BIG BREW 2001



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The Official Newsletter of the Cloudy Town Brewers

December 2002



Next Meeting

Wednesday December 4, 2002

7:00 P.M. at

Granite City Food & Brewery

Meeting Minutes

Al from Granite City has approved March 22, 2003 for the Best of Show for the Third annual March Mashness. Beer, Beer and More Beer have once again agreed to be the Best of Show sponsor. They have a new catalog that may need to be mailed out. Granite City has once again paid for the medals for two years. Bob McKenzie, Granite City’s brewer, is also looking into getting beer from other breweries for sampling.

We need to contact sponsors and get prizes. Last years contact list is available online. Darin has also made new contacts at the Great American Beer Festival. We also need to reserve rooms at the Ramada for judging and setup a block of rooms.

We are once again going to do online entries and this year we are requesting the recipe with the entry. Entries will be accepted from February 26 to March 12, 2003. Entries shipped in will need to be sent to Granite City.

We had the best turn out yet for our community education Homebrewing class. Once again this year we gave one-year memberships to the 14 class members.

Competitions

The third annual March Mashness Best of Show will be held on Saturday, March 22, 2003 at 1 p.m. at Granite City Food and Brewery, St. Cloud, MN. Entries will be accepted from February 26 to March 12, 2003. Entry forms will be available soon on our website at .

Kansas City Bier Meisters 20th Annual Homebrew Competition and Banquet, special activities: Brewer's Breakfast, Kansas Pub Crawl. Special guest speaker: Charlie Papazian, Sponsoring Club: Kansas City Bier Meisters. Deadline: 2/8/03. Fees: $6 for 1-5 entries, $5 for 7 or more. Awards Ceremony: 2/22/03.

Contact: Jackie Rager & Robin Beck

Phone: 913 894-9131 - 913 451-9255

Email: jrager@

URL:

For a complete list of competitions visit the Events & Calendar on the AHA’s web site at .

Club Only Competitions

|JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003- Bitter & English Pale Ale Competition |

|Hosted by Leo Vitt and the Minnesota |

|Timberworts of Rochester, MN |

| |

|Category 4 Bitter & English Pale Ale |

|MARCH/APRIL 2003 - Brown Ale Competition |

|Hosted by Susan Ruud and the Prairie Homebrewing Companions of |

|Fargo, ND |

| |

|Category 10 Brown Ale |

|MAY 2003 - "All that Glitters is Not Old” Competition |

|Hosted by David Moritz, Matt Stinchfield and the Rillito Creek |

|Brew Club of Tucson, AZ |

| |

|Category 11 English & Scottish Strong Ale |

Tommy Z Generosity Award

Here are the point totals through Nov. 2002.

|Phil Thomas |7 Points |

|Erik Nelson |6 Points |

|Chris Lusena |5 Points |

|Cody Winter |5 Points |

|Darin Dorholt |3 Points |

|Larry Nusbaum |3 Points |

|Jeff Saranpaa |3 Points |

|Jerry & Deb Dusich |2 Points |

|Mike Esplan |2 Points |

|James & Jean Michael |2 Points |

|Tom Zupanc |2 Points |

|Keith Johnson |1 Point |

|Bruce LeBlanc |1 Point |

|Charles Rice |1 Point |

2003 Interclub Campout

Submitted by Bruce LeBlanc

Next year’s Interclub Campout will be hosted by The Cloudy Town Brewers. Our responsibility will be to reserve a location and date for the event, run the homebrew competition and put on a feed Saturday night. I will be looking for some input at future meetings. Competition styles are picked by the winner of the best of the show at the previous years campout.

 

The Inter-Club Campout styles for 2003 are as follows:

India Pale Ale (BJCP Category 7 - )

Russian Imperial Stout (BJCP Category 12.C. )

Varietal Mead (BJCP Category 25.B. -

)

California Common (BJCP Category 6.C. -

)

2003 National Homebrewers Conference

The 2003 National Homebrewers Conference will be held June 19 – 21, 2003 in Chicago at the Holiday Inn Chicago-O’Hare International. They already have the beer brewed, 50 gallons of bourbon-barrel-aged imperial stout. For more information go to aha03 or watch zymurgy or the AHA website at .

