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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator

Contents:
  Cost of Conference & the AHA <=> Compuserve connection (hplabs!amdahl!uunet!ingr!tesla!steve)
  Time to Update Those Databases ... (rogerl)
  Re: Homebrew Digest #105 (March 21, 1989) (Darryl Richman)
  re: AHA conference cost (Darryl Richman)
  Dark Ale & Network address ("MR. DAVID HABERMAN")
  knowing where you are (Michael Bergman)
  Wyeast Danish Lager Yeast (lbr)

Send submissions to homebrew%hpfcmr at hplabs.hp.com
Send requests to homebrew-request%hpfcmr at hplabs.hp.com


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Date: Mon, 20 Mar 89 10:01:44 CST
From: hpfcla!hplabs!amdahl!uunet!ingr!tesla!steve
Subject: Cost of Conference & the AHA <=> Compuserve connection
Full-Name: 

I was also shocked by the cost of the conference this year. There were eight
people who were planning to go to the conference from here, and after seeing
the cost, there may not be any. There will be at most three people who are
willing to pay the price to attend. All of us felt that the cost should have
been around $100 or less, and we would not have objected to paying that price
and not getting any meals included. I phoned the AHA about another matter, and
complained about the cost, and was put through to Charlie P. himself. We had
a nice discussion about the whole thing, and this is the feeling of what he
said: He realizes that $210 is more than many (if not most) home brewer's
annual budget for their hobby, and he admitted that this is a dilemma, because
one of the "missions" of the AHA is to promote the availability of the hobby.
The real reason for the cost is that the highest attendance at a conference so
far has been about 200 paying attendees, hence the high cost. He said that the
cost this year is $15 less than last year. Now let me begin my thoughts on
some of the things C.P. said. It seems that the problem is how to increase
attendance and lower the cost. I think that the move to Kentucky will help,
but it's going to be hard to convince people to pay over $200 to attend. C.P.
said that the AHA can't afford to lose money on the conference due to their
limited budget, and it does seem unfair to me to subsidise a conference that
only a few hundred people attend with the membership dues of the entire
organization. I don't know what the answer is. The cost isn't outrageous when
compared to conferences I have attended which were work-related, but the tab
has always been picked up by the company (not The Company). I haven't attended
one of these in the past, but I have bought the transcripts, and they have
been valuable to me. If the transcripts contain all of the lectures for $15,
then the question becomes "Will I have $200 worth of fun at the conference?".
I have been to Oldenberg, and it's a really great place for the conference,
but the eight of us could take our money and a few cases of homebrew and go
camping in the smokies for a week, and have a lot of fun, too. Come to think
of it, does anyone want to meet at the Deep Creek campground the week of the
conference? It's near Bryson City, N.C. Of course, there's no alcohol allowed
in the campground ;^).

 Next subject: the AHA and Compuspen, er Compuserve. I wrote an article for
Zymurgy about this mailing list and the benefits of computer communications
to the AHA, and talked to the AHA quite a bit about what they wanted to do.
Some of the alternatives that were considered were connecting to the usenet,
operating a BBS from the AHA offices, or establishing an area on an existing
service, such as Compuserve. The number of people who can be reached by usenet,
Bitnet, etc. is much more limited that the other methods, even though it is less
expensive for those who have access. One of the major goals was to reach new
people who would not otherwise be familiar with the AHA. There was a feeling
that by operating a BBS and publicising it in Zymurgy, the AHA would be 
"preaching to the choir". By joining a service, the exposure will be increased,
and membership may increase. Some of the features available by using a service
were also very attractive, such as conferencing. One of the ideas that has
been discussed, and which I mentioned in my article, is a forum tasting of
commercial beers, with C.P. and/or Michael Jackson on-line as the host.
 I am probably at least partially responsible for the choice of Compserve,
as it is the only service which I am familiar with, and no-one at the AHA
was familiar with any of them, so when the idea was discussed, it was in
terms of Compuserve. However, let me say this about that. The AHA operation
on Compuserve is being operated as a test, and is taking place as a sub-space
of the wine and beer forum. If you like the idea, but don't like the
implementation, please let C.P. and Co. know what you would prefer. If there
are better, or more cost-effective services available, let's hear about them.
I have no great love for Compuserve, and don't use them for much else, so if
I can get connected more cheaply, I'm all for it.

 Gosh, I never got to my actual brewing questions, but they'll wait. I've
run on long enough.

		Steve Conklin		uunet!ingr!tesla!steve
		Intergraph Corp.	tesla!steve at ingr.com
		Huntsville, AL 35807	(205) 772-4013

Kids, the seven basic food groups are GUM, PUFF PASTRY, PIZZA,
 PESTICIDES, ANTIBIOTICS, NUTRA-SWEET and MILK DUDS!!

