May 2003

Editors Note:[Please submit any beer related information or articles to the newsletter editor at m@ttjarvis.com or call me at 342-2203. The ‘deadline’ is the 3^rd Sunday of the month.]

Next Meeting:

June 4^th 6:30- SPECIAL NOTE: EMERGENCY BUS TRIP PLANNING MEETING IS COMING UP JUNE 4^th, 6:30pm at West Bros. We gotta use it or lose it, so please attend to talk about taking the bus to Portland or other destinations.

June 7^th5pm - Mark & Lisa Dillon will once again be hosting folks that want to come over and check out the hotrods as the cruise by for the River Road Cruise. Bring side dishes and beer for a great and relaxing good time!

June 21st at 5pm. Belgian Beer Night at John & Kelly Wilson’s located at1960 Washington Street. Phone: 345-7544. They will be providing homemade pizza dough and sauce - we bring the toppings! Also load up your Belgian beers and bring them along!

And Now a Word from President Robin Chitwood:

2003 Sasquatch Brewfest

The 2003 Sasquatch Brewfest will begin with a brewfest reception at 6pm on Friday, May 30thand a brewer’s dinner at 7pm that evening. More information about those events will be coming out soon. The taps start flowing at noon on Saturday, May 31st and the rest of the agenda goes as follows:

Barleywine Symposium: 3pm

Hops and Malt Symposium: 3:30pm

Cask Conditioning: (Richard Norgrove, Bear Republic)

Oak Barrel Beers: (John Harris, Full Sail) 4:20pm

Shelly James Trio 7:30pm

Sasquatch statue unveiling 9pm

Raffle 9:10pm

Paul deLay band 1st set 9:30pm

Break/silent auction winner 10:30pm

Paul deLay band 2nd set 11pm

End 12am (or so)

The Wild Duck will acquire a permit to occupy the alley and tents will be set up to the north of the building. The big garage door into the music hall will open into the table seating area outside. Here’s the lineup:

Anderson Valley, Hair of the Dog, Pelican, Bear Republic, High Street, Pike, Bill’s Tavern (Cannon Beach), Kona Brewing, Port Halling, BJ’s, Laurelwood, Rock Bottom, Bridgeport, Lucky Lab, Rogue, Caldera, Mia & Pia’s, Siletz, Deschutes, Midnight Sun, Steelhead, Elysian, Mooses Tooth, Terminal Gravity, Fish Brewing Co., Mt Hood, West Brothers, Full Sail, Oregon Trader, Widmer, Wild Duck Brewery and Wild River…. wow!

There will be a reasonable entry fee ( I’m not sure what that will be yet) but it will include a commemorative glass and possibly one token. There will be more info later.

They will need volunteers for tear down and clean – up. There are already a lot of volunteers for pouring. Please contact me if you are interested in helping.

This really sounds like it’s going to be good. The hope is that it will generate enough revenue to cover costs so that it could develop into an annual event and provide a benefit fund. Don’t miss this one!Cheers - RC

Other News:

Big Brew 2003

Aromas of malt and hops rolled out of the steamy interior of Denny Conn’s brewhouse on Saturday May 3rd for Big Brew Day 2003. Four brewing systems ran off some thirty- five gallons of fermentable wort that day, and we had a head count of 20 people. I have not seen the official figures for this year but last year over five thousand gallons were homebrewed on the same day around the world. Denny really knocked himself out setting things up and cooking for us. Check the CBS website for some great photos (www.hbd.org/cascade). This was a great opportunity for brewers to get together to swap ideas and see some interesting brewing rigs. Denny wants to do it again next year and thinks he can accommodate more brewers. See you there next time.RC

[Editors Note: This makes 4 years in a row for me out at Denny’s place for The Big Brew…. I would *really* encourage others to come on out next year and brew with such a great bunch of folks! It’s a hoot! For those thinking about going all grain or using “big gear”, there’s no better chance to come see it in action than out at Denny’s…. Hope to see you there next year!Matt]

We have a Winner!

Congrats to Denny Conn for 3^rd place with his Vanilla Bourbon Imperial Porter at the 21^st Heart of the Valley Homebrew Festival in Corvallis! Also thanks to Chris Studach and Russ Kazmierczak for judging, and Liz Laughlin (and myself) helped with stewarding and other odd jobs at the festival. A good time was had by all! Check out our club website for pics ) coming soon).

