Bubblings from the Fermenter
Mark Tumarkin

June was a strange month for me. Anne was in Africa for two weeks for daughter Carolyn's wedding. I left for Detroit and the MIY2K AHA National Convention the day after she returned. That meant that we only had one night together before I left ... but that's a different story. The AHA convention was incredible, truly a celebration of the homebrewing community. (see my MIY2K story for details). I would recommend that you all plan to attend the convention next year, if at all possible.

We had a good turnout for the June meeting at Wayne and Sue's house. Wayne's new brewery is really shaping up. The sink and floor are in and the walk-in cooler has been roughed into place. He's still got a ways to go till his first brew, but the place is looking good. I heard several brewers talking about wanting to stake out space in the new cooler for beer storage. I must admit the thought crossed my mind too, but consider this first: do you really want to leave your beer in Wayne's cooler? I mean we trust him completely with the treasury, but that's only money -- this is beer. Let's just say Wayne would probably be happy to have you leave your beer there...

Robert Riley gave a terrific synopsis of his experiences as a professional brewer at Buckhead in Tallahassee. He raised issues that were ongoing problems and other aspects that kept him brewing -- imagine walking into a large, professional brew house and thinking "gee, they pay me to make beer and play with these toys" -- especially when you'd being doing it for months just for the fun of it. His fiance Jamie, a member of the executive committee of the North Florida Brewers League, invited us to join the NFBL for their Octoberfest (in September; the 30th to be precise). This is a charity fund raising event that the Tallahassee brew club has been doing for years. We will have our own table to dispense our brews to help them raise money. This is a fun event and gives you the opportunity to try thirty or so homebrews in one location. HB will pay for the ingredients if you are willing to brew a five gal batch to keg. The club also has some corny kegs available if you don't have one.

Sue has volunteered to act as the club librarian, and we'll have our own bookshelf in Wayne's new brewery. (I can picture it now, dropping by to see what Wayne might have on tap in his new cooler while you select a brewing text to check out of the library) We have a good start towards the library with our club subscription to Zymurgy, as well as books donated by Ed Wolfe, myself, and others. Ray has offered to donate a number of brewing books left from the closure of his shop. We are also going to get a club subscription to New Brewer, Beer, Brew Your Own, and the Malt Advocate. Let Sue know if you have any old brewing magazines or books that you'd like to donate to the library.

Under old business, Robert inquired what was happening with the club logo pint glasses. Especially since Jamie got the NFBL glasses done (from the same supplier we'll be using after getting the info from us) long ago. Bradley responded that he charges immense amounts of money to do that kind of graphics work. But don't worry, the treasury is safe. I'll go over to his house, ply him with beer and get the artwork done before he realizes what's happening. So, look for club pint glasses soon. The main item under new business is the Road Trip/Pub Crawl 2000. The date is sneaking up on us quickly and we've been getting a pretty good response from people saying that they want to go. Looks like we'll have a larger number of crawlers than for last year's trip to the St Augustine/Jax area. So secure your place on the bus by getting your payment to Wayne, that's $10 for members and $15 for guests. Nobody has volunteered to provide a batch of beer for the bus yet, any volunteers? Brew a batch now and we can keg it up for the pub-crawl. Well, that's about it for now. The July 28th meeting will be at Greg and Sandra's house, and the style competition is Open (so we ought to get a good number of entries). So until then, keep those fermenters bubbling.