Prost - September, 2002




				*September 2002* *Volume 25* *Number 6*

		*The San Andreas Malts' Newsletter* *Our 25th Year - It's Not Our Fault*
	INSIDE &OUT:		San Andreas Malts Online *(thanx to Webmeister Jay Stanley for this one!)* The San Andreas Malts have had a website for quite a few years now, graciously hosted by Tim McNerney. This year, we've bought the domain name sanandreasmalts.org, and the site has moved to be hosted by Bill Stender's business website (Thanks, Bill!) at Landmark Signs. Bill's hosts (machines) are also serving as our domain nameservers, so when you type in http://www.sanandreasmalts.org, you'll be directed to the new site. Since we're pretty much `rolling our own' webserver, you'll notice that there are NO advertisements, and no irratating pop-up ads. Please note that the old site still exists for the time being, but will NOT be updated and will (should) go away soon. For the time being, most web pages on the old site will automatically redirect your browser to the new (updated) site. I've been handling the updates; posting new copies of the venerable *Prost! and updating the calendar. I've been working on registering the new website with the major search engines, but that may take awhile... State Comp rules, etc. are there. If anyone has any content that you'd like posted, or if you have any questions or concerns, please email it to me at beansboy@yahoo.com. In parallel with this, Dave Weaver set up an open forum for San Andreas Malts members on Yahoo! Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/samalts). Although it would be possible to create a private discussion group on our own server, frankly, it is a lot of work to do it well and securely; we can be pretty certain that Yahoo! will work well, and be quite secure for the future. The price we pay for this is the advertisements, which is actually a small price for the service we're getting. The discussion group is very low-bandwidth (13 messages since April) at the moment. Check out the samalts group and the new website if you haven't yet (the group is invitation only; signup directions on Yahoo! should be pretty clear). Since the group is invitation-only, we don't anticipate any `spam'. Again, feel free to contact me if you have any questions at beansboy@yahoo.com.*
a melange for your reading pleasure, including... BHJ - Tales of Texas + Herbal Healing Brews Malts ONLINE Pale Ale Bout/Club Comp
PALE ALE BOUT ALERT! WHERE: Pat Loughran's house, 409 Mangels, SF WHEN: Thursday, September 19, 7:30 PM WHAT: Match your "homey" against some good commercial stuff. BRING: A tasting glass & any "homeys" you're proud of &/or not afraid of having trashed! DIRECTIONS: Call 415/333-7395 if you don't know SF; Mangels is 2 streets above Monterey; Pat's house is 2 blocks or so east of Foerster, which is the light nearest the Safeway on Monterey.
CLUB COMP - OCTOBER MEETING We haven't finalized the date and site yet, but expect it to be October 16/17/23/24 at one of the officers' abodes - the number of entries the past few years have dropped markedly from our heyday in the late 80's & early 90's. Bring an entry - you're guaranteed a pass into the Stern Grove comp unless you're doing pale ale or Stout. In any case, you'll get some feedback from us as to your brew's quality. This is also an excellent opportunity for newer members to get some judging experience sittin beside some of the "vets". We'll have the final details in th next issue & maybe even up on the website before we mail the next *Prost - MJK*



