Marzen - Home Brew Digest

Marzen
The Birmingham Brewmasters
Styles for the coming year:
Officers:
January
American lager
Scott Harville, President
February
Porter
Bill Plott, Vice President
March
Stout
John Rhymes, Webmaster
April
Hops "R" Us
Todd Darroch, Treasurer
May
Send in the Clones
Bob Nelson, Member at Large
June
Wheat
Tracy P. Hamilton, Secretary and
Newsletter
July
Pilsner
August
Iron Brewers
September
Meading
October
What else?
November
Spice, pumpkin and weird
December
Heavy
As a member of the Brewmasters, you may
be interested in signing up for the listbot,
AKA mail exploder, remailer, whatever. See
the
Web page www.bham.net/brew/masters.html
Birmingham Brewmasters
C/o Tracy P. Hamilton
2541 Dunmore Dr.
Hoover, AL 35226
A synopsis of the February meeting:
Courtesy of Bill Plott with comments by secretary in (italics)
Style of the Month - Porter
1.Wild Goose Porter, Wild Goose Brewery, Frederick, Md., provided
by Ray Statham (I missed it!)
2. Rogue Mocha Porter, Oregon Brewing Co., Newport, Oregon,
provided by Doug McCullough
3. Perkuno's Hammer Imperial Porter, Heavyweight Brewing Co.,
Ocean Township, N.J., "Baltic Porter style...base of pale Munich and
English chocolate malts, German and Slovakian hopes and a bottomfermented yeast all contribute to the mystery and spirit of this often
neglected style," provided by Rob Nelson (Imperial Porter)
4. Kim Thomson's Southern Home Mystery Dark Oatmeal Mild
Porter homebrew (nice, light mild)
5. Dennis Johnson's Club Soda Mystery Grain, Porter Recipe With
Lager Yeast homebrew (very smooth and crisp)
6. Scott Harville's Robust Porter homebrew
7. Samuel Smith's Imperial Stout, provided by T.J. Hartfield
8. Original Flag Porter, Darwin Brewery, Durham, England,
"Brewed with 1825 yeast salvaged from a sunken vessel in the
English Channel using an original 19th century recipe," provided by
Doug McCullough (where does he dig these up? Now we know.)
9. D. Carnegie & Co. Argang 2000 Stark-Porter, breed and bottled
by AP Pripps Bryggerier, Gothenburg, Sweden, "brewed for the first
time in 1836 and tastes the same today," provided by Doug
McCullough (interesting!)
10. Bill Lees' Martzen homebrew
11. Tracy Hamilton's Oatmeal Porter...Yeah, that's the ticket)
homebrew (hey if we can have Imperial Porter...)
12. John Rhymes' Robust Pale Porter homebrew (American Pale Hope you like 'em hoppy and bitter)
13. Whitbread Best Bitter, provided by Bill Plott
14. Jeromy Williams' What-Did-I-Do-Wrong Beer? homebrew (A
pilsner all-grain that only had a very high mash temperature that left
too many complex sugars- seemed clean and reasonable otherwise)
15. Mackeson Triple Stout, provided by Allen Farr (sweet, of course)
16. Todd Dorrach's Porter-'Cause-It's-the-Style-of-the-Month
homebrew
17. Bill Kehrwald' I-Don't-Think-There-Are-Any-Bugs-in-This
homebrew
18. Weyerbacher Autumn Fest, Weyerbacher Brewing Co., Easton
Valley, Pa., provided by Rob Nelson
19. Kim Thomson's (So-I-Can-Make-the-List-Twice) homebrew
20. Flying Fish ESB, Flying Fish Brewing Co., Cherry Hill, N.J.,
provided by Rob Nelson
21. Dennis Johnson's I-Don't-Know-Why-This-Bottle-Is-Left-in-theFridge homebrew
22. Ommegang, Belgian-style Abbey Ale, Brewery Ommeganag,
Cooperstown, N.Y., provided by Rob Nelson (I made sure I got some
of that!)
Great brews, guys!
March event - The Homebrew Raffle Planner
March Agenda - Stout?
Planning meeting reminisces omittd - TPH out
of town
Since it is Stout month, here is a Guinness Postcard for your edification:
Not written by Lewis Carroll!
Future Competitions to keep an Eye on - Classic BrewFest in Athens, GA
http://www.negia.net/~brew/brewfest.html
Report on 8 th Annual Peach State Brewoff
By Tracy P. Hamilton
At first, I was going to ride there with John Rhymes on Friday and stay until Sunday morning.
