May-June 2001

Volume 24

Number 4

The San Andreas Malts' Newsletter

Our 24th Year

INSIDE &OUT:

PARTY TIME!!!

(aka the June meeting)

When: FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 6PM - ????

Where: Joe Byrnes' & Rick Hendricks' house, 2631 Noriega (between 33rd & 34th Aves), SF. 415/681-5901

What: Another social event - what we do best. Chill out after a tough week at work & don't worry about having to get up the next morning.

Bring: Brew to share, food to grill/side munchies, a drinking vessel - the club will furnish plates, napkins, & a limited amount of plastic ware.

Direxions: The house is about 1.5 miles west of 19th Ave, on the south side of the street in the middle of the block. Parking isn't too bad as SF goes. From 280/1 northbound, your best bet is to take Brotherhood Way to Sunset, then R on Noriega. If you come up 19th Ave, you'll have to do a "3-turn left" onto Noriega from Ortega or Moraga. From the north, a no-brainer - down 19th Ave & R on Noriega. From the East Bay, I recommend 101 to Fell & Laguna, out Fell to GG park, over to Lincoln, then L on Funston to Kirkham, R on Kirkham, L on 19th Ave, then R on Noriega. MUNI 71 from downtown/Haight/Lincoln (east of 20th Ave) gets you there.

OYSTER BBQ LOST & FOUND

LOST: 2 box cameras (MJK got a phone message about this & e-mailed a lot of the late crowd; no response so far); 1 pair of club tongs

FOUND: some dark blue cloth napkins (MJK has)

If you have any info on these items, call/e-mail your editor; ditto if you ended up with something that isn't yours.

a melange for your reading pleasure, including...

BHJ - Brewpub Reviews

ELEXION RESULTS

PARTY TIME!!

PRESIDENTIAL GRUMBLINGS

ELEXION results

And the winners are ...

President - Dave Suurballe

Veep - Jack Dawson

Treasurer - Joe Byrnes *

Editor - Mark Kornmann

* Joe was 1 vote behind David Najman in the balloting, but David is soon to be a dad, & has decided to step aside for the time being ... the club thanks David for his work the past few months.

Thanks to all who voted & to my roomie Eric for tallying the ballots after we got home that night. Next year, we'll add the Webmeister slot to the ballot, & maybe even do nominations if the rest of you will cooperate!! All the officers will be at the June meeting at Rick & Joe's (see opposite) - stop by for a quaff or two!!

WHEN YOU SEND IN YOUR DUES, PLEASE GIVE US AN E-MAIL ADDRESS IF YOU HAVE ONE, PLUS AT LEAST ONE PHONE NUMBER - WE WANT TO KEEP OUR RECORDS UP TO DATE!

2 MAY/JUNE PROST 2001

B^REWER'S

Comments & Opinions

Home Journal

SAN ANDREAS MALTS

P O Box 884661

San Francisco, CA 94188-4661

http://www.river.org/~mumbly/malts/

President - Dave Suurballe

415/759-6768 (h) suurb@apple.com (w)

Vice President - Jack Dawson

415/841-1433 (h) jsdawson@pacbell.net (h) Treasurer - Joe Byrnes

415/681-5901 (h) 415/541-2581 (w)

joe@byrnes.com (h)

Editor - Mark Kornmann

510/528-5351 (h) 510/466-3495 (w)

yupbashr@pacbell.net (h)

beerman49@msn.com (anywhere)

Webmeister - Jay Stanley

415/990-6951(cell) jaystan@well.com

Contributing Emeritus Officers

Pat Loughran Alec Moss Bill Stender Russ Wigglesworth

Honorary Lifetime Malt - Steve Norris

* * * * * * *

It's easy to become a San Andreas Malt. Dues are $15/year, renewable in January. Mail them to our PO Box or pay at any meeting/club event.

The Malts publish the Prost* semi-monthly. Our copy deadline generally is the 25th of the even-numbered months. You may reprint our articles as long as you cite the Prost as the source.

Editor's note: Send me material on the net/on 3.5" disk (< 1.44 Mb) in Word (< 7.5), WordPerfect (< 6.5) or ASCII (text only) files. If you send Word/WordPerfect files, send an ASCII backup just in case. Mail discs to:

Mark Kornmann

1621 Mariposa Street

Richmond, CA 94804-5017

* prost \pröst\ interjection, [German fr. Latin], used to wish good health, especially before drinking.

