November 1994 Fermental Order of Renaissance Draughtsman Vol. 2 No. 11


This Issue:

Last Months Meeting 1
Club Business 2
Next Meeting 2
Competition News 2
New Members 2
What's New 2
Habermanns Corner 3
Beer Travels 4
Recipes 4
Brewers Profile 5
GABF Winners 6/7


Last Months Meeting


WOW! Last months meeting was the biggest turnout I've seen since the Beer-B-Q! I was running a tad late (baby sitters rule my life!) and when I got there I was lucky to find a seat at the table. For those of you that missed the meeting, we were at the newly opened Berkley Front "mega tap" bar in Berkley on 12 mile. I don't know if there is a clear definition of what constitutes a mega tap, but the Berkley Front has over 30 brews on tap, and at least another 30 bottled beers. Beers ranged from Bells solsun to Frankenmuth to Optimator and everything in-between(but no Strohmillercoorweiser or Zima (yaaa!). The owners intent is to bring a huge selection of great beers to the public and hopefully educate them about beer at the same time. The food list includes no fried foods as grease tends to wreck the head on beer but there is a big list of great sounding sandwiches for those who come at dinner time. I highly recommend the Berkley front as a place to sit and enjoy some great beers, and bring a friend and introduce him/her to Lambics, esb's, bocks and wheat beers n a nice atmosphere with a great jukebox (ya gotta see the selection to believe it!).


The Ye Olde Brew News is the monthly publication of the Fermental Order of Renaissance Draughtsman, otherwise known as the Fermentals. The club meets once a month on the 4th Wednesday at 6:00 at the Traffic Jam & Snug brewpub in Detroit, unless a special meeting is to be held elsewhere. Our fiscal year begins Jan 1st and dues are set at $25 a year for new members, and $15 a year there after, members joining after July 1st pay $17.50 for the 1st year. Joint memberships (same household only) are $40 the first year, and $20 there after.


President: Neal Petty,

Vice-president: Tom Herron,

Treasurer: Sandy Bruce,

Secretary: Rich Byrnes,

Librarian: Doug Geiss,

Special Events Coordinator: Doug LeCureaux,


The Berkley front is extremely crowded on weekends so if you go, plan on a wait, and quite a crowd. The bar should have an upper room completed open for business by Thanksgiving so that will help .

Anyways, I was a bit late so Neal conducted the meeting and took notes so I will to try and summarize here.

Neal started off by acknowledging our 1st year anniversary, (can you believe it, seems like just yesterday.....) and then in conjunction, asked for volunteers to be site coordinators, I will be distributing posters advertising our club, and each site coordinator will be responsible for putting those posters up in their building, we won't have every building covered, but we can get our name out to more people this way. I will have my name and phone number on each poster as well as the name of each site coordinator, we will try and coordinate so most buildings get postered.

Neal then proceeded to talk about the Taste of the Great Lakes contest and seminar, I don't have any info on what he covered specifically, but the event is over by now.

Neal then reminded everyone of the library's most recent acquisition, the complete set of the classic beer series books (9 total) so feel free to check one out to learn more about a style. Tom Sieja, who has been gracious enough to download the Internet HBD files has recently downloaded several FAQ (frequently Asked Questions) from the homebrew digest, these are a series of questions and answers about such topics as All grain brewing, kegging, hops and yeast. All the files are in a 3 ring binder and can be checked out as 1 book. Our most recent 50/50 library raffle netted $18 for the library (and $18 to Bob Rotay), so if you have any suggestions for books you would like to see, please send your suggestions to Doug Geiss, we have achieved great success in stocking a library by using the 50/50 raffles so we will continue to use this money making venture.


CLUB BUSINESS


The most important thing to be thinking about as the year draws to an end is officer elections, we will be taking nominations this month and having elections in December. The nominations are self made, no one needs to nominate you if you want to run. I will devise an absentee ballot for those of you who want to vote in December but can't make the meeting. The positions that are available are President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary and Librarian. These positions start in January.

FERA ALERT!!

The fine people at FERA started up the drive to establish a homebrew club again and attracted just about 40 people (deja vu), well the leader of this group had never heard of the F.O.R.D. club as he works at Ford Credit. After Neal contacted him to brief him on the F.O.R.D. club, he and the other brewers are going to come to the November meeting to meet us and see what we have to offer, so lets make a good impression on these people. Due to the potential for several new people to join the club, we may delay elections for a month if any of the new members are interested in running for office.