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Date: Tue, 21 Mar 89 15:08:02 EST
From: rogerl at Think.COM
Subject: Time to Update Those Databases ...

At long last:

Beer and Wine Hobby
22B Cranes Court
Worburn, MA  01801
Phone: (617)933-8818
FAX: (617)662-0872
Phone Orders
Outside of MA: 1-(800)523-5423

This is new as of about 2-4 weeks ago.  The FAX line is new.  I've
have nothing but good experiences dealing with these people.

Roger J. Locniskar 
<rogerl at think.com>

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Date: Tue, 21 Mar 89 13:54:34 PST
From: Darryl Richman <darryl at ism780c.isc.com>
Subject: Re: Homebrew Digest #105 (March 21, 1989)

From: hplabs!utah-cs!cs.utexas.edu!raven!rcd (Dick Dunn)
"> By the way, Charlie Papazian and the AHA apparently are going to
"> be available through a SIG on Compuserve soon.  I wish that they
"> were simply tied into BITNET to participate in this forum which
"> is obviously more active...
"
"Does anyone know more about this?  Why don't we see if we can at least
"automagically gateway some of it into the mailing list.  It's interesting
"that Charlie didn't try to do this, since there must be a couple dozen
"people in Boulder who could have arranged it!

The AHA has arranged to get a couple of sections and libraries under
the wine forum on CI$ (GO WINEFORUM).  They are shooting for a formal
announcement on April 1 (no fooling! ;-).

I just signed up myself, and I was looking through it this morning.
It's pretty sad right now.  There are a couple of discussions going on
about making champagne and wine barrels.  Even the section name is a
compromise:  "Beer & Home W/B Mkg".  According to Charlie P., they're
still trying to figure out how to make the whole thing go.  I would
expect it to take a while before they have it running smoothly.

If you are a subscriber, let's try to get some beer discussion going
over there.  As I understand it, the powers-that-be at CI$ don't really
expect this beer thing to have much response, which is why they've
given it a halfhearted ok.

		--Darryl Richman

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Date: Tue, 21 Mar 89 14:06:51 PST
From: Darryl Richman <darryl at ism780c.isc.com>
Subject: re: AHA conference cost

From: hplabs!utah-cs!cs.utexas.edu!raven!rcd (Dick Dunn)
"One of the questions bearing on the comparison of conferences is whether
"the conference is viewed as a fund-raising activity.  I don't think USENIX
"_per_se_ is a fund-raiser...the tutorials might be, but they're separate.
"I would hope that the AHA conference is not seen as a fund-raiser, because
"they do other things (like the beer festivals) to raise money.

I wonder how well they'll do this year at the beer festival.  When the
conference and the festival coincided, it was sort of a Mecca for the
homebrewing community.  When I figure the costs for hotel and plane
flights, this national will be over $750.  I certainly am not gonna
spend another $400 to go drink beer for a couple days.

On the other hand, comparing the AHA conference to Usenix isn't really
fair;  Usenix has got to attract many thousands of people.  Last year's
national conference had 2-300 in attendance.  I suspect that there are
a lot of fixed costs that don't (to a large extent) depend on the size
of the function.

		--Darryl Richman

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Date: 21 Mar 89 15:54:00 PST
From: "MR. DAVID HABERMAN" <habermand at afal-edwards.af.mil>
Subject: Dark Ale & Network address

About a month or 2 ago I asked for help on when to bottle my dark ale.  
Getting no responses, I bottled anyway.  My problem (I thought) was that my 
ending gravity seemed a little high.  This was the first time taht I had used 
crystal malt as an adjunct.  To recap:

	Full Moon Ale

	6 lbs.   Dark Australian DME
	1 lb.    Carmel Crystal malt
	1.5 oz.  Willamette hops
	1.5 oz.  Fuggles hops
	1 pkg.   Wyeast British Ale Yeast #1098
	5 gal.   Arrowhead Mtn. Spring Water
	3/4 cup  corn sugar to prime.

	Initial gravity:  1.055
	Final gravity:    1.017

I boiled 2 gal. of water and turned off the heat.  I then added the crystal 
malt for about 15 min. or so (I'm at work so the exact time escapes me) and 
then poured the liquid through a muslin bag into the wort pot.  I heated up 
another galon of water to 170 deg. and poured it through the grain into the 
wort pot.  The water was then heated to boiling and the DME added.  One third 
of the hops were added, the next third after 45 min., and the last third after 
1 hr. when the heat was turned off.  I stuck the pot into the sink and ran 
water to cool it off.  The wort was added to 2 gal. water already in the 
fermenter.  I use a glass jar that my great grandfather used to make wine in 
over 50 years ago.  It looks like a giant mason jar, so I use plastic wrap 
with a rubberband on top to close it.  The yeast was added at 75 deg. and the 
initial gravity was 1.055.

