November 1999 Fermental Order of Renaissance Draughtsmen Vol. 7 - No. 11
In this issue:

November's Meeting

The next meeting will be held back at Sisko's in Taylor on Wednesday, November 17th. 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 Stouts. As usual, the thirsty hard-core who want dinner will start arriving around 5PM, people will drift in for an hour or so, and we will start our meeting around 6PM.


Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day!
Chris Frey

This Saturday (November 13th) is Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day. As we discussed in our club meeting a while ago, homebrewing needs our support! The numbers are dwindling (membership in the AHA is down over 50% in the last three years, Brewing Techniques shut down and Zymurgy recently reduced its page count to 64) and the hobby needs a shot in the arm if we want to continue to have the variety and quality of retail support and technical information available to our hobby.

I will be brewing at the Barr House Brewery this Saturday. If anyone would like to join me and either bring their own system or a friend who is interested in brewing, come on over and join in. I start around 9:00 am and will be in the thick of things around noon.


Competition Results
Jim Racine

The winners from our last three club competitions are:

Porters Oktoberfest Strong Ales
Place Name Points Place Name Points Place Name Points
1 Gary Shewchuk 40/50 1 Gary Shewchuk 45/50 1 Kim & Bob Barrett 34/50
2 Jim Racine 38/50 2 Craig Rinkel 34/50
3 Kim & Bob Barrett 37/50
HM Tom Sutphen 36/50

This month's competition will be Stouts, Category #11 a, b, c, d & e. Upcoming competitions, including the schedule for 2000, may be found later in this newsletter.



Howie Klix

Jim & Marie Racine are all smiles at Beer-B-Q '99, decked out in their "Cool American Beer Co." shirts and enjoying a tasty glass of Greektown Lager. Doug Geiss serves as head cook and starts cooking up some of the sausages, brats and hotdogs at Beer-B-Q '99.

Greektown Lager
Jim Racine

It all started December 25th, 1992. I received the gift that keeps giving... a homebrew kit. Like many homebrewers, I was bitten by the bug. I loved my new hobby! I was reading everything I could about it and brewing like crazy. This went on for four years.

While reading Midwest Beer Notes I came across an advertisement from Arcadia. They wanted to start a microbrewery and needed investors. Naturally, I inquired. After reading the prospectus, I thought "I can do this" and started to look into opening a brewery. That led me to the 1996 Boston Brew-In, a national conventional for microbreweries and brewpubs. Before the conference I attended the American Brewers Guild 2-day course "How to open a Brew Pub or Microbrewery". The conference had a number of speakers and the tradeshow had hundreds of vendors from the industry. I had a great time and learned a lot. While planning the brewery I talked to a lot of brewers and owners to get their advice. The one thing they all had in common was their 60+ hour work weeks.

At this point in my life I was married, had two kids at home (1 & 6 years old) and another on the way. Being the primary caretaker (Mr. Mom, if you will), I had to decide if I was ready and able to give it a shot. I chose to put the plan on hold until the kids were all in school. Reasoning that beer had been around for thousands of years... waiting a few more wouldn't hurt.

Now my mission was to learn as much about the brewing process as possible. I started all-grain brewing and joined a great beer club. At one of our meetings we had guest speakers from Traverse Brewing Company. Through talking with them I found out that they originally started up with a beer distributor's license. They continued with a brewery in New York or Pennsylvania (I forget which... lots of samples that night) making beer for them. The brewery made Manitu Amber and Traverse distributed it. When they had established the beer in the market they were ready to build Traverse Brewing Company.

The light bulb went on... get into the beer business by becoming a beer wholesaler that distributes an exclusive brand of beer. This could be done for pennies on the dollar compared to all the expenses that went with opening and operating a brewery. Another important advantage to this approach is the control it gives you over your beer compared to having another distributor who will sell your beer along with the many other brands it carries.

I dusted off my brewery plan and converted it to a beer distributor plan. I contacted the BATF and the State of Michigan Liquor Commission to see what was needed for the licensing process. The question of when still remained.

