Thursday, August 26, 2010

Homebrew Digest #5721 (August 26, 2010)

HOMEBREW Digest #5721 Thu 26 August 2010


FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org


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Contents:
Coming Home (Mark Tumarkin)
Re: Mead (bill keiser)
Re: Smithwick's clone (David Huber)
Re: TT and HBD (Calvin Perilloux)
Foam Rangers announce the 27th annual Dixie Cup (Kyle Jones)
Curly Quotes (Jason Henning)


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* Beer is our obsession and we're late for therapy! *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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Financial Projection As of 13 Jun 2010
Projected 2010 Budget $3305.65
Expended against projection $2280.59
Projected Excess/(Shortfall) $ 346.85

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Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:11:38 -0400
From: Mark Tumarkin <mtumarkin at att.net>
Subject: Coming Home

Hey y'all,

Haven't been on the HBD for quite a while. Left as the traffic got so low
after TechTalk picked up. Now with the possibly imminent demise of TT, I'm
back and it feels like coming home. Great to see some old familiar names.

Thanks to Pat & the janitors, and to all of you posters for keeping this
great resource going. Of course, timing is everything. And I seem to have
come back in the midst of fundraising..... I'll be sending Pat my donation
asap.

Mark Tumarkin
Hogtown Brewers
Gainesville, FL


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Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:48:52 -0400
From: bill keiser <sharpstik at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: Mead

A good starting recipe for mead is "Joe's Ancient Orange".
It is easy to make, ends up a bit on the sweet side and is ready to
drink within about 4 to 6 months.
It uses bread yeast and has its drawbacks, but It's won several
competitions for me.
bill keiser


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Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:25:25 -0400
From: David Huber <n3uks.dave at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Smithwick's clone

I originally sent this last week from my gmail, but I suppose I got
hit with the 80-character limit in HTML mode. I (hope) I'm sending
this in plain-text format:


I used the Irish Red recipe given by Zainasheff and Palmer in "Brewing
Classic Styles." Based on a comment Jamil made in his podcast for that
recipe (http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/membersarchive/Jamil05-05-08.mp3),
I cut back the specialty grains from 6 oz ea to 5 oz and I was quite
happy with it (his comment was that he thought if you cut those
specialty grains back, you'd probably get a pretty good clone of
Smithwick's). For what it's worth, I brewed the all-grain recipe but
an extract version is also provided. I used the recipe out of the
book, but it is the same as the one in the podcast, in case you don't
have the book.

I picked up some Smithwick's and did a side-by-side comparison and I
thought the taste was very close, though I think mine had some esters
from a slightly warmer ferment than I intended. The color was spot-on.
I bottle condition and mine was a bit hazy while the Smithwick's was
brilliantly clear, so you'd want to either filter or do a better job
at fining than I did. The Smithwick's also had a very nice, white
head, while though mine was nice, it wasn't as tall or long lasting.

Dave Huber, Jessup, Md.


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Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:13:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: Calvin Perilloux <calvinperilloux at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: TT and HBD

Hi Rowan,

TT is TechTalk, the American Homebrewers Association's
competition to HBD. It's a member-only list kind of like
HBD, but it's moderated, and when it came online a few
years back, it siphoned off a good chunk of traffic
from HBD.

The TechTalk "interface", to be honest, is easier to use --
a lot more flexible for posting, since it took just about
anything, and their (expensive?) humans on that end cleaned
it all up before posting. That said, it needed daily
editing by their janitors to do that cleaning, and I imagine
they must have had good doses of spam coming in that had to
be removed. (HBD is more resistant to spam, due to the
much-bemoaned restrictions on incoming e-mail format;
spam these days seldom passes the criteria because the
spammers include HTML to make it pretty for other recipients.)

TechTalk's managers have now decided that it's too expensive
to keep it running, and they are/were encouraging their users
to transfer to the AHA Forum. But as with most forums,
sometimes you get a load of rubbish mixed in with the
real information. It also didn't seem easy (or possible?)
to find ONLY what has been updated in the last day, all
on one page, like a daily digest (HBD or TechTalk).

Besides that, a fair number of people can't access any
beer-related forums from the office, but they are able
to receive an e-mail digest.

Hence, HBD is welcoming whichever homebrewers want to hop
over from the AHA's TechTalk board that will be closed
down at end of this month. Hopefully, we can assist the
newbies with the posting quirks. I'm definitely sure that we
can give them good signal-to-noise in answering their questions.
Like I've told some of them at TechTalk, there are a lot
of very knowledgeable lurkers here at HBD just waiting to
answer brewing questions.

Calvin Perilloux
Middletown, Maryland, USA

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Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:50:17 -0500
From: Kyle Jones <akylejones at gmail.com>
Subject: Foam Rangers announce the 27th annual Dixie Cup

Earn the respect of your wives, husbands, domestic partners, kids
coworkers, and fellow homebrewers by winning a medal (or two) at the
world-famous Dixie Cup. Dixie Cup is a tradition steeped in history
and barleywine, one of the largest and longest-running homebrew
competitions in the nation.

The Foam Rangers homebrew club is now accepting entries for the 27th
annual Dixie Cup, "Strange Brew", a BJCP-sanctioned competition. An
unlimited number of homebrewed beers, ciders, and meads may be
entered, but no more than two per medal category. The entry fee is $7
per entry online, and $8 per entry if paper entry forms are used until
September 17, 2010. After that, it's $10 per entry until the deadline
of September 24, 2010.

Dixie Cup is also the last leg of the Lone Star Circuit and is an MCAB
qualifying event.

All entries should be shipped to:

Dixie Cup
c/o DeFalco's
8715 Stella Link Rd
Houston, TX 77025
713-668-9440

Entries may also be dropped off in person at DeFalco's or at Brew It
Yourself (25770 Interstate 45 #107 Spring, TX 77386).

Please refer to http://dixiecup.crunchyfrog.net for more information
about Dixie Cup. All BJCP styles will be judged, along with special
categories "First Time Entrant" and "Strange Brew". See the website
for details.

Also, do not hesitate to contact the competition director with any
questions that remain after a visit to the website.

Kyle Jones, Competition Director
dixiecup at foamrangers.com


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Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:40:47 -0400
From: Jason Henning <jason.henning at gmail.com>
Subject: Curly Quotes

I'm sure most of us write our posts in a word processor for ease of
editing, spelling and grammar checkers. Some word processors will
automatically change quotes to curly quotes. Curly quotes aren't in
the ASCII character set and will be rejected by the filter.

To see what I'm talking about and/or to see how to change the settings
in MSWord, check out http://bit.ly/cMmjAU

Cheers,
Jason Henning
HBD janitor


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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5721, 08/26/10
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