October brought us all back to our home base, Chelsea's. We had a great turnout to hear Dan McConnell from Yeast Culture Kit Co. Speak about yeast, and boy did he educate us on yeasties!

Tim started the meeting by announcing that the stout contest would be held offsite as the judging team felt that the contests could be more accurately judged in a controlled environment free of smoke, cooking odors, and with better lighting. Tim then mentioned the $25 missing from the bill from the previous months meeting, to the best of my knowledge no one stepped up to that one, also, it's not too early to start thinking about paying dues for next year, as always, dues are $15 after your first year, $20 to renew a family membership.

I then showed an example of the ceramic steins we can have customized with our logo and your name or a saying (20 oz mugs are $13, 11 oz coffee mugs are $9). Tyler brought in the counter pressure bottle filler to show everyone, Tyler has volunteered to be the equipment manager for the following year. So far the equipment bank consists of the counter pressure bottle filler and a customized socket wrench for pin lock coke cornelius kegs. Tyler will have a list of guidelines for checking out equipment in the very near future.

Steve Rowley and Brian Shepard are starting up a sub club for anyone that's interested, the Cigar Aficionado & Renaissance Smokers for the cigar fans in the club, contact either Steve or Brian for more info, Steve mentioned a cigar dinner at the Berkley Front in the near future.

Several people have commented on the homebrew section at Merchants Dearborn expanding greatly, they will even start carrying kegging supplies soon. I also passed along a phone inquiry from a Dearborn Jaycees representative hoping to get our club to do a demo for one of their meetings, probably next April or May. My last announcement of the evening was to pass along the AHA contests for next year, they include Pale Ale, Lagers (German Light, Classic Pilsner, American lager), Bock, TBD, Weiss and Bitter.

Chris introduced himself and made note of the fact over 25 items have been checked out from the library and people need to remember that there is a one month checkout period.

The big business of the evening before Dan got started was the nominations for club officers. Unless there has been any calls directly to Neal there is only one person running for each office. Both Neal Petty and Tim Tepatti have stepped down and Rich Byrnes is running for President and Joanne Wilson is running for Vice President. Rich Byrnes and Chris Frey have both stepped down from their previous positions of Secretary and Librarian, Chris Frey is running for secretary and Ted Geftos is running for Librarian. And the one constant in this whole mess is our faithful treasurer, Sandy Bruce. Once the nominations were out of the way the PA system and the spotlights were fired up for Dan McConnell.

After Dan introduced himself he made mention of the fact that he has been focusing lately on commercial trouble shooting and yeast management for professional breweries. He showed examples of yeast colonies in petri dishes on agar, and 3mm vials of yeast ready to be started up for brewing.

The conversation quickly turned to the most important factor for brewers, pitching rates. For most ales, a rate of 10 million cells per liter is what you want for ideal fermentation, this is for a normal 1.040 gravity beer, a high gravity 1.080 style beer would need double that, or 20 million cells/liter.

That being said this works out to around 2 to 4 liters of active starter per batch, with this volume of yeast, you can reasonably expect only a 2 hour lag time for fermentation to commence. This is of more importance to commercial breweries where reproducibility is much more of a factor than homebrewers that can vary every batch with no consequence.

Dan prefers not to use carboys for fermentation for the sake of yeast harvesting, his technique is as follows. When the krausen forms, skim the top layer of crud and dispose, then skim the beautiful creamy white layer underneath that forms which is pure top cropping high flocculating yeast. This yeast can be stored in a mason jar or Erlenmeyer flask to be restarted for subsequent batches. With proper handling under controlled conditions, yeast can be reused several hundred times, although the chances for mutations are high, the yeast will naturally mutate after a few generations to adept to your brewery anyway (Grizzly Peaks is on the 220th batch reusing the same yeast!)