Damn, this year is flying by!! We must be having lots of fun!! As promised, some quick reviews of brewpubs & wineries in the San Diego area, plus 2 locals. but first the KUDOS: To Nico Freccia & 21st Amendment fo rcreating a great place to hang out before a Giants' game & to the Schooner's folks for their fine new "oasis" in good food/brew-starved Antioch. And a major KABONG to the idiots who forced 20-Tank out & still haven't done anything with the site.

San Diego's brewpub scene isn't bad, all things considered. Karl Strauss' downtown site (Columbia St, between A & B; close to trolleys & a lot of big hotels) offers a wide variety of food, plus a good selection of generally good brews, some of which are on tap in the Southwest terminal at the SD Airport. I rate them the best of the bunch - they also have a spot in the Mira Mesa area. Coronado Brewing company (on Orange - easy access once you cross the bridge) makes a damn good burger & has an interesting menu of not-too yuppie other food. Good ambience & decent ales, tho not as good as KS. Stuft Pizza's beer reminds me of Tied house, but they have excellent pizza & pasta ... their best brews are the darker ones. Lighter ales are wimpy.

An hour's drive north of San Diego on I-15 lies a nifty little wine area in Temecula, with the wineries concentrated in a small area a la Livermore Valley. You pay to taste ($4-6; keep the glass), & all serve food - some more elaborately than others. My 2 favorites are Hart at the bottom of the hill, & Faulkner at the top - both on the same side of the highway. If upscale is you thing, try the champagne cellars opposite Hart - their bubbly doesn't impress me, but their Bordeaux style reds are damned good! Hart has the best tasting deal & the funkiest tasting room; Faulkner has live music on Sunday afternoons. The big disappointment was Callaway, which is the oldest winery there - nice tasting room, but nondescipt vino. Great way to kill a Sunday afternoon.

Newest local pub, Schooner's in Antioch - about a mile south of Hwy 4 on Loveridge road in a brand new shopping center - is a hot spot already. I went there on a Saturday afternoon w/my buddy Tom (of 13 pubs in 3 days fame), & the place was jammed - we got lucky & found 2 seats at the bar, where we parked until the Preakness ended. Excellent Pale Ale - hoppier than the IPA. Good burger, but the rest of the lunch menu left me cold - I want to meet a couple of my Delta Brew Clup pals there for dinner some weekend ... just hope they can age their beers enough & not end up like Triple Rock used to be (they now make an excellent IPA). On the way back, we hit Jupiter in Walnut Creek - they no longer brew their beers on site. Yup city shopping area, & the menu reflects that - we just snacked on some house-made potato chips & I had some seared Ahi that was quite good. The brews are decent, but there's no need to make the long drive with the Berkeley pub being so close to BART.

Peace & Good Brewing - MJK

3 MAY/JUNE PROST 2001

RACKING TIP FROM ALEC MOSS

MUSINGS FROM AN EX-TREASURER

(Dave Weaver now resides in Livermore)

Ahhh, the East Bay. Here it is the end of May and my cascade hops are nearly ready to harvest. The cones are 1.5" long and an electric green. If I unwound the vines from the trellis, they would be 20'. OTOH, my Kent Goldings have just had a growth spurt the past week. A week ago, they were under an inch. (The vines, that is.) Now they are six inches high. Of course, with twins on the way, an electric stove and 100 degree garage, I don't expect to be brewing with these hops. But they look great and make good conversation pieces when foisting Big Daddy on beer neophytes. Our company picnic will include a keg of Coors. I'll bring along some Big Daddy and maybe even some Corsendonk, for the adventurous souls.

Have you checked out www.ratebeer.com? I found it while trying to ID the style of a bottle of Delirium Nocturne before opening it. (Great Belgian Dubel by the way. Lots of complexity. I loved the migration to a growing toffee note as the glass breathed. Reminiscent of a good Zinfandel.) Well, I hope you are staying cool and powered up. - David

Looking for an easy way to start a siphon that does not involve sucking, shaking or jiving? This is what I do when racking from my carboy fermenter to a stainless keg.

With the carboy on a table, insert your cleaned and sanitized racking tube with hose and OUT or LIQUID quick disconnect already attached.

