Here's the latest in news from the Minnesota Home Brewers Association, lest
you think there's nothing going on in the club!
TOPICS (search for these to go quickly to the article...)
*** AHA COC WINNER: CURT STOCK
*** NEXT AHA-COC: SPECIALTY/EXPERIMENTAL/HISTORICAL
*** 2003 BJCP SCORES ARE IN!
*** FOAM CUP DEADLINE: JULY 25 (HIGH PLAINS BREWER-OF-THE-YEAR)
*** MEAD DAY - AUG 2, CHRIS HADDEN'S HOUSE
*** GREAT TASTE OF THE MIDWEST - SAT, AUG. 9
*** MN RENAISSANCE FEST STEINBEER DEMO - SUN, AUG 17
*** STATE FAIR BEER COMPETITION - SAT, AUG. 23
*** RIVER CITY ROUNDUP DEADLINE: SEPT. 5 (HIGH PLAINS BREWER-OF-THE-YEAR)
*** AUTUMN BREW REVIEW - SAT, SEPT. 6
*** INTER-CLUB CAMPOUT & MASTER-OF-MALT COMPETITION: THIS WEEKEND!
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AHA COC WINNER: CURT STOCK
Congratulations to Curt Stock, whose Bohemian Pilsner took the prize as the
MhBA's entry into the AHA Club-Only European Light Lagers competition.
Curt's beer will be going on to compete Nationally with entrys from clubs
all over the country. Good luck Curt! Thanks to Steve Piatz, Paul
Dienhart, Jonathan Crist and Steve Fletty for showing up to help judge.
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NEXT AHA-COC: SPECIALTY/EXPERIMENTAL/HISTORICAL
The next AHA Club-Only is for Specialty/Experimental/Historical beers, and
we will judge them at my place on September 10 at 7pm. Fire up your brew
kettles for those funky beers!
AHA COC UPCOMING:
NOV 2003 - Altbier and Koelsch
DEC 2003 - Barleywine
APR 2004 - Mead
MAY 2004 - Extract Brews
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2003 BJCP SCORES ARE IN!
The scores are in from the 2003 Winter Beer Judge Certification Program
class. We had ten people pass the exam, five of whom were NEW judges: Curt
Stock, Steve Fletty, Pete Peterson, Kris England and Rick Oftel. Two
people passed with NATIONAL scores - Kris England and Jason Nelson. The
remaining re-takers were Steve Piatz, Jonathan Crist, Bob Cromer and Mike
Swalinkovich. Congratulations to everyone! The BJCP class has become so
popular that the MhBA is adding a SECOND class, this one in the fall and
organized by Kris England, in addition to our winter class which will be
organized by Jonathan Crist this year. Contact Kris at:
engla008(a)tc.umn.edu or Jonathan at: cristj(a)bsci.com for more information
on these classes.
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FOAM CUP DEADLINE: JULY 25 (HIGH PLAINS BREWER-OF-THE-YEAR)
The FOAM Cup, sponsored by the Fellowship of Oklahoma Ale Makers deadline
is July 25. Jonathan Crist has already sent off several club entries, but
if you act quickly, you can still get your beers in on time for the
contest. The FOAM Cup is a qualifier for the High Plains
Brewer-of-the-Year award, as is the Upper Mississippi Mash-Out. If you won
medals in the Mash-Out, you are a CONTENDER for the High Plains BOTY!
Check the FOAM Cup website at: http://www.alemakers.com/ and the High
Plains BOTY website at: http://kcbiermeisters.org/highplains.htm
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MEAD DAY - AUG 2, CHRIS HADDEN'S HOUSE
Chris Hadden is hosting an AHA Mead-Day event on Saturday, August 2 at 1pm.
We will be brewing at least 2 batches of mead there, as well as sampling a
variety of different meads, both commercial and home-brewed. If you've
ever been curious about this wonderful beverage and would like to taste it
and see how it's done, don't miss this event! Contact Chris at
chris(a)chadden.com for more info.