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		B^REWER'S Comments & Opinions Home Journal
	SAN ANDREAS MALTS P O Box 884661 San Francisco, CA 94188-4661 www.sanandreasmalts.org President - Dave Suurballe 415/759-6768 (h) suurb@sbcglobal.net Vice President - Jack Dawson 415/841-1433 (h) jsdawson@pacbell.net (h) Treasurer - Joe Byrnes 415/681-5901 (h) joe@byrnes.com (h) Editor - Mark Kornmann 510/528-5351 (h) 510/466-3495 (w) beerman49@msn.com (anywhere) Webmeister - Jay Stanley beansboy@yahoo.com 831/252-1756 Contributing Emeritus Officers Pat Loughran Alec Moss Bill Stender Russ Wigglesworth Tim McNerney 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.	B^REWER'S Comments & Opinions Home Journal
		Wow! 3/4 of the year gone already! Time do fly when you be havin' fun! And I have had plenty of that the past couple of months - 2 weddings, Labor Day weekend in Texas to check out the new ball parks (more on that in a minute), Springsteen, BB King Blues Festival ... you get the idea. July & August meeting turnouts were sparse - 5 at Magnolia & 5 here at our house ... highlight of meeting here was Nik Farats showing up in his '55 Jag roadster. KUDOS to all those who brought goodies to eat; KUDOS to Magnolia for still having some of the best fish & chips & pub quaffs in town! Furhter KUDOS to Bill Stender & Jay Stanley for taking the plunge into wedded life again & for throwing great reception parties - great settings, weather, food, & brew - thanks again for the invites! Texas is a brew wasteland - but I did find Sierra at Ruggles, a sports bar/restaurtant inside Minute Maid (nee Enron; soon should be dubbed "OJ") Park in Houston. Before the Sierra, I had a pint of a nondescript local micro's amber - I forgot the name. Ruggles serves a 1/2 lb cheeseburger on Texas Toast for $10 with fries - SN was $5/pint - not bad for a ball park. In the stands, however, the best brew available was Shiner Bock, which is the one ubiquitous micro down there, & actually is a pretty tasty lawnmower beer. The Ballpark at Arlington has a Friday's inside, but I never got there, as we ate at nearby restaurants before. In the stands, I was getting 16-oz Beck's for $5.50 ... everything else but Shiner was of the "swiloors" variety - heavy on the lite side! Finding a mini-mart around Arlington that sold beer was an adventure - apparently, there are some dry counties/towns, except for the bars. The highways & traffic signals down there are a trip as well - extremely short on-ramps on most of the freeways' horizontal traffic signals, a good percentage of which are on the wrong side of the intersection! If you're first in line, the signal may be over your head!! Very common in downtown Houston. The scariest thing I saw was a PRISON along I-45 between Dallas & Houston - if a guard went psycho, he'd have an easy time doing a "Charles Whitman" (U of Texas sniper from the 60's) on passing cars. On the good side, Johnson Space Flight center, about a half hour drive SE of downtown Houston, is well worth a visit - especially for the kids ... lots of exhibits for them to play with/in/on. 90-minute tram tour is worth the wait as well. Costs $14-16 for adults & 4 to park; senior & military discounts available. Though both ball parks are first quality, I prefer Pac Bell & Seattle's. Arlington could use a dome; MM needs cupholders on the seats, but has the best scorebaord system of any of the new parks I've been to. Suffice it to say I was glad to have gone, but happy to be back in the Bay Area, even tho it was 85 when I landed at 4 PM in Oakland - at least it was dry! Next year, I may try to get to Pittsburgh, Cincy, & "the Jake" in Cleveland. *... concluded on page 3 ...*



