The
Cascade Brewers Society Newsletter
http://hbd.org/cascade/
February 2004
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 3rd
Sunday of the month.]
Last
Meeting:
[See
Robin’s comments below]
Gadget
Night (by M Jarvis)
Two
of us showed up with gizmos to show off during our Gadget Night. I brought
my handheld mini CO2 dispenser which is really handy for when you want
to haul your kegs around, along with my Super Siphon (http://web.iwebcenters.com/brewersdiscount/item85607.ctlg)
which I think totally rocks.
Denny
brought his Wort Wizard and gave a talk on it’s mysterious workings. In
the past he also did a review and it is posted online here: http://www.bodensatz.com/article.php?story=2002112712525575
Next
Meeting:
[NOTE:
Change In Date!!!]
Saturday,
Mar 6th, 9:00am
at Mark & Rose Smith’s house, 1232 Dalton Drive, Eugene. Club extract
brew in preparation for the AHA Club Only extract competition. To
qualify, at least 50% of fermentables must come from extract. Beyond
that, any style goes for this one. Please contact Denny (denny@projectoneaudio.com
or 998.8580) by March 1 if you intend to brew so that we can have stuff
ready for you. Note: Mark will provide water, but for anything else you
are on your own!
Saturday, Mar 20th, 4:00pm. Russ & Amber Kazmierczak's, 639
Kourt Drive, Eugene. Hop rhizome digging. At 6 PM, we'll have the
club mead competition with the winner entered into the AHA Club Only mead
contest. We need some judges for this who know about mead, and that
ain't me! Contact Denny if you intend to enter or would like to judge.
The
first part of the meeting is technical based and will start at 4:00 PM.The
subject for the tech portion of the meeting will be homegrown hops.Weather
permitting, we plan on digging some hop rhizomes and then have a discussion
on growing hops, using hops in homebrew, and then finish it up with tasting
beer made with homegrown hops.The
second part of the meeting will be a belated St. Patrick’s Day Party starting
at 6:00 PM.The party is a potluck,
so please bring some Irish style food and beverages.
And Now a Word from President Robin Chitwood:
2/29/04
The
first technical meeting of 2004 was well attended by beer geeks and non-geeks
alike. Denny Conn set brewing thermometers straight and some innovative
brewing gadgets were demonstrated. Steve McCornack unveiled his prototypes
of ceramic beer mugs he has created for the club. These will be available
when molds are completed.
Debbie
Davis gave a favorable report on the club treasury. We intend to utilize
these funds throughout the year to finance club activities and the treasury
must be replenished from time to time. Dues accomplish part of this but
we also rely on other fund-raising activities. We now have a large stock
of nice merchandise donated to us by breweries and other brewing industry
vendors. Starting at the next meeting, we will auction or raffle off just
a few of these items at club functions. By vote of members to amend
the minutes of the January meeting Debbie Davis, treasurer, and Karen French,
secretary, are authorized to sign checks on Cascade Brewers Society account.
The
AHA National Homebrewer’s Conference is happening in Las Vegas this year
at the Riviera Hotel and Casino on June 17th – 19th. The conference has
an impressive list of speakers as well as the homebrewing competition and
hospitality suite where participating clubs offer samples of their best
brews. Take advantage of this if you can. I plan to be among the CBS members
who attend.
It
was good to see Todd Steele back in town for a few days. Todd was at the
tech meeting on the 16th. A CBS member for several years, Todd was the
mastermind behind “Old Woody”. This was a huge collaboration brew of lambic
that was aged in a large wine cask in Todd’s garage. Todd is also known
for the infamous “goldmine” trips to his property in southern Oregon.
The
extract brew session is coming up the first weekend in March at Mark Smith’s.
This will be one of the beers for the club-only competitions. Let’s see
if any of you all-grain brewers can actually make an extract beer worth
drinking! Cheers.
Late breaking news:
We
are taking the CBS Annual Pub Crawl to Portland this year. It will be an
over-nighter on the weekend of April 17th – 18th. Kevin Hornbuckle has
agreed to take us up on the bus for a fee of $19.00 per person round trip,
including transportation around the city. The club treasury will pay half
of that fare for paid up members. This is based on a fifteen-person minimum.
With more than fifteen people the price could go down some. The days of
departure and return will depend on member’s preferences. We can leave
Friday or Saturday and return on Sunday. The dozen or so microbreweries
in the Portland area would more than fill a two-day itinerary. Good hotel
rates are available if you know where to look and lower-cost suites are
available for those who like to share accommodations. Of course there is
room on the bus for those hardy types who want to save hotel fees.
Portland
is a picturesque old city with a lot of history. It is fun to see the historic
sections of the city from the sidewalk, and a good way to do that is a
pub-crawl. Beer is so much a part ofPortland’s
history that there are many more places to find good beer than most cities.
Along with all the microbreweries there are of course lots of good pubs
with great imported beers on tap. I’ll be on the bus – hope to see you
there…more information to follow. RC.
