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As Seen In |
March Minutes BY Douglas King (Published in the April 1997 Brews and News)
The Maltose Falcons had a regular monthly meeting on March 2nd at the Home Wine and Beer Shop. Brian had the trophy from Anchor Brewing Company, which we get to keep until next year. This trophy goes along with the killer party that we had on Febrewary 8th, in celebration of our California Homebrew Club of the year award. We had a pretty good tunout for the meeting, around 60 I think. As usual, we started with the group homebrew tasting session, which had many terrific brews as usual. Contributors included Doug King, Spudweiser-Ryeweiser-Witweiser; Jim Moorman, Light and Delightful Pale Ale; Tom Wolf, Sierra Nevada Celebration clone; Kevin Baranowski, brown ale; Mick Deering, pumpkin and spice brown; Bruce Wenzel, porter; Rich Schmittdiel, stout; Thom Rogers, ESB; Brian Vessa and brew crew, club brewed Presidential Porter(3 versions); Maribeth Raines-Casselman, all women's Exxtasy Porter. After the fabulous homebrews we covered some old business. The newsletter got sent a little late this month. The recent Anchor trip was a huge success! Jeff Jost has our Web page updated, and looking great. Thanks Jeff! Steve Keppler had some real nice buttons made, to commemorate the Anchor trip, free to all club menbers. Thanks Steve! There was a list of members who are expired passed around. We want to make everyone aware that they need to re-up. The Falcon's Web has been canceled, due to an overwhelming lack of enthusiasm. There was almost no interest shown toward the monthly puzzle, it may go away soon as well. MB's yeast culturing class was a success, with 15 or so attendees. The Barleywine project took place on 2-22, and was a complete success. Yield was 15 gallons of 1.006 BW, and 13 gallons of 1.045 bitter. The bitter will be served at Mayfaire and SCHF, the BW will be served throughout the Falcon's 25th year, 1999. Moving on to new business, Bill Ames will do a shop brewed brown ale on March 8th. David Janss will do a pre-prohibition lager on March 22nd. The Mayfaire competition is coming up soon. Entries due March 19th at the shop. Judging will be April 12th. We need stewards and judges!! Sign up sheets were passed around. Tickets are available for the southern California Homebrewers Festival on May 3rd. Price is $25, they will be availavle through John Daume at the shop. The Mayfaire party will be April 19th at the North Hollywood Sportsman's Club, located near Santa Clarita. A map and instructions will be included with the April newsletter. Maps were passed out at the meeting, as well. John Daume talked for a few minutes about some of his new products. He passed around samples of First Gold and Admiral hops, new from England. The shop now carries Crisp Maris Otter pale malt, a premium English 2 row. John is carrying the terrific new book by Ray Daniels, Designing Great Beers. There is a new yeast package from Brewers Resource available, enough to pitch 5 gallons without making a starter. There were free samples available, with a questionaire to send in for feedback on the new product. It's supposed to be about 5 times the yeast cells as a Wyeast pack. The monthly distributed beer tastings are being done differently this year. There will now be only one per month, alternating between the Westside and the Valley. The next one will be March 29th at MB's. Michael Bowe's new brewery is scheduled to have a grand opening March 16th, in Culver City. He had handouts available. The annual mead tasting is set for March 15th at the shop. There were two entries for the AHA Club Only Luscious Lager competition. There were two entries for troubleshooters corner, held during lunch. The final portion of the business meeting wasn't really business at all. We watched two videos on TV, one of which was a tape of the All Women's Brew at MB's house, filmed by CNN and aired a couple of weeks ago. The second tape was of the AHA Homebrewers Festival, showing some of the Falcons in attendance. The business portion of the meeting concluded and we got on with the fun of the Annual Chili Cookoff. There were 6 entries this year. The winners and their prizes were: Corrinne Pooler, 1st place $25, Eric Holtz, 2nd place $15, and a tie for third between Lily Wissell and Dean Lynn $10. Thanks to Gary Smith for coordinating the Chili Cookoff. There were also other videos playing during lunch. And plenty of kegged beer too! After lunch we tasted the beers from our Grand Hydro for this month's style, brown ale. Newcastle Brown, Sam Smith's Nut Brown, Adnam's Nut brown, Bateman's Nut brown, and Downtown Brown from Lost Coast Brewery. This concluded the meeting, and I want to thank everyone for a great clean up effort. Keep up the good work. see ya all at Mayfaire! Doug
Board Meeting The Falcon's Board of Directors had a meeting on 2-25-97. There were 8 members in attendance. The recent Anchor trip was one focus of the meeting, with all agreeing that it was a complete success. Sales of the club's paraphernalia were quite good, selling almost all that was taken. The club's barleywine project went without a hitch on the 22nd. Style of the month for March will be brown ale. The annual spring mead tasting will be on March 15th at the shop. Tickets for SCHF are available for $25. We discussed whether or not to keep handling the SCHF glassware in the future, we will decide after this year's fest. It will depend on whether or not they will allow us to sell them at our table, and give us a little more table space to do it. The location for the Mayfaire Comp is still undecided. The newsletter will continue to run crossword puzzles, and some different types of puzzles as well. Membership cards will not be mailed this month, we're still working on them. Steve will design a new club handout for John to pass out. We discussed the problem of expiring memberships, and ways to get more re-ups. A list will be made for the meeting. We discussed membership discounts for married couples, but came to no decision. The Mayfaire will be held at the North Hollywood Sportsmans Club near Santa Clarita. It sounds like a real good spot, and the price was very reasonable. We will look into having Sunfest at the beach this year. |
