Bubblings From the Fermenter
By Mark Tumarkin

Wow! Great meeting this month! Great beer, good people, good food; all the basic ingredients came together in a great mix. Thanks to Greg & Sandra, our hosts this month. We had several new people come to see what we're all about. Welcome; Chad, Pete, and Greg - hope to see more of you in the future (and Pete, bring more of that great Imperial Stout!).

We're coming into the competition season, lot's of homebrew competitions in the next few months. The first one is a local contest being put on by Deena at Bray's Brewing. It is an Oktoberfest contest with entries due on Dec. 14 and judging on the 15th. There is a prize of a $100 gift certificate. There are many other contests coming up as well. Check the Competition Corner on our website for more details. We've been getting great participation from our judges, but I'd like to see more entries into the local and regional competitions as well.

Also coming up is the Hogtown Medieval Faire. There is a big change this year. The Faire will be held on two consecutive weekends, rather than one. It will be the first and second weekends in February. So get out your calendars and mark the 3rd and 4th, and the 10th and 11th. This is going to require a big commitment of time on our parts. Last year we made a great effort, with almost 100 per cent participation by our club members. We did a great job, and should be really proud of ourselves.

I look for that same kind of participation this year. Providing staffing for the booth for two weekends will obviously be more demanding; so we will be getting volunteers to help us pull it together. Ray will be in charge of scheduling, so let him know when you'll be able to help out. We made a lot of money at the Faire last year, and expect to make even more this year. So start thinking about creative and fun ways to put that money to use. A trip to Belgium has been mentioned, what would you like to do?

We have new t-shirts in some great colors. Sue did a great job, they look terrific. We should also give credit to Robert for his request to see some fresh new colors. In addition to the standard t-shirts, Sue got a dozen long-sleeve shirts and also a dozen scoop necks for the ladies. Both of these are going quickly so get yours before they disappear. The tees and scoop necks are $10 ea, while the long-sleeved shirts are $12. Look for ball caps in the near future.

We went through our new list of styles for the Brewer of the Year Competitions and the associated tastings/presentations. We now have volunteers to do the presentations for all the styles. The last few tastings have been awesome, the barleywine tasting was literally staggering. It was the first time we didn't sample all the beers we had. There were just too many. As Wayne said, we have truly raised the bar. By planning this out so far in advance, it will allow the presenters to put together both great selections and strong presentations on each style. This is beer education at its best!

Rather than one specific style, our tasting this month featured homebrew. We bring our homebrew to share at every meeting, but this month we put it in the spotlight with a formal presentation (well, as formal as we get). There was a tremendous assortment of great beer. I tried to sample them all and ended up with a wee headache the next morning. That doesn't usually happen, I guess you could say it was a good indicator of the number of homebrews people brought to share. And if you still haven't had enough homebrew (or even if you did) - don't forget the upcoming Solstice Bash at Sue and Wayne's on Saturday the 16th. Bring more of your best homebrew and cook up something really special. Should be a great time!

This month's style competiton, Old Ales and Barleywines, wraps up the 2000 Brewer of the Year contest. We had much more participation and competition this year than last, and I expect to see this improve even more for the 2001 BOTY. Next month's December (in January) meeting will be held at Dave & Julie Williams' house. Sue will be giving the presentation/tasting on Stouts. The BOTY competition will be Category 24 (Specialty, Historical, and Experimental), as well as Seasonal, X-mas and Open - so pretty much anything goes. I want to see a large number of entries to kick off the 2001 BOTY race. So, until then; have a Malty Xmas, a Hoppy New Year, and keep those fermenters bubbling!

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