The BrewsLeader August 2004 Vol. 21 No. 8 IMPORTANT READ THIS FIRST Summer Party (Carnivore) We've all heard of Carnivale, that raucous celebration observed by Catholic countries at the beginning of Lent. JRH will hold its summer party, a sort of Carnivore at my house, --REMOVED--, on August 14th, beginning at 6:00 PM. Here's the deal: The club will provide (and I will cook): MEAT. Namely, traditional barbequed pork shoulder and chicken, Carolina style, prepared in the slow-cooked North Carolina style. Possibly, also, some jerk pork, a product of the Nanny Town Maroons from eastern Jamaica. If you want something else to eat, please bring it, or send me a request and we'll TRY to accommodate you. Please bring side dishes, including salads, veggies, fruits, desserts, etc. NOT crunchy stuff in a plastic bag, but REAL picnic food! We are at --REMOVED--. We're looking forward to seeing y'all! Of course, there will be homebrew and homemade vino! Dan Mouer UPCOMING EVENTS Aug 11 Club Meeting - Tour of Legend Brew House AHA Club Only – Wheat Beer (Cat. 17) Aug 14 Summer Party @ Dan Mouer’s Aug 20 – 22 BURP Mashout Sep 8 Club Meeting - Style Discussion – IPA AHA Club Only – Smoked Beer (Cat. 23) Sep 11 Club Brew @ WeekEnd Brewer Sep 15 Board Meeting Sep 25 River City Beer & Seafood Festival Oct 13 Club Meeting Oct 30 Hallo-Fest Party @ Stasi & Jeff York’s Nov 10 Club Meeting - Style Discussion – Spiced (aka Weird) Beer AHA Club Only - IPA (Cat. 7) Nov 13 AHA Club Only - IPA Nationals – hosted by James River Homebrewers Nov 17 Board Meeting Dec 8 Club Meeting - Election of Officers Style Discussion – Winter Warmers Dec 11 Holiday Party @ Steve Jarrett’s July Meeting President Tedd Smith welcomed members and guests, and thanked Tom Martin and the rest of the Legend staff for their gracious hospitality. Members set a record for the amount of homebrew they brought in to share with their fellow homebrewers. (Your Secretary failed to record the exact number of brews, but trust him – it was a record.) Feature: Dashing Dan Mouer presented the history of brewing in Richmond. In particular, Dan discussed the James River Steam Brewery, an affiliate of the Yeungling Brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, that operated in Richmond during the mid-19th Century. Thanks again, Dan, for sharing you knowledge with us all! Club Brews: Brewing sessions at Ted Warrens to brew a Fest-style beer for the Hallowfest Party this fall and at Richbrau to commercially brew a pilsner based on Steve Severtson’s Classic Pre-Prohibition Pilsner went very well. Raffle: Another great one! Prizes included cool glasses, kegs, coasters, hats and buttons. Jeff Hewit won the Mystery Prize– a cool glass and an Anheuser-Busch bandana. ***************************** Farewell and Good Luck Academia has called the Ladutkes – Rachel, Larry and Aiden – back North. (Many of us first met Aiden on a prenatal basis.) Good luck, and good brewing! Upcoming Club Brew We will conduct a mega-brew at the Club Brew set for September 11 at the WeekEnd Brewers. We will split into teams and brew multiple batches for the Holiday Party in December. This will be a great learning and social activity, so don’t miss it! Details will follow at the August and September meetings. ***************************** Club Survey We are conducting a survey of the membership to get a better handle on who we are and how we can make the James River Homebrewers an even better organization. Blank surveys were included in the March issue of the BrewsLeader. If more than one member of a household is a member of the Club, each member should complete a survey. Please return surveys to Jeff Hewit, or mail them to Club’s PO Box. If you need another copy of the survey, see Jeff, or go the Club’s website. ***************************** T-Shirts and Glasses We still have some available. The T's are $15 (new style) and $10 (old style). Old-style glasses are $2.50, with a special deal for Club members only - two for $5.00. New-style glasses, with a fancy etched logo - are one for $4.00, two for $7.00, and three for $10.00 ***************************** AHA Club-Only Competitions From time to time, the American Homebrewers Association (AHA) sponsors competitions based on a particular style. These competitions are open only to AHA-affiliated homebrew clubs. Each club holds a competition on the particular style. The winner’s brew is sent off to the AHA to be judged with the winners from other homebrew clubs around the country. Bring in five bottles – two for the local competition and three to send off if you win. Competition schedule: > Aug - Wheat Beer (Cat. 17 ) > Sep - Smoked Beer (Cat. 23) > Nov - IPA (Cat. 7) - Hosted by James River Homebrewers When the entry dates are set, we will include the competitions in the Upcoming Events listing. Winners earn Homebrew Club of the Year points for their club. ***************************** Elections We're looking for a few good men…and women! In the fall, we elect Officers and Directors for terms beginning January 1, 2005. The offices of Vice President, Secretary, and Member at Large will begin two-year