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GREAT TASTE OF THE MIDWEST - SAT, AUG. 9
The Great Taste of the Midwest will be held in Madison, WI on Saturday,
August 9th. If you've never been to it, you're missing an amazing
spectacle - over 100 breweries from all over the country and over 400
different beers are on tap! It takes place outdoors in beautiful
Olin-Turville Park on Lake Monona in Madison, and has become Mecca to
anyone who loves great craft-brewed beer. Tickets are sold out for 2003,
but mark your calendars for Saturday, Aug 14, 2004. (Chris Hadden - as
owner of the "Travelling Trophy", it might make a good road trip - hint,
hint!) Beth and I are going, and I think Bob and Renee Cromer always go
too. Anyone else have tix?
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MN RENAISSANCE FEST STEINBEER DEMO - SUN, AUG 17
Kris England has arranged with the Minnesota Renaissance Festival for the
MhBA to conduct a Steinbeer demo on Sunday, August 17. If you're
interested in helping, contact Kris at: engla008(a)tc.umn.edu
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STATE FAIR BEER COMPETITION - SAT, AUG. 23
Online registration starts NEXT WEDNESDAY! for the Minnesota State Fair
Homebrew Competition, hosted by the Minnesota Home Brewers Association and
the St. Paul Homebrew Club. Jim LaRocque from the MhBA is organizing it,
and I'm sure he'd be happy for anyone willing to help him out. Contact Jim
at: James.LaRocque(a)goodrich.com. This is the FIRST MN State Fair Beer
Competition (that we're aware of), so let's make it a BIG one! Let's send
as many entries from the MhBA as we can! Check out the website for the
contest at: http://www.mnbrewers.com/events/mnfair
ONLINE REGISTRATION DEADLINES: Wed, July 26-Wed, Aug. 6
ENTRIES DUE AT DROP-OFF SITES: Wed, Aug 6-Thu, Aug 14
FIRST & SECOND ROUND JUDGING: Sat, Aug 16, 10a-6p at the CREATIVE
ACTIVITIES annex
BEST-OF-SHOW JUDGING & AWARDS: Sat, Aug 23, 11a-2p at the CREATIVE
ACTIVITIES building
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RIVER CITY ROUNDUP DEADLINE: SEPT. 5 (HIGH PLAINS BREWER-OF-THE-YEAR)
The River City Roundup, sponsored by the OmaHops homebrew club in Nebraska,
has it's deadline for entries on Sept. 5. Jonathan Crist, our club
Entry-Shipping Potentate, will be contacting people in August sometime
about when and where collections will occur for shipping entries from our
club to this contest. (Jonathan has it worked out to about $1 per bottle -
VERY inexpensive!) The River City Roundup is a qualifier for the High
Plains Brewer-of-the-Year award, as is the Upper Mississippi Mash-Out. If
you won medals in the Mash-Out, you are a CONTENDER for the High Plains
BOTY! Check the River City Roundup website at:
http://www.douglascountyfair.com/ochandbook/lots.php?id=13 and the High
Plains BOTY website at: http://kcbiermeisters.org/highplains.htm
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AUTUMN BREW REVIEW - SAT, SEPT. 6
Dave Berg of Bandana Brewery and the MN Craft Brewers Guild has confirmed
that they will be hosting the 3rd Annual Autumn Brew Review at Peavy Plaza
in Minneapolis. Tickets should go on sale soon. Check out their website
at: http://www.mncraftbrew.org/page3.html.
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INTER-CLUB CAMPOUT & MASTER-OF-MALT COMPETITION: THIS WEEKEND!
Finally, the Inter-Club Campout starts tonite and goes through Sunday!
This is a great chance to get outside and do some camping, but with BEER!
