Bubblings From the Fermenter
By Mark Tumarkin

We had a good turnout for the August meeting at George & Karen Perrin's house, and we gained one new member. Welcome, Dave Perez. Dave has yet to brew his first batch, but he's anxious to get started - as evidenced by the post he sent to the Hogtown Brewers list. He got some good responses, including an offer to brew with Robert. I think this is a great use of the list. It's good to see it being used for other things than just announcements.

Fred dug deep into the recesses of the digital archives and came up with enough info to put together a presentation on Meads and Ciders. We had a phenomenal tasting to go along with the presentation. We had one commercial cider, and approx. fourteen different meads (if I didn't miss any). We had ten homebrewed meads and four commercial meads including Screaming Viking, Chaucer's, Blue Ridge, and Seifu's Tej. Tej is traditional Ethiopian mead. This one was brewed in this country and I suspect it isn't representative of the Ethiopian meads. We had a variety of homebrewed meads - George's orange blossom mead; Richard's peach, dry & sweet orange blossom; Dr. Bob's hopped mead; Ed Wolfe's '97 cyser; Ken Woodward's State Fair prizewinning Black Currant and also a blueberry; and my avocado and orange blossom meads. Ed's cyser seemed to be the overwhelming favorite, but there were a number of other excellent meads as well. This was probably the largest selection we have yet had for a tasting.

We also had the chance to try a few of the beers Wayne and Sue brought back from their Vermont trip. We got to see some photos and hear tales about some of their adventures, including meeting the assistant brewer at Ommegang at another brewpub and being invited for a personal tour. They brought back many ice-chests full of growlers (a half-gallon to-go jug) from various brewpubs, an incredible assortment of Belgian beer, and at least one of every style know to the brewing world. At their party Friday night, we'll have the opportunity to help them drink up the growlers before they go bad. You'll be doing them a favor. The thought of that much beer going bad is giving Sue nightmares.

Next month's meeting will be held out in the wilds of Newberry, at Dave and Julie William's house (scene of the infamous Monster Mash). The style competition will be historical beers. I think we'll probably have to make the definition fairly loose in order to get any entries. I know of at least one member with a true historical style to enter, but I doubt we'll get many entries like historical brettanomyces porters. So, if you have a beer and can think of a reasonable historical reference for it, we want it in the contest.

The presentation/tasting will be on old ales and barleywines. Between the examples I have, the ones that Joe Kostelnik shipped us from the Northwest, and the ones Wayne and Sue brought back with them from their beer-gathering expedition (it's hard to think of it as a vacation, it was more on the order of a Mission from God) we should rival the number of meads we tasted at the last meeting. As Wayne said, "We're raising the bar on the style tastings." So until then, keep those fermenters bubbling.

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