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			can draw complete parallels with our nation's current positions on inebriating plants with previous historical efforts. In addition to the theme of how mankind's common conceptions on fermented beverages has changed from ancient societies to the present, the author presents lots of recipes for every type of fermented product imaginable. Not only are the standards there (Mead, Grape Wine, Beer), but also fruit fermentations (all manner of fruits), and many herbal-infused drinks. The author has an encyclopedic knowledge of herbs in general, and goes to great length to discuss their common effects, both mental and physical; there is a chapter on psychotropic and highly inebriating beers, some of which could be quite dangerous by today's standards (wormwood, henbane, mandrake...). Quite interesting was a section on hops, which was legislated into being the one approved "bitter spice" allowed, because it replaced Gruit mixtures which were apparently quite inebriating with hops (which medically is an effective sedative). The book closes with a few appendices on how to make them, more information on mead and the herbs commonly used in them, and a large set of references for the curious reader. This is a very thought-provoking, well-organized and interesting read. I'd be interested in what any other Malts think. -jay
	WEBMEISTER BOOK REVIEW Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers; the secrets of Ancient Fermentation by Stephen Harrod Buhner (c) 1998 by Stephen Harrod Buhner Siris Books; Brewer's Publications, PO Box 1679, Boulder CO 80306-1679 I first encountered this book a few years ago in the library behind the bar while enjoying a few pints at the Magnolia Brewpub on Haight. It certainly seemed interesting, was weighty (>500 pages), and, try as I might at the time, I could not find anyone selling it, and I certainly couldn't read it all at the bar. I mentally filed a note to check it out if I ever saw it again, but my mind has a tendency to forget mental notes gained in a pub after a few delicious pints. Fast-forward to about March, when (after moving to Ben Lomond), I checked out the local homebrew store, 7 Bridges Co-op here in Santa Cruz (selling pretty much exclusively organic malt/hops, a natch for SC if you've never visited), and there was a copy waiting for me; I was quite happy to find something interesting to take my mind off of looking for a job in the desolate job-landscape (at least for my profession - need a good Oracle DBA?). I decided to give it a quick read, and to review it for the benefit of our loyal *Prost* readers immediately. What I didn't realize at the time is that this book is quite dense, contains many interesting ideas, and the job of reviewing it isn't a trivial one that you can do in a week - you need to kind of absorb it slowly. Therefore, please excuse both my delay and my very topical review; in short, I would very highly recommend this book if you're interested in ancient brewing crafts, in how our modern view of intoxication has changed, and especially in incorporating traditional western herbs into beer. The author, Stephen Buhner, obviously is an expert on ancient western medicine (as opposed to TCM/traditional Chinese herbology), using things found in nature to make both healing and sacred fermentations. The book explores in good depth the radically different views of how our ancestors viewed intoxicating beverages vs. what is passed for common knowledge today espoused by groups like MADD who are modern-day prohibitionists. Although prohibition in this country was repealed by the 21st Amendment after failing the test of broad public support, it wasn't very effective. However, many of the Puritan ideas from that era are passed as common knowledge today (any drink is a BAD THING and you should feel GUILTY). These ideas certainly were not prevalent in ancient societies, where the evidence shows that they understood that ... "alcohol enhances many physical and mental functions; that most beers were traditionally made with herbs that were medicinal, aphrodisiacal, highly inebriating, or psychotropic; and that these plants and the fermentations made from them seemed to play a crucial role in our development as a species"[page xv]. This theme is built very convincingly in the 1st chapter and throughout the rest of the book, and on several occasions one

			BHJ, CONCLUDED El Presidente is in Hawaii as I write this - he'll have a lot to say for the October issue, I'm sure. Get those Pales ready for Pat's & your other "homeys" ready for the Club Comp next month & Stern Grove November 23. Not much on the local scene/new brew front. I did try both Bagel Brews (available at TJ's for about $2/22-oz) - the plain was mediocre, the poppyseed a little more interesting. Best one I've found recently was a Russian lager ($6.99/6 at BevMo), supposedly made from a recipe dating back to the 1770's. Quite tasty! Finally, thanks to Webmeister Jay for most of the material in this issue - that book on herb brews sounds very interesting, tho until I retire, I won't even think of trying to read such a tome - I'm plodding my way thru a book about the Busch family (an unauthorized bio) - them folks had & still have quite a bit of clout! They also had other businesses besides breweries - once I finish the book, I'll provide more details. We're still looking for a Christmas Party host - Friday nite or Saturday in early December preferred. Call/e-mail an officer if you want to volunteer! RIP - Johnny Unitas Peace & Good Brewing! - MJK


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		CALENDAR Wednesday, September 19, 7:30 PM - Annual Pale Ale Bout at Pat Lughran's house. "Homeys" vs. commercial brews - get yours ready! Details next issue. October 16/17/23/24 - CLUB COMP at a site TBD - see October issue for final details; basic stuff on page 1.
	Saturday, October 26, 10AM-2PM. Entry Check-in for Stern Grove @ Landmark Signs. Volunteers wanted!!! Saturday, November 23, 10AM -9:30 PM - State Comp @ Stern Grove. WE NEED A VOLUNTEER TO HOST THE XMAS PARTY!! EARTH TO NIK FARATS: Your brewkettle is gathering dust (hopefully not rust!) in my garage! Show up on August 17 to reclaim! - MJK *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!




	*1ST CLASS*