Author: Kevin Cotter

Rant Style guidelines

Since the American Homebrew Association (AHA) has intensified their goal of disenfranchising as many homebrewers and competitors in the National Homebrew Competition (NHC) as possible we complain! Being the Saint Paul Homebrewers Club we like to be the best, and we like to organize stuff. Prepare for the 1st Annual Bitch about the AHAs NHC.
Rant Style guidelines:

Category 1 – Drunk:

A: Angry drunken rant
B: Loving drunken rant

Category 2 – Unintelligible:

A: Entire rant slurred into one word
B: Every work mispronounce

Category 3 – Insults:

A: Condescending
B: Passive Aggressive
C: Offensive

Category 4 – Holier Than Thou

A. I’m Always Right Because _________
B. You Should Never/Always Do X
C. Self Righteous Indignation
D. Unintentional Buffoonery

Category 5 – Open/WTF?!?!

A. Anything not covered in Cats 1-4

Category 6 – Sour & Bitter

A. Judge at fault

Don’t worry about the entry lottery system, just like the AHA we’ll change the rules to give the win to whomever we desire!

Calagiones Scale

The Calagiones Scale measures a brewers passion in units called Deci-bags.
10 Deci-bag = 
1 Calgione
10 Calgiones = A Full-on Brewing Douchebag
Level 5
Level 4
Level 3 – You are a brewing tool
Level 2
Level 1 – You are a full-on brewing douchebag

December 6 Club Meeting

We had a fun meeting, discussed a few topics: Extract Brewing, Upper Mississippi Mash-Out, Club Swag, 2012 Club Plans, and drank some beer. Style of the Month: Stouts (13A – 13F). We sampled our way up to Bells Expedition Stout (OG 1.11, ABV 10.5%). Consensus was this would be a good beer to stock up on and cellar. Fletty posed the question, “Why is it that on the web beere rate places RIS always rises to the top.” Answer: Because it’s so easy to hide the flaws from Mook Judges!

The next CoC competition is Dark Lagers – Brew NOW! They are due February 10. The category after that is Stout. If you fully comprehend the previous paragraph, you’ll want bring your best RIS to win. Stout entries are due March 17, 2012.

Scottish and Irish Ale entries are due Thursday, May 10, 2012.

Hops

by Joe Gerteis
Saint Paul Homebrewers Club
September 7, 2010

When you first start using a brewing software package, one of the first things the software asks you to do is to pick a formula for hop calculations. The common ones are Rager, Garetz, Tinseth, and Daniels. You may have heard people say that hop calculations are estimates only, and what really matters is consistency rather than absolute accuracy. In other words, what they are saying is pick one that works for you and stick with it. That’s true and it’s good advice. The problem is that brewers are often then forced to pick before they really know what’s involved in the choice. The simple practical advice is this: pick Tinseth and stick with it. But if you care about what’s going on and why, here’s the deal.
See Complete Article.

Base Malt

What is a good base malt?
Depending on what your looking for:

Optic is as malty as you can get.
Pearl is the UK equiv of Rahr pale.
Golden promise has a touch of biscuit but lots of apple.
Halcyon is a very clean UK lager malt w/o the DMS
Dingeman pale is like cross between MO and Optic and a little darker than the rest.

Barley is the fourth most important grain crop in the United States. Barley is one of the oldest cultivated grains. Grains found in pits and pyramids in Egypt indicate that barley was cultivated there more than 5000 years ago.
Half the barley grown in the US gets used for livestock feed. As feed it is nearly equal in nutritive value to kernel corn. It is especially valuable as hog feed, giving desirable portions of firm fat and lean meat. The entire kernel is used in feed, generally after grinding or steam rolling. Malt sprouts from malting as well as brewers grain–byproducts of brewing–are also valuable livestock feeds.
Around 25 percent of barley crops are malted in the US. Of the malted barley some 80 percent is used for beer, around 14 percent for distilled alcohol products, and 6 percent for malt syrup, malted milk and breakfast foods.

September Club Meeting

Fletty passed around some traditional mead from various varietals of honey for sample and discussion, including: raspberry, blackberry, tupelo,  a blend of the 3, and an ’09 fruit mix. Jeff follwed with mystery beers, where we had to guess if they were pro or homebrewed. Some of the comments included…
“This makes my beer taste better.”
– Richard
“Pliny is like Bud Lite compared to this shit.”
– Fletty

Minnesota State Fair Home Brewed Beer, Mead and Cider Competition!

Judging will take place at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds on August 19th and 20th. If you’ve never judged the State Fair it’s held at the Creative Activities Building. NOTE: Preliminary judging not open to the general public.

Best-Of-Show Judging and Awards Ceremony will be held during the fair August 27, 2011, 11am – at the Education Building’s outdoor stage, adjacent to the Creative Activities building.

Kevin Cotter’s Brewing System

Here is my personal humble brewing setup. No fancy sculpture – just 2 Megapots and a Polarware mash-tun with a false bottom.

I do not have any pumps as of yet, so I have cobbled together anything I can find to achieve the correct heights to perform gravity fed witchcraft. Here I have a metal frame with a two-by-fours and header board stacked to get the proper height over the mash for sparging.
I have one working propane burner, so I have to move pots of hot liquid several times during the brew day to get the job done. “I’m just waiting for the day when I can scald myself silly.”

I do have some tools to make the jobs easier, like Phil’s Sparge Arm that works fine for smaller 5 gallon brewing jobs. KalenBorg left his chiller at my house, so I’ve been using it for about 3 years now. I live in the far south metro in Credit River Township, and as such, we hicks rely on well water. Mine is about 42 degrees out of the tap, which is great for rapid wort chilling. I have a temperature correcting light refractometer to take gravity readings. Last year I acquired a Thermolyne 7200 Stir Plate and I have a small PC fan taped to the side to keep the temperature down.
Kevin is in the process of building a Brutus 10 Clone – see progress here!

Jeremy Hodgson’s Brewing System

This is my set up. There aren’t any fancy pumps or stands just a couple kettles, immersion chiller, 10 gallon cooler mash tun, and a propane burner. I also have a 5 gallon megapot styled pot for decoctions. I use a 1 quart measuring cup and floating tupperware lid for sparging. After cleanup it all stacks nicely in the corner!

This was the first batch at the new apartment and I live on the second story. Not wanting to carry all this water down the stairs I hooked up an RV water hose to the sink and ran it out the window. To keep the hose from ripping off the faucet I used a copper pipe hanger and screwed it to the bottom of the counter.