After cleaning the keg thoroughly with detergent, rinsing, and thensanitizing with either chlorine or iodophor, remove the oval lid. Flash rinse with the hottest water you can muster. I have the luxury of a small plastic hose connected to my laundry sink fau-cet and can quickly rinse the inside wall of the keg with 140 de-gree water. Alternatively, boil some water in a tea kettle and pour in around the inside wall of the keg. I always flash rinse. I know I am risking some contamination from the water, but I weigh that against the risk of contamination by letting it drain thoroughly, then opening it to dispel the sanitizer.

Quickly dump out the water, and replace the oval lid, making sure that the pressure relief valve is closed tight. Stand the keg in a plastic bucket.

Connect your LIQUID quick disconnect to the OUT plug, and the contraction of the steam and hot air in the keg will immediately begin your siphon. After a minute or two, open the pres-sure relief valve, or put a GAS quick disconnect on the IN side to relieve the building pressure in the keg.

There are a few downsides to this method. I don't really want to siphon my beer into a hot keg, so as soon as possible I hose down the outside of the keg with cold water to cool the metal. Thus the need for the bucket.

This method does not allow you to purge your keg with CO2, although you could try purging between sanitizing and hot rins-ing. So this is best done with still fermenting beer. Having said that, I almost always do this with completely fermented beer, and have had no oxidation problems.

I suppose that if you wait too long to begin your siphon, your keg might collapse from the building vacuum. I've seen that happen to large tanks in breweries, but they were usually in re-frigerated rooms. I don't think this is much of a problem. If you snap on the GAS quick disconnect too soon you risk sucking in some air, so I ease it on and listen for the telltale hiss. If using the pressure relief valve, twist it very slightly and don't open it all the way until it opens silently.

PRESIDENTIAL GRUMBLINGS

I just wanted to write a short note describing how I was elected president.

At the Oyster Barbeque, just before the election started, Mark Kornmann asked me to walk to the far end of the area to remind any Malts there that the election was about to start. While I was out of earshot, he apparently told all of you that I was running for president. This was not true, but you elected me anyway. Thank you.

Being unwillingly elected, my agenda for the year is rather thin. At this point there are only two items on it, more parties and better elections. As far as the first item is concerned, the next regular meeting is a party with no agenda other than beer. Bring beer. Drink it. And the second item I'll take up at the end of my term; it won¹t be an issue till then, obviously.

Suggestions for other things to do this year are welcome. The idea is to have fun - Š

CLUELESS MENU DEPARTMENT

On my last trip to Triple Rock, while waiting for the barkeep to draw my pitcher of IPA, I noticed a sign offering a hot link sand-wich with feta cheese!! Why in the hell would anyone want to ruin a hot link with feta cheese?? To me, that's as bad as ruining a good burger by slathering it with mayonnaise, slopping sour cream on Mexican food, or destroying a good steak with bleu cheese!! Enough of this trendy crap - time to get back to basic unadulterated food with the condiments on the side!! MJK

4 APRIL PROST 2001

CALENDAR

Wednesday, October 17, 7:30 PM - Club Comp @ Speakeasy, 1195 Evans, SF

Saturday, October 20 - Entried Due for State Comp - proabably @ Landmark Signs.

Saturday, Nov 10, all day - STATE HOMEBREW CLUB COMP @ STERN GROVE (no confusion in 2001 like there was last year!).

Recreational/Educational Activities: Devise a weekend "road trip"/outing! Call an officer/attend a Planning Meeting/post details to the PO box to run it up the proverbial flagpole! WE HAD A DEAD Y2K - LET'S MAKE 2001 BETTER!!!!!

Friday, June 15, 6PM-?? - Party/Meeting @ Joe & Rick's, 2631 Noriega, SF. See page 1

Sunday, July 15, 10 AM - SF Aids Walk - Sponsor your Editor and/or Jack Dawson. Anyone else planning to walk??

Thursday, August 9, Regular Meeting @ Dave Suurballe's, 250 San Leandro St, SF (west end of St. Francis Wood).

Late summer weekend afternoon - meeting @ Ed Chainey's; details TBA.

WE NEED A MEETING HOST FOR JULY! Call/E-mail your editor if you're willing!! Tue/Wed/Thurs evenings or Saturday afternoons are fine!

1ST CLASS