Bubblings From the Fermenter
By Mark Tumarkin

Fall weather is here, crisp and cool - at least by comparison to the steamy summer weather that seems like it's been the norm like forever. And being that we're in Northern Florida, we can look forward to this continuing for a good number of months. It almost makes the summer worth putting up with. And fall is brewing time, what's in your fermenter?

Along with fall weather comes Oktoberfest (hope you checked out the Oktoberfest web-cam from Munich while it was up). A little closer to home, Jamie Schee, brewer at both the Ocala and Gainesville Hops Restaurants, invited Hogtown Brewers to sample the new Hoptoberfest beer, Hop's first seasonal. This was an unusual Oktoberfest beer in that they used a Koelsch yeast rather than a more traditional lager yeast. The Hoptoberfest was yummy, a nice malty beer with lots of Saaz, giving it just a nice floral bitterness to balance the clean, malty sweetness.

Hops has recently switched to using Wyeast yeast products, after an infection from a bad batch of the Lallemand dry yeast they had been using. Jamie told us that all their beers ended up with banana esters and clove phenolics, more typical of a German weizen than the clean, low flavored offerings of Hops. Jamie gave us the deluxe tour of his brewhouse and generously plied us with beer and appetizers for several hours. Thanks for the hospitality, Jamie; it was great. We look forward to having Jamie at one of our meetings in the future.

We had a good turnout for the meeting at Erin and Bradley's house. The tasting style for the month was Dark European Lagers. Although we didn't have a presentation, as such, we ended up with a very interesting selection of beers for the tasting. Earlier, it didn't look like we'd have much by way of examples of the category (which includes Munich Dunkels and Schwarzbier); however several folks came through to give us a surprising selection. We also tried several examples of loosely related styles such as other dark euro-lagers, as well as Dunkle Weizen and Smoked lagers.

I know I've probably left some out but here's at least a partial recap - Ayinger Altbairish Dunkel, Dinkel Acker, Diebels Premium, DAB Traditional, Heineken Special Dark, St Pauli Girl Special Dark, Beck's Dark. For the Schwarzbiers, we had Kostrizer Schwarzbier and Kulmbacher Kapuziner Schwarz. We were fortunate enough to have two different Schlenkerla smoked beers, the Urbock and the Marzen. We also sampled Dunkleweizens from Tucher and Erdinger. We finished up with Celebrator Dopplebock, a malty giant of a beer. We also sampled a bottle of New Glaurus Belgian Cherry Red that Erin brought back from Wisconsin, YUMMMM. I not even going to try to list the variety of tasty homebrews we sampled, let's just say that some of them were as good or better than the commercial beers we tried. All in all, I'd say that our recent meetings have been unparalleled tasting extravaganzas.

I really hadn't expected this tasting to have such a wide variety. Both the quantity and quality of the beers at our tastings has been truly amazing. Because of the repressive Florida bottle laws, many of these beers are not available at our local beer emporiums. We have the opportunity to sample these beers because many of our members take it upon themselves to bring back beer when they travel, either on business or for pleasure. We owe a big round of applause and thanks to Wayne and Sue Smith, George Perrin, Robert Riley, and especially to Jim Ritchhart for the great selection. Jim sent a UPS care package to me with a number of beers, even though he was unable to attend this meeting, having chosen to go to the Beer Fest in Clearwater instead. (how about a report on the festival for the newsletter, Jim?)

Instead of a style presentation, Robert Riley gave us a very good talk on yeast. He had prepared this for the North Florida Brewers League, of which he is also a member. He gave us a synopsis of the presentation. George Perrin also gave us an update on the yeast ranch, as well a demo of how it will work. There are now approx. 15 strains available, and the number is growing. In order to get yeast to use for your brewing, you will need to do a little advance planning. Let George know which strain you want about 10 days to two weeks ahead of your brew date. He will start a culture for you and give it to you in a sterile tube (about the size of a White Labs tube). This tube will contain approx the same number of cells as a Wyeast smack-pack, so you will need to do a starter to step up the culture to pitchable quantity. Having this yeast ranch available to the club is really an incredible resource; take advantage of it. We want George to feel that all his hard work is worthwhile.

The holiday season is upon us and we have several parties coming up. Wayne and Sue will be having their annual November celebration (a number of club members have birthdays, anniversaries, etc all at this time). Bonfire, beer, great food, good friends; don't miss it. It will be Saturday, November 25th (the weekend after Thanksgiving). Mark it on your calendars now. Plan on bringing tents, sleeping bags, etc and staying over. While you've got the calendar out; mark Saturday, December 16th as another don't miss day. This will be our club Solstice Party, also to be hosted by the party animals, Wayne and Sue. This will be a combination of pot-luck and catering. We'll talk more about the details next month, but start planning to bring your best beer and some great food. This should be the start of another great Hogtown tradition. (check our club calendar on the website to make sure you mark your own calendar with all the events in our busy club schedule!)

This month's style competition was Meads and Ciders. We had a good showing - both in entrants and judges. There were eight meads & ciders entered, well up from the usual average. Next month's contest is Barleywine and Old Ale. This will be the last contest of the 2000 Brewer of the Year competition. It's still a very close race and the finish will be decided by the next contest. The award will be made at the December Solstice Party. The 2001 BOTY Competition will also begin in December, with a brand new style calendar, encompassing almost all of the style categories. (see the Competition Calendar to view the new schedule) This calendar will be repeated each year, so it'll be easier to plan your brewing schedule to mesh with the competition schedule. Hopefully, this will result in more entries into the competitions. The Style Tasting for the November meeting will be Open Homebrew. That means this is your chance to bring your best brews to spotlight and share with everyone. With that in mind, keep those fermenters bubbling.

Back to November 2000 front page