Dan makes his starters up with a gallon of water and 1 LB of light extract and always steps up 3 times, from slant to 35 ml. tube to 250ml Erlenmeyer to 1 liter Erlenmeyer. A typical homebrewer step-up program would be from 35ml (smackpack or Yeastlab Tube) to 500ml to 2liters.

The Erlenmeyer flasks are laboratory grade and can be autoclaved and also boiled on a stovetop to make sterile starters, but Dan said the practice of canning starters in pints and quarts is comparable to autoclaving and sterilizing your starters.

Dan then got out the alcohol lamp, inoculating loops (both disposable and reusable) and demonstrated how to first streak a plate with a yeast colony you wish to grow and preserve on agar, and then how you would isolate a single colony of pure yeast to build a starter from.

The technique didn't look too difficult at all, and I saw enough eager eyes in the crowd that I expect in a few months that a slew of people add "Yeast Farmers" to their list of homebrewing skills, hell, we could even get a certified registered yeast rancher for the club, a yeast librarian that would maintain a freezer full of slants and build up starters for people, any volunteers? Dan McConnell has over 200 slants in his freezer, yikes!

When asked which was his favorite, Dan referred to an English yeast from National Culture Collection in England, possibly from Fullers.

When asked about mixing yeast strains, his reply is that is isn't all that common, although the practice of fermenting with one strain and bottling or priming with another was common. When the best of show winner from an English contest was analyzed, it contained 4 unique yeast strains (Tailors Landlord Ale)

When Dan did an actual demo on grabbing yeast from a slant to build up, the one thing he stressed over anything was to protect the mother colony! Time is critical, work fast and make sure everything is sanitary!

Special thanks to Dan for driving out from Ann Arbor in the rain to meet with us and to Pat Babcock for inviting Dan and setting up the show! When I left at 9:30 Dan was still sitting at a table with Tyler and a slew of others answering a list of questions. Dan can be reached at 313-761-5914 (work #) or E-mailed at yckco@aol.com.

Even though each candidate is running unopposed we can't announce election results yet, but I can announce the results of the volunteer positions within the club and I couldn't be more tickled about that!

Chris Frey has graciously volunteered to be the Newsletter editor/Author for next year, Thank you Chris!!

Tyler Barber has graciously volunteered to be the equipment manager for next year (while visions of Pico systems danced in his head!) Thanks Tyler!

Pat Babcock has volunteered to be the Business Manager next year, Pat will oversee club purchases, advertising and assist with, well, club business! Thanks Pat! Pat also gets full credit this year and again for next year for creating and maintaining our website, both on the World Wide Web and within Ford Motor Co!

And last but certainly not least is Jim Bazzy volunteering to be the Special Events Coordinator. Jim will help oversee any and all committees that need forming and coordinating all public events including demos and club functions. Thanks Jim!

Congratulations to our very own Bob and Missie Palmer. Missie had a baby boy, Robert Tylor Palmer on 11/1/96 @ 3:02 am, way past closing time. Little Robert came in at 7lbs., 5 oz.. !Mother and child are doing fine; Bob on the other hand is still looking kinda pale and twitching every now and then, go figure!

A hearty welcome to 3 new members this Month, Brian Shepard, Larry Rose and Niel Rabiteau. We are now up to member number 112! Can you say GASP!! Please remember that Dues are due soon! As soon as your dues are paid for '97 you will be issued a new ID card, these do expire every year, plus the new cards will have ALL the phone numbers on the back that we get a discount from.

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.

Correspondence should be directed to:

Rich Byrnes,

30972 Cousino

Warren, MI 48092

Voice/Fax 810-558-9844

usfmczgm@ibmmail.com

CompuServe 75113,411

Visit our website at: http://oeonline.com /~pbabcock/ford.html

current circulation.....122, and growing!

Our next meeting will be Wednesday, November 13th at Chelsea's Pub in Dearborn Heights. Due to the Thanks-giving holiday, we will meet on Wednesday the 13th and the contest will be Belgian beers. Chelseas is located on Vanborn between Telegraph and Southfield (midway, on the North side). Their address is 22120 Vanborn and their phone number is 313-278-0888. Hope to see you all there!

