit and Lambic beers. This contest involved the AHA major category "Belgian Style Lambic" (3) including "Belgian Style Lambic" (3a), "Belgian Style Gueuze Lambic" (3b) and "Belgian Style Fruit Lambic" (3c), as well as the AHA major category "Fruit and Vegetable Beer" (21) including "Fruit and Vegetable Beer" (21a) and "Classic Style Fruit and Vegetable Beer" (21b). The winners are:

A toast to Chris Frey and Tony Tantillo, this months judges. The major fault in the competition was that Tyler only brought one bottle.

We propose to hold the judging each month at Jim Rice's, on the Wednesday following each months meeting. All members are encouraged to attend. This months judging started at 6Pm and took over 60 minutes, so it's not a large time committment. Please call 313-277-3865 for more info.

This month's competition is the "If it's not Scottish..." AHA competition. This is a contest of the AHA major category "Scottish Style Ale" (8) including "Scottish Style Light Ale" (8a), "Scottish Style Heavy Ale" (8b) and "Scottish Style Export Ale" (8c), as well as the "Strong Scotch Ale" (10b) subcategory of the "English and Scottish Style Strong Ale" (10) category.

November's competition will be Porters. This is a contest of the AHA major category "Porter" (9) including "Brown Porter" (9a) and "Robust Porter" (9b).

Decembers competition is Holiday Ales and Barleywine. Entries are also due for January 1999 Hail to The Ale AHA competition

by Crispy

After a late night meeting with the AABG and FORD club (3:00am, got to get some sleep!), I got up bright and early (OK, early) to begin the festivities. Doug and Kathy spent the night and I went upstairs on my way out to the garage and kicked them in the head
to wake up. I'm ugly with a hangover.

Nothing like the sound of a drill to grind grain and the banging of multiple pico systems to keep that hangover from disappearing! Several Advils later I had prepared the systems while Doug completed the grinding. Around 10:00am we began the mash for 10 gallons of Barley Wine, 20 gallons of SNPA 7 and what turned out to be 10 gallons or so of Strange Brew 2, the runnings from an Alt, an Oatmeal Stout and the Barley Wine, with a can of LME thrown in for good measure.

Mike Arend and his sister Lois and friend Scott brewed up 10 gallons of Bee Porter, Bob Scholl and Ed Lustenader of AABG brewed 10 gallons of Alt, Spencer Thomas (also of AABG) brewed 5 gallons of Oatmeal Stout and Doug and I brewed the aforementioned
40 gallons of misc. brews.

As usual, not all went easily. The 46 pounds of grains that I stuffed into the pico for the Barley Wine managed to get under the screen and clog up the valve (shades of pain-in-the-ass-porter!), and I had to carefully ladle out the grains from the mash tun and make my boil kettle into a mash tun. Once the grains had absorbed the fluids it was pushing out the top of the tun! This made sparging a very delicate operation, but I ended up with 10 gallons of 1.100 Barley Wine using nothing but grains.

New members Bob and Kim Barrett, innocent bystanders to the whole process, spent the better part of the day absorbing knowledge (and beer), and have committed to partaking in little brew 3 as brewers themselves.

Thanks go to Kathy Loftus, who was the chef for the gathered masses; I supplied burgers, dogs and chili and everyone else brought side dishes, so there was no famine among us. A special thanks go to Mike, Lois and Scott for sticking around and helping me do clean-up, much appreciated.

By Crispy - September 30th

At lunch today I stopped by Merchants in Dearborn to see if they had found a replacement for Mike Pagnely in the homebrew department. I sauntered over to the homebrew supply area only to find...nothing! Well, almost nothing. The hops and yeast were all gone, just about all the grains and extracts too! There was a box of old magazines, a bottling bucket and a few other pieces of homebrew paraphernalia, but really not much of anything.

I retraced my steps throughout the store trying to locate where they had moved their supplies, but to no avail. Finally, I approached Mr. Jonna to discuss what was up.


"Did you move the homebrew supplies or remove them?", I queried. "Removed them," Jonna replied, "We shipped what we had up to the Royal Oak store. It was a combination of things. First, we just weren't doing the volume to justify the section. Secondly, the materials in the homebrew area are dated and a recent review of our inventory showed almost a third of our inventory was past their sell dates. Third, without the volume, we were not making any money. I could have lived with breaking even, but with other stores specializing more in homebrewing, they were able to sell their inventory cheaper and go through their inventory quicker. And finally, the most important reason why we are getting out is that we have not been able to keep a dedicated, full-time person on the job. Mike went on to a job with a distributor and he was the third person running the department in less than three years. Without the attention of a full-time person, the homebrew section couldn't make it. I'm sorry".

I indicated that there was no reason to apologize, that we appreciated his support of our hobby of the last few years, giving us the club discount, allowing us to utilize his facility for the various homebrew demonstrations (I have personally participated in all 5 I believe) and the overall support that Merchants provides both brewers and specialty beer drinkers. He indicated that they will still sponsor beer-related events and asked that I ensure that Tony Randazo in Royal Oak be kept on the clubs mailing list so that he could inform us of any upcoming beer events that Merchants may be sponsoring or hosting in the future.

While Merchants was never a full-blown homebrew supply shop, I will personally miss being able to have a place so close to work to grab supplies from. The last minute roasted malt, the extra carboy, the piece of tubing or whatever.

Sincerely,
Chris P. Frey

Beer Events, Meetings & Competitions Gabrielle Palmer

• October 27 (T) - FORD Meeting, If It's Not Scottish... Competition (AHA), Categories #8 a, b & c and #10 b.
• November 3 - Abbey Ales at Dragonmead Brewery in Warren, 7pm.
• November 6-7 - 9th Annual Taste of the Great Lakes Homebrew Conference in Frankenmuth includes a Beer Feast, speakers, Microbrew & Specialty Beer Tasting, Homebrew Competition and more. Contact Jeff Hervert at 517-652-9081 or call 1-800-FUN-TOWN for more information.
• November 12 - Belgian Beers Tasting at Arbor Brewing Company, $20.
• November 18 (W) - FORD Meeting, Porter Competition, Categories #9 a & b.
• December 1 - ? Style at Dragonmead Brewery in Warren, 7pm.
• December 10 - Seasonal Beers Tasting at Arbor Brewing Company, $20.
• December 15 (T) - FORD Meeting, Spiced Holiday Ale/Barleywine Competition, All Style Categories. Entries also accepted for the January 1999 Hail to the Ales Competition (AHA), Categories #5 a & b and #6 a, b & c.

Strong Scotch Ales
Gabrielle Palmer

Scottish ales are traditionaly maltier in flavor and aroma than their English counterparts and are often balanced with a toasty dryness, darker colors, more full-bodied and smokier character than the English ales. Scottish ales are also fermented at cooler temperatures than English ales and results in less fruity esters. In order to accentuate maltiness and body, the Scots ferment their beers with less attenuative yeasts than brewers elsewhere which leaves a sweeter, maltier beer.

Strong Scotch Ales are overwhelmingly malty and full bodied. Perception of hop bitterness is very low. Hop flavor and aroma are very low or nonexistant. Color ranges from deep copper to brown. The clean alcohol flavor balances the rich and dominant sweet maltiness in flavor and aroma. A caramel character is often a part of the profile. Fruity esters are generally at medium aromatic and flavor levels. A peaty/smoky character may be evident at low levels. Low diacetyl levels are acceptable. Chill haze is allowable at cold temperatures.

Fermental Funny