terms; the Assistant Competition Coordinator and all six director positions will begin one-year terms. The current Board of Directors will nominate a slate of candidates at the November meeting. (With Board approval, the current Assistant Competition Coordinator will assume the position of Competition Coordinator.) The elections will take place during the December meeting. (Additional nominations may be made at that time.) If you’re interested in serving the Club, let any Officer or Director know. Following are the duties of the positions, as set forth in the Club’s By-Laws: > Vice President: The Vice President shall assist the President as needed and perform the duties of the President in his/her absence, and solicit items for and conduct the monthly raffle. > Secretary: The Secretary shall record the minutes of regular Club and Board meetings, edit and publish the Club newsletter and maintain the Club’s active member list. > Competition Coordinator: The Competition Coordinator shall be in charge of all beer competitions held by the Club, including those open to Club members only and those open to the homebrewing public. > Assistant Competition Coordinator: The Assistant Competition Coordinator shall assist the Competition Coordinator. > Member at Large: The Member at Large shall maintain Club history and memorabilia and take charge of special projects as approved by the Board. The following article was written by Dan Mouer, and published in Brew Your Own magazine. Club Profile: The James River Homebrewers, Richmond Virginia By Dan Mouer The annual Spring Party of the James River Homebrewers (JRHB), is usually an affair for those who feel “Irish” for a day or two in Mid-March, and who want to glug down various member-made versions of dry stout (and, often, also sweet stout, red ale, pale ale…). This year the party had another over-riding dimension. It was our 20th anniversary party. In attendance, besides a large percentage of the substantial current membership, where many emeritus members from the early days. I was present wearing both hats—paid-up current Vice-President-in-Good-Standing, and co-founder in March 1983 and first president of the club. Back then we were only a handful of guys—well, mostly guys, but we’ve always had at least one or two female member (and at least one lady brewer has served as our president.). Most of us had begun brewing, using Munton and Fison, Edme DME, or even Blue Ribbon malt extracts and powdered generic yeasts. Our references were the old books from Byron Birch, Dave Line, C.J.J. Berry and the like, but a few of us had graduated to all-grain brewing, relying then mostly on David Miller’s first book for guidance. Charlie Papazian’s first tome was still a year away! Our ideas of what comprised “good beer” didn’t come from globe-hopping (and pub-crawling) tours through London, Munich and the Belgian countryside, nor from “microbrewery” beers available at local gourmet shops, but from “discovering” Bass, Whitbread, Spaten, DAB and other European brews—mostly through clandestine “bootlegging” trips to Central Liquors in Washington, D.C., 100 miles to the north. Picture this: a VW beetle full of desperate paranoids dashing across the Key Bridge over the Potomac River looking fervently in their mirrors for state police prowlers, while sweating anxiously over a couple cases of “contraband” beer and wine in the bonnet! Within the first year of our existence we had begun the tradition of an annual club competition. The first few were held around my dining room table. For judges we brought in some folks who owned the handful of beer-and-wine shops and restaurants that carried choices beyond Bud, Schlitz, Miller and Papst. Our homebrew mustn’t have been all that bad, because they volunteered to come back in subsequent years and do it all over again! By the second year we had opened the competition to folks outside the club, as well, and thus was begun a tradition brought down to the present in the annual Dominion Cup competition. JRHB sponsors the Dominion Cup, which attracts folks from all aver the Mid-Atlantic and Upper South—and sometimes from even further afield. A few other traditions had very early starts. In 1987 we held our first “Big Brew,” in which members got together and produced one 30-gallon all-grain batch. One of our members had scraped up a 30-gallon steam-jacketed stainless kettle! Each year we still have a number of “club brews” in which all-grain brewing, usually in 10-gallon batches, is conducted at one member’s house (or, sometimes, at a number of them simultaneously). Folks who haven’t ventured beyond extract or mini-mash brewing get to come and see the equipment and techniques, and get some hands-on experience. These club brews typically provide refreshment for one of the four club-sponsored seasonal parties each year: Spring/St. Paddy’s Day, Summer, HalloFest (Octoberfest meets Halloween!), and Winter Holidays. Naturally we tend to focus on seasonal beers for these brews and parties: stout in the Spring, pilsner and white/wheat beers for the summer, Marzen/Vienna brews for Fall, and winter warmers for the