Our friends from the Cloudy Town Brewers are hosting, and will serve dinner
to all campers Saturday night. Representatives of the Minnesota
Timberworts, The Prairie Homebrewing Companions and the St. Paul
Homebrewers Club will be there as well, all bearing their best homebrewed
products since the last campout.
The MASTER-OF-MALT competition, selecting the best of each clubs offerings
in each of four styles, will commence on Saturday afternoon, 1-ish. The
four styles this year are: California Common, India Pale Ale, Russian
Imperial Stout and Varietal Mead. There will be ribbons and prizes (!!!)
As usual, the MhBA will select it's competitors for the competition on
Saturday morning - nothing like beer (and mead!) for breakfast!!
Directions to the campsite, Collinwood Regional Park in Cokato, were
provided by Bruce LeBlanc from St. Cloud, and are as follows:
Here are the directions to Collinwood, from the south head west on Highway
12 go through Howard lake and about five miles past HL there should be a
big John Deere dealer and a sign for Collinwood at the intersection of 137
- go left. About 4.5 miles on that there will be another sign pointing left
into the park.
>From the north go south on Highway 15 turn on 12 and go through Dassle
fallow to county road 6 turn right by the Collinwood sign and follow to
park.
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That's all the news that's fit to print (well, all that I know about
anyway!)
Hope to see you all at some of these events!
- Al
Hi Rick,
We had 13 kegs at the last campout, so if you have the room to bring the
club cooler...
Otherwise rotating the kegs will work also...We'll see you Sat.
Cheers!,
Swally
On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 08:15:50 -0500 "Rick Oftel" <Rick.Oftel(a)toro.com>
writes:
> I need to work this Friday and will likely drive the CAR out Saturday
> morning. One Webber included. Should I bring the club cooler or
> is one draft box adequate?
>
> Rick O
>
>
>
Cheers!,
Mike "Swally" Swalinkavich
Greetings fellow Brewers,
For those of you that like to see Maps... I've attached one for you, which includes some of the street numbers... If you don't like maps, well I guess you could always just follow the signs ;)
Collinwood County Park
17251 - 70th St. S.W.
Cokato, MN
See you there,
Tim
Cloudy Town Brewers
-- Binary/unsupported file stripped by Ecartis --
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I need to work this Friday and will likely drive the CAR out Saturday morning. One Webber included. Should I bring the club cooler or is one draft box adequate?
Rick O
I'll be taking Friday off again, I'll be at my parents in Buffalo for
part of the day then I'll head over to the Interclub out. Anyone else
going early there on Friday?
I'll be bring my 5 tap draft box again!
Cheers!,
Mike "Swally" Swalinkavich
Jason-
It's category 2 - European Pale Lagers. so Muenchner Helles, Dortmunder
Export, North German Pilsner and Bohemian Pilsners are all fair game.
- Al
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason Nelson" <jason_nelson(a)uhc.com>
To: "Al Boyce" <alboyce(a)bigfoot.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 9:55 AM
Subject: Re: Wed, July 16 - AHA Club Only Competition - European Pilsners
>
> Al,
>
> Is it really for European pilsners or is it light lagers? I have a
Helles,
> which fits into the latter but not the former.
>
>
>
>
>
> "Al Boyce" <aboyce(a)mn.rr.com>@thebarn.com on 07/10/2003 09:56:24 AM
>
> Please respond to "Al Boyce" <alboyce(a)bigfoot.com>
>
> Sent by: mba-bounce(a)thebarn.com
>
>
> To: <mba(a)thebarn.com>
> cc:
> Subject: Wed, July 16 - AHA Club Only Competition - European Pilsners
>
>
>
> Remember: Next Wednesday, July 16 at 7pm we will pick the MhBA Entry for
the
> AHA Club Only European Pilsner competition. Email me if you have an
entry,
> or if you'd like to help judge.
>
> Al Boyce
> 3208 Edgewood Ave So
> St. Louis Park, MN 55426
> 952-927-8968
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or
> proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to
> which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended
> recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified
> that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is
> prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the
> sender by replying to this message and delete this e-mail immediately.