Just a early reminder about dues, dues will be due (department of redundancy department?

in January, all current members will be assessed $15 for next year except multiple households that are assessed $20. if anyone wants to pay early, no one is stopping you )


NEXT MEETING


Novembers meeting will be back at Traffic Jam & Snugs, and the meeting will be a week early due to the holidays. Decembers meeting will also be a week early sue to the holidays, but the location hasn't been decided yet, we may be back at the Berkley Front. The idea of a Christmas Party has also been bounced around a little bit, something simple with people bringing an appetizer and their spouses to the December meeting, if anyone has any thoughts on this let's plan it!


COMPETITION NEWS

This month's brew competition is specialty beers and is an official AHA competition. This is a unique category that includes beers with fermentables other than barley (such as Rye) or a unique brewing process (such as hot rocking your wort).

Decembers competition is Holiday spiced beers which is a club competition, not an AHA one.

Octobers fruit/pumpkin beer competition drew 3 fruit entries and no pumpkin beers. Congratulations go out to Tom Herron for his year old Strawberry Wheat (no recipe available due to construction confusion at the Herron Ranch), Neal Petty's "Razz-Terry" took 2nd and Ted Geftos took 3rd

If anyone has any suggestions for competitions next year, please see Neal or myself as we will be drawing up the competition schedule for 1995 pretty soon.


NEW MEMBERS


The Fermentals welcome Bob Neimi to our club. Bob sat in on a meeting last January and got really busy after that, but now has taken the plunge and joined our merry band. Bob is featured in the Brewers Profile this issue so introduce yourself at next meeting if you haven't already.

I will be reprinting the members directory so if you have any updates, please let me know. The directory includes your name, phone number and any specialties you have so others may call you for advice and help. Specialties include All grain brewing, mead making, cider making, Lambics, hop growing, yeast culturing, Pico system user/owner. and kegging.


WHAT'S NEW


Sam Adams Honey Porter is finally on the shelves (yum!) as well as many special holiday brews, check out your favorite beer store for this years picks!


Habermann's Corner


Here is a formula for computing IBU (International Bittering Units) that appeared some time ago in Zymurgy (I'm not sure of the author, but give credit to the magazine for publishing it). I've used it successfully when attempting to match style for competitions. The formula is based on the assumptions that hop bitterness is dependent on length of time in the boil as well as alpha acid level of the hops you are using.

IBU = W * U * A * 7462 / V * (1 + GA)

GA = (GB - 0.050) / 4.3

where W = weight of hops in ounces

U = utilization percent

A = alpha acid percent

V = volume in gallons

GB= gravity of beer

A utilization schedule gives hop bitterness utilization over the period of the boil, and assumes that at most 30% of hop bitterness is available. Hops boiled less than 5 minutes provide 5% utilization.

%U = 30.0% 51-60 minutes

15.3 26-30

8.0 11-15

5.0 < 5 minutes

Here is an example. Suppose you are planning a beer with a target of about 20 IBU's that will be 1.040 Original Gravity. With a hopping schedule listed here, compute the actual IBU to confirm your assumptions:

1.0 oz 5.0% alpha 60 minutes

0.5 oz 4.1% alpha 30 minutes

0.5 oz 3.0% alpha 5 minutes

compute GA = (1.040-0.050)/4.3 = 0.23

IBU =[(1*.3*.05*7462)/(5*1.23)] + [(.5*.153*.041*7462)/(5*1.23)] + [(.5*.05*.03*7432)/(5*1.23)

= 18.2 + 3.81 + 0.91

= 23

Therefore, you have guessed quite well in your hop additions. You could decide to adjust the schedule to get closer to your target or use the schedule as is if it fits the range given for this style.



Beer Travels


I was fortunate this year to have attended the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, all I can say is WOW, talk about a journey to the Holy Land! Colorado has a total of about 40 brewpubs and micro-breweries spread out throughout the whole state (we definitely have some catching up to do!) I visited a few of them and was extremely impressed everywhere I went. Unfortunately it was the weekend of the festival when I was there so no brewmasters were available to show me around and talk to me, that was to be expected however. The festival itself was in the heart of downtown Denver, at a huge exhibition hall. The event drew 20,000 thirsty beer lovers over the course of a weekend (actually Friday and Saturday) and I was one of them. the event started Friday at 5:00 and last call was at 9:45, it's amazing how many 1 oz. samples of fine micro-beer you can sample in 5 hours. This year drew 265 brewers with a combined total of 1100 beers ( I have included the winners in this newsletter) The event is inspiring and quite fun, if you ever have a chance to go to Denver in October, definitely plan on attending the Beer Fest!



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