The story would not be complete without Marie, my wife (the one who gave me the beer kit). She is an attorney who has been practicing for about 15 years. A lot of her work was done for developers in Greektown (Fishbones, Pegasus, Atheneum). When the developers decided to try to get a casino in Detroit, Marie represented them. Since then I had always thought that if they were successful in their bid for a casino, I would have to give Greektown Beer a try.

In the spring of 1999 the paper process began. After submitting lots of forms, the Cool American Beer Company got federal approval. However, state approval was not so easy. Due mostly to the city of Detroit's road blocks to entry and mistakes (I should have known better). Reasoning that most of the beer would be sold in Detroit, I wanted to be part of the city. But after months of getting nowhere in Detroit, I decided to use Dearborn instead. They only turned down my request once before giving their approval. With that, I was able to get state approval.

Now that Cool American Beer is fully licensed, I am moving ahead with launching Greektown Lager. Michigan Brewing Company will brew the beer and I will distribute it. The label proof has been finalized and I am waiting on them to be printed. The beer is in the fermentor and hopefully it will be available in Greektown before our next newsletter.

Coming to a meeting soon... Greektown Lager!

Beer-guzzling wild elephants rampage in India, killing four

Wild elephants broke into a cluster of thatched huts in Gauhati, India, guzzled rice beer that was fermenting in casks and then tore the village apart in a drunken rampage, trampling four people to death and injuring siz, a government wildlife official said.

The herd of 15 elephants burst into Prajapatibosti village in Golaghat district, 290 kilometers (180 miles) east of Gauhati, the state capital of northeastern Assam on Wednesday, said elephant expert Kushal Konwar Sharma.

"The elephants descended on the village and broke into the thatched huts with their trunks and began guzzling down local rice beer kept in casks by the villagers," Sharma said in a phone interview from Golaghat. "After drinking the beer the elephant herd became intoxicated and went on a rampage, trampling to death four members of a family." They trampled standing rice crops and more huts before leaving the area Thursday morning.

"The man-elephant conflict is mainly due to shrinking forest habitat and encroachment by human beings," said Sharma. "The elephants have a tendency to stay away from human beings, but when their area is disturbed they come out of the forests. The tastes of sugarcane, maize, rice, and homemade brew makes them feel more attracted toward the village areas."

Local villagers say they can no longer scare the elephants away with torches and the beatings of drums and cymbals, as in the past.

"Elephants are very intelligent and when they realize that bursting of firecrackers, torch flames and beating of drums are painless, they get used to such traditional methods and do not normally get scared," said Sharma.

He said elephant attacks are less frequent in the hill areas where people use guns. At least 100 people have been killed in elephant attacks during the past year in Assam, where 5000 wild elephants are estimated to live.


Beer Events, Meetings & Competitions
Gabrielle Palmer


Fermental Funny
Jonathan Rosenberg

Ye Olde Brew News
published by the F.O.R.D. Homebrew Club
Editor:
Gabrielle Palmer

Contributors:
Chris Frey
Howie Klix
Gabrielle Palmer
Jim Racine
Jonathan Rosenberg

Club Officers:
Pat Babcock, President
Jim Racine, Vice President
Rich Byrnes, Secretary
Chris Frey, Treasurer
Gabrielle Palmer, Newsletter Editor/Webmaster
Sue Merritt, Photographer/Historian/Beer Mooch
Mike Arend, Librarian
Jim Rice & Tyler Barber, Special Events Coordinators
Tyler Barber, Equipment Manager
Doug Geiss, Business Manager

F.O.R.D. is a private, non-profit organization of homebrewers. The main goal of this club is to promote awareness and appreciation of the quality and variety of beer; to share information regarding technique, equipment and skill required to brew quality homemade beer; and to encourage responsible use of beer as an alcohol-containing beverage.

Correspondence should be directed to:
Rich Byrnes
30972 Cousino
Warren, MI 48092

Work: 313-390-9369
Home: 810-558-9844

(w) rbyrnes2@ford.com
(h) RByrnesJr@aol.com

Visit our website at: http://www.be.ford.com/brewers/
or external to Ford at: http://hbd.org/ford/

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