>
That sort of paranoia seems totally inappropriate. I have been
making lambics (and other strange fermentations) since 1996. I
do have a separate bottling bucket and hose as well as
dedicated plastic buckets for fermenting for my lambics but
that is it. The main reasons for the separate fermenters; one
they are cheap and I leave the beer in them for years, two they
are slightly permeable so I get some oxygen uptake that
wouldn't happen in glass which sort of mimics the wood used in
Belgium.
Sanitation is key even if you don't make lambics, many of the
micro-organisms are present anyway. I have used bleach,
iodophore and Star-San at various times in my brewery, they all
work fine if you follow the directions.
I haven't had any problems with contaiminating other more normal
fermentations.
Will Holway writes:
>
> When we first started the homebrew store, Scott Law
> told me a story of a guy who stopped ina at James Page
> homebrewing, back in the day. Apparently, the guy said
> that he had made a lambic one time, and pretty much
> had to completely repaint his brewing room before he
> started making good beer again. That kind of
> discouraged me from attempting the experiemnt.
>
> Cheers
> WH
> --- Rick Oftel <Rick.Oftel(a)toro.com> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks Steve (Oh Lambic Master) for sharing your
> > wisdom and experiences.
> >
> >
> > My Lambic fermenting is much more limited and to
> > date, I have only used
> > the Wyeast lambic mixture. The first batch I tried
> > was a Belgian style
> > with cherries and was trying to duplicate a cherry
> > framboise. Initial
> > ferment was with one of the Belgian strains and the
> > secondary
> > fermentation used the Wyeast lambic mixture. It
> > only aged about 8
> > months and then my neighbor found it. My neighbor
> > likes unique
> > beverages. Before it was all gone (in the cornie),
> > we brewed another
> > batch of cherry wheat and I transferred about 4-1/2
> > gallons onto the
> > dregs of the "lambic." Like Steve mentioned, the
> > stuff just keeps going
> > and going and going. Two times each week, I release
> > gas from the cornie
> > and it just continues to make more.
> >
> > I hope to bring some of this beverage to the
> > Christmas party and serve
> > it with ice cream.
> >
> > BTW, these little critters are very strong guys.
> > Would recommend you
> > keep your fermenting equipment segregated
> > particularly hoses and plastic
> > buckets.
> >
> > Best of luck.
> >
> > Rick Oftel
> >
> >
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
> http://sbc.yahoo.com
>
--
Steve Piatz piatz(a)cray.com
Cray Inc. 651-605-9049
1340 Mendota Heights Road
Mendota Heights, MN 55120
Shawn M. Johnson writes:
>
> Steve,
>
> Would you have a good framboise recipe you could share with me? I'm
> thinking I should try my first lambic now that raspberries are coming
> into season. I want to stay away from anything too sour, my wife
> wouldn't drink it otherwise. She loves Lindemans framboise. I'm still
> using extract by the way.
>
> Thanks a lot. You can count on me to share it at a meeting.
>
> Feel free to reply to the list.
>
> -Shawn
>
The recipe is pretty simple though it will take a few years
until it is ready to drink.
I make my lambics with extract since the malt isn't a dominate
part of the flavor or aroma. Almost all the standard brewing
techniques are ignored here.
The following is the recipe for the straight lambic that took
silver in Nationals this June. This batch was brewed on Feb.
19, 1999 and was ready for competition this spring. To get a
Framboise you just add the raspberries later.
6.5 gallons of water
3# Munton's Dry Wheat extract
3# Munton's Dry Light extract
100 grams of malto-dextrine powder
1 tbs Fermax yeast nutrient
120 grams of very old hops (no hop aroma or flavor)
Boil for 90 minutes, SG is approximately 1.057
Run the hot wort into a plastic bucket fermenter and leave
without the lid overnight to cool.