After 4 days it seemed to stop fermenting and the gravity was 1.022.  I then 
racked into a secondary fermentor and topped to 5 gal.  I decided to wait a
while to see what would happen.  After 3 weeks it was finally douwn to 1.017
but I didn't have time to bottle then.  I bottled after 4 weeks using 3/4 cup 
corn sugar to prime.

My main problem was that I wasn't sure when to bottle and how much priming 
sugar to add.  All the other brews that I have made  ended at 1.011 SG and I 
was worried that mine was too high.

The beer came out tasting great and did not explode any bottles.  In order to 
call this a Porter, it needs more hops, therefore I think it is a Scotch ale.

----------

My 2 cents on the network addresses.  I am on internet and it appears that 
several other in the group are also.  I have tried to send messages to some of
you (mainly Darryl Richman) without success, while others have worked.  The
reason is that we do not have all the host names in our host table.  This
table translates the names to internet numbers.  If I knew the number, I would
not need the name.  For example you could send a message to me at
HABERMAND at AFAL-EDWARDS.AF.MIL or HABERMAND at 26.5.0.134 

David
------

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Date: Tue, 21 Mar 89 21:42:28 est
From: Michael Bergman <bergman%medusa.m2c.org at RELAY.CS.NET>
Subject: knowing where you are

   Date: 19 Mar 89 23:33:12 MST (Sun)
   From: hplabs!utah-cs!cs.utexas.edu!raven!rcd (Dick Dunn)

   Folks, we can do a lot to facilitate email for personal conversations with
   a little care in addresses...Batte wrote:

   > ...Although I can reach the network
   > address MOST of the time, there are many of
   > your home or commercial addresses which DO NOT
   > link...

   Part of the problem is that people don't necessarily know where they are!

	[deleted]

	  Can someone tell us how to get to the bitnet world, for example?

   ---
   Dick Dunn	{ncar;ico;stcvax}!raven!rcd		(303)494-0965
			   or	rcd at raven.uucp

I get to bitnet by way of mitvma.mit.edu, which is a gateway between
bitnet and internet at mit.  If you are on internet, the form would
be:

	bitnetuser%bitnetmachine.BITNET at MITVMA.MIT.EDU

I am not sure what this looks like from the bitnet side.  Nor do I
know how to reach this machine with a uucp address, but I'm sure
someone else will pipe up with that "bit" of information.

--mike bergman

bergman at m2c.org (internet)

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Date: Tue, 21 Mar 89 23:46:07 EST
From: lbr at gatech.edu
Subject: Wyeast Danish Lager Yeast

Some time ago I wrote that my dark lager wouldn't fall below 1.021.  It's
now at 1.016, and it's completely still.  My problem was certainly due
to high mash temperature and very erratic fermentation temperature control.

Someone (Jay Hersch?) said that this yeast would not attenuate well.  This
is contrary to the listing supplied by my store: it lists the same apparent
attenuation for this as for the German lager yeasts.

Also, I have made two batches of Pilsner with this yeast, and both fell
to 1.012 and were quite tasty.  I like this yeast: it has a softer flavor
than typical German beer, characteristic of genuine Tuborg or Carlsberg.

Len Reed
gatech!holos0!lbr

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Date: Tue, 21 Mar 89 23:45:45 EST
From: lbr at gatech.edu

My wife is considering buying me a second refrigerator for my birthday
(April 11, if anyone else wants to do some gift shopping).  Here in
the Deep South lager is the drink of choice in the summer and is impossible
to make without refrigeration.

The units she's looked at are your basic top/bottom refrigerator/freezers.
This should give me plenty of room in the refrigerator part.  I'm a little
concerned about temperature, though.  Miller and Noonan say ferment in the
45-55 degF range.  Most refrigerators are set to maintain the low 40s.
Is the fridge's thermostat likely to hold 50, or will it require the
external on/off timer that some writers mention?

Ideally, I'd like to use the refrigerator for fermentaion and maybe lagering
(lower 30s), and the freezer as a mini deep freeze (otherwise it's just
wasted).  Is this feasible, or does the 50 degF ferment preclude using
the freezer?  (This is a big selling point to my wife.)

Some of you out there use refrigerators.  Did you have to do anything
special to get the right temperature?  Can you use the freezer?

Len Reed
gatech!holos0!lbr

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