A special meeting will be held at Chelsea's one week after the regular meeting. Jim Bazzy, in conjunction with Chelsea's, has been contacted by Chris Mason, who works for Distinctive Beverage out of Livonia. They have set up a special event that will be hosted by Traverse City Brewing Company', Brewmaster and Assistant Brewmaster. The F.O.R.D. Club has been invited to both evaluate their brews and to get out some P.R. and brand recognition in this area. For those of you who remember last time Jim got a distributor to host an event like this we all enjoyed ourselves immensely. This special event will begin around 5ish at Chelsea's. A tip of the hat to J.B.!

Large Coleman Cooler. Broken hinge on lid, self-draining. This would make a good mash tun. Also, 10 Budwiser Holiday Collector Mugs (1980-1989). Anyone interested, I will bring the brochure to the next meeting - Al

And if you think you can get this stuff off of me cheap, just look to the next page to see what sort of guy your dealing with!)

Last month's category was Stout and the winners, as judged by the members of the Beer Judging class, were:

1. Tyler Barber scored 41 out of a possible 50 with his recently brewed Imperial Stout.

2. Chris Frey earned 40 with his Toad Spit Stout recipe (right out of Papazian)

3. A tie with Tony Tantillo's Oatmeal Stout and Tyler Barber's Foreign Style Stout, both of which earned 38 points.

For those who would like to get a copy of Dan's Yeast Culture Kit Co. catalog, it is currently (and temporarily) available at Ford's internal website. Put your browser to URL http//www.be.ford.com/brewery/ yckcotbl.html

For people who have not done much brewing point and click over to articles written by both Jim Busch and Pat Babcock at http//www.be.ford.com /brewery/begbrewr.html

Pat has also put up the BJCP study guide at his homepage

O.K., I admit it. I don't have anything else for the newsletter. Rather than rant, here are a few ideas. First, since Pat still has nightschool for a few more months, I can't always get pictures for the newsletter. If you have a decent photo of you, a loved one, or even a pet brewing beer that you would like to share with the club, bring it to a meeting and, if selected, it will get scanned and put into the newsletter.

If you find a great beer, figured out a new way to make brewing easier, want to ask a question to the group, sell something brewing related or otherwise have ANY content for this newsletter, don't be shy. Just write me a profs, send me a note, or call me and tell me what you would like to share.

Oh yeah. I called the American Homebrewers Association about the July meeting in Ohio next year and they tell me that there will be reduced rates for AHA club members (that's us!) and also there may be some quantity discounts . I know that I will be there, as last years national meeting in Colorado was just too far away. Let's work this group discount thing and go as a large group. Who knows, maybe if we get enough people to go we can hire a bus for the trip.

The holidays are coming up and we offer our friends and family our homebrews as gifts of kindness. Let's not forget to mention that these babies tend to have higher level of alcohol and that they should take care after drinking a few. We want to see everyone next year and we ask you to all drink responsibly.

That's it. Got to see who is winning the elections. Guess the outcomes kind of a given, but there were a lot of proposals this year. Hope we get the stadium. See you at the meeting!

American Homebrewers Association

National Homebrewers Conference and Festival

July 17-19, 1997, Cleveland, Ohio, Sheraton City Centre

* World-renowned speakers * Grand Banquet

* Homebrew Seminars * Awards Ceremony

* Award-winning homebrews * Homebrew festival

* National Homebrew * Free beer and fun

Competition judging

Join other homebrewers and beer enthusiasts for the Beeriest time of you life! Brought to by the American Homebrewers Association,

P.O. Box 1679, Boulder, Co. 80306-1679 (303) 447-0816 aha@aob.org

Another page by BabsTech Enterprises. Can we do yours?

Last updated 11/8/96