Cloudy Town Brewers Mugs & Shirts

The Cloudy Town Brewer mugs are now available. The mug has wider base in a gray color with the club logo stamped in brown and green hop ring decal. They are available to club members for $10 and non-members for $12. Please contact Tom Zupanc if interested.

We have cream-colored T-shirts that are screen printed with the club logo. They are $12 for a club member and $15 for a non-member. We also have a few embroidered polo shirts that are $22 for a member and $25 for a non-member.

CTB Embroidery

Submitted By Tim Fuerstenberg

For anyone interest in getting our new Cloudy Town Brewer's logo embroidered onto their favorite garment, shirt, sweater or jacket (sorry they can't do hats), please bring your item(s) to our next meeting. The cost of the logo is $10 per item. If you need more information please contact Tim Fuerstenberg.

Sanitation

Submitted By Bruce LeBlanc

Questions always come up around the issue of sanitation, so for this month’s article, I thought I would tackle the subject.

We must all accept that our beer, no matter how well we sanitize, is infected.  If good sanitation is practiced, this infection doesn't perceivably affect the flavor of the beer.  It is not if the beer is infected, but how bad the infection gets.

The job of sanitation is to keep the number of spoilage organisms down to a point where they have difficulty growing to numbers that will affect the taste of beer.  Good sanitation procedures will almost guarantee this will be the case.  Bad sanitation procedures don't guarantee that you will get bad beer, but the risks are higher.

There are a number of products that are sold to homebrewers to accomplish sanitation and they all have their benefits and drawbacks. Later I will give a rundown of the products that Northern Brewer sells.  Be aware that some products are not sanitizers, but rather they are cleansers meant for cleaning.

Good clean equipment is the beginning of good sanitation, and cleansers have there place making sure that beerstone, caked on yeast, protein, oils, and other residues of brewing can be easily removed and won't serve as a breeding ground for spoilage organisms. Only once a surface is clean can it be sanitized.

There are two basic schools of thought on sanitation.  The first school uses very strong and powerful sanitizers like caustic lye or chlorine to sanitize tough equipment like stainless steel or glass and then will rinse with scalding hot water until all traces of the sanitizing solution are gone.  This is typical in commercial breweries where clean in place systems and safety gear to keep the workers safe from these dangerous but effective sanitizers.  Bleach water and a good hot rinse is the home version of this school of thought.

The second school is to use milder sanitizing solutions such as mild acid sanitizers, oxygen bleaches, or iodine bases sanitizers that don't need to be rinsed away.  This type of sanitation is more typically used in homebrewing.

Switching gears a bit I think it is useful to emphasize that sanitation is only as good as your dirtiest piece of equipment. Sanitation can be ruined, along with your beer, by having a "weak link".  Most often this link is a piece of siphoning hose, but many plastic or rubber pieces are more difficult to effectively

clean and then sanitize.  Vinyl hose is inexpensive and I often replace hose if I think it may be suspect.

Next month I will go over the various products for cleaning and sanitation.

Teach a friend to Homebrew Day

From the AHA

Submitted by Jean Michael

Greetings!

Another record was broken for the 4th Annual

American Homebrewers Association's

Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day - Nov. 2, 2002!

The American Homebrewers Association wants to thank every participant that made this event the best ever! We appreciate your dedication to homebrewing.

*Record number of homebrewing sites = 124 sites around the WORLD!

*AHA estimates more than 450 new homebrewers were introduced to the homebrewing hobby.

*More than 1,000 homebrewers participated -- an increase of 400 participants from 2001.

*63 percent increase of participants from 2001's registered sites.

Check out later this week for post-event information.

One site boasted an attendance of 75 at their Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day celebration with a record 60 new brewers in attendance.

Homebrewers registered their event/site on , helping the AHA keep a running tally. After the event, homebrewers reported on the web site the number of attendees and new homebrewers introduced to the hobby.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

What is Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day?