News You Can Use Department:
Haven't
paid your dues this year?Please
send a check for $20 (individuals) or $25 (families) made out to "Cascade
Brewers Society" to Debbie Davis, c/o CBS, 2655 Ridgemont Drive, Eugene,
OR 97405. Note that you can subtract $5 if you opt for not receiving a
paper copy of the newsletter.
Also,
don’t forget that our club website is growing bigger every day! See what
Denny has done with www.hbd.org/cascade
Eugene’s Water and How it Stacks up Against the Rest of the World
Note:
This article is written on the assumption that the reader has a basic understanding
of water chemistry and how it applies to brewing.
A
couple of months ago at a club meeting Matt, the CBS Newsletter Editor,
informed me that he recently received a Water Chemical Analysis Summary
from EWEB and asked if I would be interested in writing a brief article
on Eugene’s water for the newsletter.He
indicated in the conversation that he thought of asking me to write the
article since I worked in the water business.Little
did he know that I don’t work on the clean side of water, that being water
treatment and producing drinking water, but that I work with the dirty
side of water, that of course being wastewater (i.e. producing drinking
water for cities downstream of Eugene); you know the water that Industrial
American Lager is made from.
Enough
of how Industrial American Lager is produced, we will save that for the
April issue of the newsletter.The
focus of this article will be centered on the water analysis for the City
of Eugene and how it compares with water from great brewing cities around
the world.In order to be able to
compare Eugene’s water with other cities around the world then we will
need to review some basics of interpreting a water analysis report.
For
brewing purposes, a brewer is mainly interested in the following parameters
on a water quality report:
Calcium (Ca)
Carbonate (CaCO3)
Chloride (Cl)
Magnesium (Mg)
Sodium (Na)
Sulfate (SO4)
Hardness/Alkalinity
pH
The parameters listed above are commonly reported on the report in milligrams per liter (mg/L or parts per million, ppm), but as drinking water standards become more stringent the parameters could be listed in ug/L (parts per billion, ppb).
Below
is comparison of Eugene’s water analysis against other brewing cities around
the world (reported in mg/L).
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Note:The
data listed above was obtained from the article Brewing Waters of the
World, posted on the internet at http://hbd.org/~ddraper/beer/waterpro.html.Sources
for water data are referenced at the end of the internet article.
*Analytical results for 1996 were reported by EWEB and were based on a ten year average.Results for 2003 can also be assumed to be based on a ten year average. |
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After
reviewing the analytical results for various brewing cities around the
world, the City of Eugene’s water profile is most similar to the water
from Pilsen (the home of Pilsner), Czech Republic.The
water from both cities are classified as soft water and they have a very
low mineral content.If a brewer
wishes to replicate brewing water for cities around the world, Eugene’s
water can easily be adjusted using the water profiler function on Promash™
and water treatment chemicals (measured in grams and not measured using
teaspoons) to closely match any of the other profiles listed above.
One
thing to consider when attempting to clone an imported beer you recently
tried and the values above are used for developing the water profile, the
brewery may not currently use the same water as listed.With
increased population growth and contaminated water sources, municipalities
are constantly trying to meet the water quantity and quality needs of their
community and may have changed the source of water (groundwater vs. surface
water) or use different treatment methods.For
instance, EWEB has recently installed groundwater wells around the city
in order to address water shortages as the community grows.In
the future EWEB may supplement the surface water source or switch entirely
to groundwater and at that point the water profile may change.
If
you are an extract brewer and would like to adjust your water to match
one of the profiles above, I would not recommend it since you do not know
the mineral content of the extract.Back
when I was first starting to brew, one of the biggest improvements I made
to my beer was to stop following Papazians recipes (the pale ale recipes
commonly recommend several teaspoons of gypsum) and quit adding gypsum
to my beers.Gypsum used in excess
can cause a very unpleasant sharp/harsh bitterness to your beer.
Water
Travel Tip:Imagine you are on a
dream pub crawl in Belgium and you have just woke up after a night of serious
beer tasting and you have a headache and are dehydrated.You
go to the store to stock up on snacks and water for a road trip across
Belgium.When you get to the water
isle there are about 10 to 20 different kinds of water to choose from.You
assume the water is similar to the bottle water we might find in America
(mostly low mineral content, soft drinking water)and you just grab one
and check out of the store.After
you are several miles down the road you grab a water bottle to start re-hydrating
before you get to the next city and another night of beer tasting.You
open the bottle and all of a sudden you get blasted in the face with carbonated
water.At first you think, cool I
got carbonated water, and then you take a drink and about choke.The
water tastes like someone dissolved several tablespoons of baking soda
in your water.After several swallows
you start to get used to it and then suddenly you start to realize that
the heartburn you got from a night of drinking lambics is disappearing.The
lesson learned from this experience is that when buying water in Europe
pay close attention to the mineral content, usually listed somewhere on
the bottle as a mini water quality report and purchase the water with the
lowest numbers, unless you like baking soda water or have a bad case of
heartburn or constipation.Also,
pay close attention to the words on the bottle Gas or No Gas (spelling
may vary depending on the country) or you may get blasted in the face.
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 Robin Chitwood at 342-2397.