The next day place the cover on the fermenter, wait another day
and pitch some dry ale yeast (variety won't matter). After a
couple of weeks add the Brettanomyces strain, the Pedio and
the Lacto. Leave the fermenter alone for several years other
than to make sure the airlock has water in it. After a year or
two you can add the fruit if you want a fruit lambic - for
Framboise you will need at least 10 (15 or more would be
better) pounds of berries.
To minimize the sediment in the bottles you can rack the beer
to a different fermenter the day before bottling - I don't
bother. The only time I rack after the wort goes into the
bucket is to transfer the finished beer to the bottling
bucket. For bottling I add a package of dry yeast along with
the priming sugar just to have something to generate
carbonation - it doesn't always work even then.
The resultant beer will be pretty sour and dry. If you want a
sweet beer you need a lot of extra work since the organisms in
the lambic will eat just about any type of sugar. I think to
get sweet lambics like Lindemans you would have to pasturize
the beer after sweeting and bottling - that is something I have
never tried. Details on pasturization aren't in the
homebrewing books but books like Kunze or De Clerck will cover
it. It will require heating the bottled beer to somewhere
around 160 - 180 F for 10 or 15 minutes after you let the
carbonation develop. Remember to let the beer carbonate before
you pasturize.
Note, any of the local homebrew shops can order the Brett,
Pedio, and Lacto. cultures for you from Wyeast or perhaps White
Labs. An alternative is to have them order Wyeast Lambic
Blend, I have a batch going the started with the Wyeast Blend
but don't know how it will turn out.
--
Steve Piatz piatz(a)cray.com
Cray Inc. 651-605-9049
1340 Mendota Heights Road
Mendota Heights, MN 55120
Mark your calendars for the second annual "Mead Day." I've registered
my place as an official mead day site with the American Homebrewers
Association.
At 1:00 PM, we'll kick things off by making a batch of mead. The
official recipe is a cherry melomel, or fruit mead. You can view the
recipe at http://www.beertown.org/events/meadday/recipe.html . If you'd
like to make your own batch on site, feel free to bring your gear and
ingredients. I'll accommodate as best I can by providing cleaning
supplies and filtered water. Please contact me if you have any
questions.
I'll provide beverages including a number of exotic commercial meads as
well as my own home made meads and non-alcoholic beverages. I ask that
you bring a snack to share. You are welcome to bring your own mead,
especially if it's home made.
While you're over, be sure to check out the latest book on mead making
"The Compleat Meadmaker" by Ken Schramm. Quite simply, this is the best
book ever written about mead and mead making. More information about
the book is available at http://www.beertown.org/education/mead.html .
Here are the remaining details:
Who: Anyone who is interested in mead (honey wine) - PLEASE RSVP IF YOU
PLAN ON ATTENDING
What: Learn about mead, sample different types of mead, learn how to
make it & exchange techniques
When: Saturday, Aug. 2, 2003, 1:00-5:00 PM
Where: My house - 711 Delaware Ave, St. Paul, MN 55107
Here's a detailed map of my area:
http://www.chadden.com/maps/711_delaware.gif
Here's a "big picture" map:
http://www.chadden.com/maps/711_delaware_big.gif
Directions from 94:
Take the Kellogg/Marion exit. Head East on Kellogg towards the Xcel
Energy Center. Take a right (going South) on Smith. Go over the high
bridge. Take a right on Page. Our house will be on the left hand side.
It is red and white and is on the corner of Delaware and Page.
Directions from 13:
Take 13 through West St. Paul. 13 turns into Annapolis. After it merges
with Annapolis, take a left on Delaware Ave. Our house will be on the
left hand side. It is red and white and is on the corner of Delaware
and Page.
Again, please RSVP if you plan on attending. If you need help with
directions, I'll have my cell with me: (612) 702-7599.
Christopher Hadden
--
http://www.aboutmead.com/