holidays. It was August 1984 when we took our first field trip to a microbrewery: in this case it was one of Virginia’s first, the now defunct Chesbay Brewery in Virginia Beach. Since then we have evolved the tradition of the annual Brews Cruise, in which the club hires a bus and driver to take us to destination cities within a few hours’ drive where we visit breweries and brewpubs, tour their facilities, and taste their products! Of course the trip home includes snacks, a movie or two, and lots of homebrew. That’s why there’s a well-paid designated driver! We participate in a number of public-education events each year as well. We serve as “beer captains” at the annual James River Beer and Seafood Festival, and in a similar capacity at the Mid-Atlantic Craft Brewers Festival, both in Richmond. Each monthly meeting includes an educational program, a tasting of members’ homebrews, a fund-raising raffle, and boring but necessary business. We normally have between 25-50 members, along with 3-5 visitors, at each meeting. We are fortunate to be able to meet each month (on the second Wednesday) in the private dining room of the Legend Brewing Company (http://www.legendbrewing.com) in Richmond. The James River Homebrewers is (and has from nearly the beginning been) affiliated with the American Homebrewers Association, and we try to send entries to the AHA’s club-only style competitions several times a year. These entries are, in each case, winners of a style-specific competition held at a monthly meeting of the club. We have a large number of beer judges recognized and certified by the BJCP., and, in addition to Legend Brewing, we have had awesome support from a number of wine, beer, and homebrew supply retailers in Central Virginia. We are proud of our newly updated and totally renovated website (http://jrhomebrewers.org) and of our newsletter, The BrewsLeader, which appears monthly in both electronic and paper versions. Recently, our reigning president, Jack Jackson, has been diligently at work completing a history of the James River Homebrewers. Part 1 of that history is available online at our web site, and Part 2 will be along shortly. I, for one, am very grateful to Jack not only for taking the time and effort to dig up and write up our history, but for seeking me out four or five years ago and bringing me back into the fold. Twenty years is a long time for a homebrew club to keep on going strong—and there are lots of clubs reaching that landmark these days. I’ll bet this one will continue for at least another twenty! If you are a homebrewer, and you haven’t yet joined a club—consider it! If there isn’t one available locally, start one! We in the James River Homebrewers have all learned to make much better beer and have all made much better friends through the bonds of brew. ***************************** River City Cellars Beer, Wine and Gourmet Foods 2931 West Cary Street Richmond, VA 23221 (804) 355-1375 www.rivercitycellars.com 10% Discount to Members of James River Homebrewers ***************************** The WeekEnd Brewer Homebrew & Wine Supplies 4205 West Hundred Road Chester, VA 23831 (804) 796-9760 www.weekendbrewer.com The BrewsLeader is the official publication of James River Homebrewers PO Box 486 Richmond, Virginia 23218-0486 Monthly Meetings All meetings are held on the second Wednesday of each month at The Legend Brewery, 321 West 7th Street, Richmond, Virginia. Homebrew tasting at 6:30, meeting at 7:00. We are grateful to Tom Martin and the rest of the Legend staff for their gracious hospitality. Officers and Board of Directors President: Tedd Smith xxx-xxxx Vice President: Dan Mouer xxx-xxxx Treasurer: Bobby Yenney xxx-xxxx Secretary: Jeff Hewit xxx-xxxx Member @ Large: Denise Pierce xxx-xxxx Competition Coordinator: Stasi York xxx-xxxx Asst. Competition Coordinator: Steve Severtson xxx-xxxx Web Master: Ronnie Anderson xxx-xxxx Directors Woody Elliot xxx-xxxx Jack Jackson xxx-xxxx Steve Jarrett xxx-xxxx Joel Trojnar xxx-xxxx Ted Warren xxx-xxxx Jeff York xxx-xxxx Web Site www.jrhomebrewers.org Submit Articles Articles or other items of interest from the membership are welcome and should be submitted to the Secretary. Email to aleman@comcast.net. Dues The date after your name on the address label is the due date for your dues renewal. To renew your membership, just bring your dues - only $20 - to the next meeting, and give them to the Treasurer (or another officer if he isn’t there). If you wish, you may mail your dues to the Club at PO Box 486, Richmond, VA 23218-0486 Inclement Weather Policy If the Richmond city Schools are closed due to inclement weather on the day of a regularly scheduled Club meeting, the meeting will be cancelled, and re-scheduled for the following Wednesday – this will be confirmed by e-mail. Remember Drink Responsibly - Don’t Drink and Drive! Members and guests at James River Homebrewers meetings and events are individually and solely liable for any and all actions attendant to or resulting from their participation. James River Homebrewers PO Box 486 Richmond, VA 23218-0486 Don't take it too seriously, it's only beer!