Then I decided not to stay so long, so I called Bob Nelson, who had indicated he might want to
go on Saturday only. Bob said he could not make it (reason unspecified) so I called John up to
make arrangements. I had a hard time finding a hotel at a reasonable rate, and told John I would
keep looking. Meanwhile, Bob calls back to say he can go after all, so I decide that I will go
Saturday only after all, and let John go by himself. That Friday, the big wind came to town and
John was required to stay in Birmingham after all. Alabama Power said for all essential
personnel to come in, and John wasn't going to be tricked into admitting his job was nonessential
again. Doug and Linda McCullough came in Friday and stayed overnight.
Bob Nelson and I departed at 6:00 a.m. Saturday, and got to the west Atlanta area around 9:15
Eastern time. We took the exit and started to find our way using the map (which did not clearly
say which end was north) and typed directions. I told Bob if we could not find it, perhaps one of
the places that said NUDE all over the building might be what we would have to resort to
instead. We were kind of uneasy that they did not clearly say nude what, though. We eventually
found the road on the other side of I-20, and then started to hunt for the Sweetwater Brewery.
There was no large sign, only some lettering on a glass door. It turns out that the directions for
coming from Atlanta and from the west were identically worded - only one of these could be
correct.
As Doug noted in his email, the facility was pretty good. Bill Plott would have been impressed
by the can and bottle collection. I estimate about a thousand. After a bagel and the usual
disorganization at the beginning, we started judging around 10:30. There were 20 Belgians, and
4 judges, so they split them into Dubbel and Tripels (judged by Owen Ogletree and Bob
Carlton), and the 9 others (Linda McCullough and moi). Two were clearly superior, Doug's
Saisson (very crisp and somewhat hoppy), and a Strong Dark Belgian by Jay Reeves (kind of
like a Chimay!). As a side note, Owen runs a weekend jaunt to Belgium for 3 days that is $700
total (all expenses, including air fare, meals, transportation, tours, beer). Bob helped with the
stewarding at another table.
After the Belgians, I was ready for some lunch, which was pretty good. They had a garlicky
pasta salad I would not have eaten if I had known I was going to judge lagers after lunch (they
asked around for volunteers). Sweetwater had some good beers on tap, but I had enough through
judging.
The lagers I judged with a local guy (Don Obenauer, I think). There were 2 superior lagers,
George Fix's classic American Pilsner (much more flavorful than past examples I have had), but
not quite as crisp as the North German Pilsner that was second best overall. It was tough
slogging by this time - I was just full.
After the winners were announced, the Brewmasters decided to find what we could find at the
exit with the new mall (Arbor place). The crowds were quite large at various restaraunts, and we
finally wheeled into Hops Bar and Grill. It was a bit pricey, and we did not try any of the beers
(we had had enough beer for the day, and Hops beers don't enjoy that great a reputation). After
that, we split up and got home about 9:00 p.m.
Doug McCullough's comments from the Listbot (edited)
The facilities at Sweetwater were as good for a contest as I have ever experienced: plenty of
space, good lighting and no tobacco smoke in the air. For those who needed more beer,
Sweetwater had several complimentary ones on tap. (One was their absolutely outstanding IPA.
Linda asked them for the recipe but did not get much in the way of specifics in return. They said
that you must first get your gravity on up there. He did say that they use a combination of
Columbus and East Kent Goldings for bittering, flavor and dry-hopping.)
There were about 270 entries. (George Fix entered a Classic American Pilsner.) Because of the
number of entries, some judging took place Friday night at the organizer's home. There were
twenty-one groups of entries and about 18 tables of judges. I judged with Christina Collier, wife
of the contest organizer, Chris Collier. We judged fifteen brown ales and brown porters,
finishing about 1:30pm. A couple of groups were judged after lunch. The Best of Show round
finished at about 5:00pm.
Jay Reeves took a first place in Special/Best Bitter and a second in Belgian Strong Dark Ale.
George Fix took a second with his Classic American Pilsner.
I won a 1st place in English Style Barleywine, another 1st place in Russian Imperial Stout,
another 1st place with my Saison and a second place with my Traditional Bock. (I had entered
ten beers.)
I am very proud to report that my Boughs of Barley Barleywine also took Best of Show.
Let's Have a Different Kind of Beer Competition!
VILNIUS (Reuters) A Lithuanian brewer put his 32-cm long (12.60 inches) beard to good use when he
lifted a 41-kilogram (90.39 lb) barrel of his own homemade beer, the daily Lietuvos Rytas reported
Friday. Antanas Kontrimas, from the Western town of Telshiai, was already well-known in the small
Baltic state for having Lithuania's longest beard. The paper said that Kontrimas steeled himself for the
challenge by downing a pint of beer beforehand. He pulled off his feat in front of the cameras of a
morning television show.