From Janie:

We now have 70 CBS members.I want to welcome the latest new people to our club:Kevin Cook, Kim & Donald Davis, Rob Hudson, Alan & Angela Newell and Tim & Tracey Zerr.Because of the fact that we have so many new members I am updating the address list again, so please let me know if you have any changes to make.I will print the new list by June 14th

to be distributed at John and Kelly's party\meeting on June 21rst. The following people have not paid their dues:Steve Cossette, Toby Day, Jim Emory, Lupe Gardner, Ted & Michelle Helvoigt, Rob & Michelle Rubottom, Lonn Welchman. In order to continue receiving the newsletter,

please pay your dues.(You can mail them to me at 25823 Tanya Ln, Veneta, Or. 97487)

I want to thank everybody for their support of the fund raising events we have had over the past couple of years.The money we raised has enabled us to provide extra goodies for the clubthat the dues don't cover. These things include:Clark Creek Campout,Oktoberfest Beerbrats,

Pinatas and goodies for the kids,Prizes for the Chili Cook-Off,Pub Crawl Appetizers, Club Brochures, Hop Queen and King of BrewsAwards for the BBQ, and various other things.

Everyone is talking about new club T-shirts, that will be an outlay of about $500.We already have enough money to get going on project. (Any volunteers?).I don't know if everyone realizes it but, the last time we wanted new T-shirts we did not have enough money to even get started.Steve McCornack loaned the club $125 to get the ball rolling, andwe were able to pay him back after we started doing raffles. Thanks Steve. I hope that we can continue to raise money for the club and do more fun things.If anyone has any ideas about fund raising or fund spending please bring them up at the next meeting. That's it for now.Janie

Wanted: Rod Surcamp wants to pick up a few corny kegs - give him a call at (541) 726-8792 if you have any to spare or know of a good source. (Word has it that Pepsi doesn’t sell them at the local plant anymore…)

Brewing Software Review - by Matt Jarvis

ProMash- Brewing Software For the Discriminating Brewer

ProMash Software Version 1.8a has just been released, and once again the author of the program, Jeffery Donovan of Sausalito Brewing Co., shows why ProMash stands head and shoulders above all the rest. I’ll discuss the new features shortly, but in case you aren’t familiar with this program I’ll tell you a bit about it.

In short, ProMash is a recipe formulation program. You can create a new brew recipe by adding all sorts of grains of varying amounts and colors, and ProMash will calculate your specific gravity (SG) with amazing accuracy. You can also tell it how much of what types of hops you are using, how long they are in the boil, and it will tell you what to expect for bitterness (IBU’s). ProMash works with IBU’s and what might be more familiar to some of us - HBU’s (Homebrew Bitterness Units). You can even tell it how you want these numbers calculated, using formulas for Rager, Garetz, Tinseth and ‘Generic’ methods.

After you pick a style, the style guidelines appear so that you can see how your changes or additions to the recipe will effect the outcome. As you bump up the pounds of pale malt, for example, you can see the SG increase. Keep going and you’ll see yourself go ‘out of style’ for the SG. So what??? Just call it an ‘Imperial’ and you are all set!

One somewhat justified criticism of ProMash is the incredible depth and vastness of the system settings and user interface. There are a LOT of ways to customize and use ProMash. It is actually pretty straightforward to use for the basics - it just gets a wee bit complicated when you want to push your formulation techniques to the limits.

Some nice features of ProMash include the ability to calculate your temperatures and liquor volumes for infusion mashes (single, step and now decoction). Want to change your liquor-to-grist ratio to fit into your mash tun? No problem - just tweak the ratio and watch the volumes/temps change for the infusions. It gets to be pretty much no brainer with just a bit of practice.

Have a nice recipe but want to make a double batch? No worries - just use the ‘lock’ feature and change your ending volume - ProMash scales everything up for you.

There are many, many features in this program that I can’t even begin to describe them all here. I encourage you to visit the ProMash website (www.promash.com) to learn more and/or get the FREE download version.

New features in ProMash Version 1.8a are: New Grain, Sugar and Extract Additions; Decoction Mashing; Efficiency Locking; color swatches to show the beer color based on the Estimated SRM; JPG Export of all charts; HTML Export of Recipes and Brewing Sessions; Clipboard Export of Recipes and Brewing Sessions; Hop Time Degradation Functionality and Chart Enhanced; Decoction and Infusion Spike charting capability in Mash Graphs and a New Hop Formula (Generic) based on Ray Daniels Basic Hop Utilization table.

If you have any questions about using ProMash, get in touch with either myself or Denny and we’ll get you going!

A Special Note - I’ve written my own brewing program for those folks that don’t have a need for such power as is found in ProMash. I will give a free copy to anyone that is a current club member - check out Brew Simple at www.BrewDomain.com[mj]

Club Information:For over 20 years, Cascade Brewers Society is a sometimes formal, but mostly informal club devoted to the appreciation and art of creating fine alcoholic beverages (you know; beer, mead, cider, and wine). For more information regarding the Cascade Brewers Society, please contact Kent Macdonald at 935-5711 or Robin Chitwood at 342-2397.