The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day is an international effort to introduce people to the homebrewing hobby and establish relationships with local homebrew supply shops.

Each year on the first Saturday in November homebrewers around the world are encouraged to invite friends over and introduce them to the hobby by having them help brew a batch of beer.

Cheers to this year's success,

Monica Tall

Sales and Marketing Coordinator

Association of Brewers

Beer tax boost?

From the

Wyoming legislators will vote on measure to raise tax 400%

NOV 26, 2002 - Wyoming legislators have proposed boosting the state's beer tax 400% without raising taxes on wine or distilled spirits.

Members of the Labor, Health and Social Service Committee voted last week to send a proposal to the Legislature that increases the tax on beer from 2 cents per gallon to 8 cents per gallon. Wyoming has the lowest beer tax in the nation and has not raised the rate since the end of Prohibition.

Rep. Tony Ross, R-Cheyenne, voted against the proposal because he felt the committee was singling beer out. "If we need the money, why not increase the tax on wine and distilled spirits?" he said.

Dave Clements, president of Cheyenne Beverage, called the measure was unfair. "It will put more tax on the common man, Joe Six-Pack," he said.

The committee also voted to introduce a bill increasing the tobacco tax from 12 cents to 72 cents per pack to generate nearly $25 million in revenue. Beer taxes currently bring in about $270,000 and would grow to $1.1 million at the new rate.

Vitamin B beer?

From

Scottish officials remain interested, but brewer skeptical

NOV 18, 2002 - Officials in Scotland continue to investigate the benefits of vitamin-laced beer, but British brewers aren't excited about adding artificial ingredients to their beer.

As reported in February, Scottish ministers are impressed with research by Australian scientists that shows thiamin - Vitamin B1 - can help counter Wenicke's Encephalopathy, an alcohol-releatd disease found in the heaviest drinkers. They are considering asking brewers to introduce the vitamin into their products.

Thiamin is found in cereals, lean meats, dairy products, fruits and eggs. A shortage can cause headaches, anorexia, tiredness and a lack of balance.

The British Beer and Pub Association says adding the vitamin could change the taste and style of beers. "This particular additive would be designed to to help people who consume far too much alcohol," said Mark Hastings.

"They are extreme alcoholics. They should be discouraged from drinking at all," he added.

Mike Benner of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), pointed out there was evidence moderate amounts of alcohol had health benefits. "But this seems to be suggesting that putting thiamin in beer makes it acceptable to drink six or seven pints and it won't rot your brain," he said.

Some scientists are sceptical. Members of the scientific advisory committee on nutrition have raised questions about legal and labelling issues as well as practicality. And social critics say adding thiamin to alcohol would undermine health messages about the need for sensible drinking and reinforce complaints about the "nanny state."

Beer and baubles

From

Wisconsin mall will give away beer and promote holiday jewelry sales

NOV 26, 2002 - A Wisconsin mall has found a way to combine holiday shopping, beer and the Green Bay Packers. Did we mention that the beer is free?

The first Men's Shopping Night is scheduled for Dec. 17 at the Fox River Mall in Appleton, Wis. Men are invited to the Fox River Brewing Co. in the mall for free beer samples and appetizers. Models show off jewelry from mall shops and hand out catalogs while the guys register.

An hour later, everyone heads over to the jewelry stores. Green Bay Packers running back Najeh Davenport is scheduled to sign autographs at the stores while the men shop.

"It's a cool night," said Andrea Beyer, assistant marketing manager for the mall. "Jewelry stores are going to offer discounts and cater to their needs."

The promotion is no quite as unusual as that at another Appleton jewelry store. Those who purchased one-carat diamond rings from Krieger Jeweler by last Sunday got a free 12-gauge shotgun or deer hunting rifle from Gander Mountain, after the usual background checks,” said Paul Gravunder, manager of Gander Mountain in Grand Chute. "It was very positive."

Gravunder said three or four people bought rings under the deal. The two dissimilar kinds of merchandise actually paired up well, said. "She's getting a high-quality diamond and he's getting a high-quality firearm."

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