Spring 2005

Volume 28

Number 2

The San Andreas Malts' Newsletter

Our 28th Year

INSIDE &OUT:

OYSTER TIME!!!

When: Sunday, April 24, Noon to Dusk.

Where: San Pedro Park, Pacifica (Linda Mar east from CA 1 until it ends; R a block, then L into the lot. Parking was $5 last year - may be a buck more this year - if the lot's full, there's street parking, but you have a bit of a lug if you have coolers, kegs, etc. If you live south of Half Moon Bay - DON'T USE 1! There's usually an air show in HMB that causes a major traffic jam - instead, take 280 to Westbrook, which becomes Sharp Park Blvd, then go south on 1 to Linda Mar.)

PRICES :

Malts & 1st guest - $15/each

Additional Guests - $17/each

Kids 6-12/Non-oyster eaters - $6

Kids under 6 - FREE

Get your checks in by April 21!

Bring: Quaffs of your choice, eating utensils (we'll have plastic if you forget, but we like to be eco-friendly - on that same note, try to conserve plates!!), something to drink out of, and a salad/side dish/appetizer/dessert. The alphabet routine by last name, member or guest:

A-F - Side Dishes

G-R - Desserts

S-Z - Appetizers

DUES TIME - SAME FOR INFO UPDATES!!

When you send in your dues check, please give us any address, phone, and or e-mail address changes so we can update the members' list that will come in the May-June issue. Also, please e-mail them to your Editor. Dues still $15 - MJK

a melange for your reading pleasure, including...

BHJ - Luka's & other reviews

Oyster BBQ!!

Stout Bout Results

STOUT BOUT RESULTS!

7 judged 12 brews & bought a lot of cookies - thanx, Pat, for being the usual congenial host & keeping the dog out of the swill bucket! The winner is ... a "homey" again! Kelly Dunham won a close race between some excellent brews, the average scores of which (on our usual 20-pt scale) are:

Kelly's Homey - 14.0

Hoptown Old Yeltsin Imperial - 13.86

Reaper Ale Morbidity Stout (7.8 ABV) - 13.71

Hoptown Breakfast Oatmeal Stout - 13.57

Jack Dawson's Silver-capped Homey - 13.07

Anderson Valley Oatmeal Stout - 12.93

Jamaican Stout * - 12.86

Young's (England) Oatmeal Stout - 12.21

Sean Stokes' Homey - 11.29

Half Moon Bay ** - 11.14

Jack Dawson's Gold-capped Homey - 11

Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout - 10.5

* Available at BevMo for about $7 for 6 10.5 oz bottles; this brew surprised all of us - very roasty & a good session brew.

** Kelly brought this in a growler he picked up earlier that day at the pub; unfortunately, it had lost most of its nitro tap carbonation by the time we tasted it ... at the pub, I'm sure it would have been in the top 5 (I've had it there, & it's quite good).

Final note: I got all the bottled commercials at BevMo from the backs of the shelves to minimize possible light damage; SS comes in clear bottles, so it has to be better on tap (IF you can find it).

SPRING PROST 2005

page 2

B^REWER'S
Home Journal

Comments & Opinions

SAN ANDREAS MALTS

P O Box 884661

San Francisco, CA 94188-4661

http://www.sanandreasmalts.org

President - Dave Suurballe

415/759-6768 suurb@sbcglobal.net

Vice President - Jack Dawson

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

415/681-5901 joe@byrnes.com

Editor - Mark Kornmann

510/528-5351 (h) 510/932-6064 (cell)

beerman49@(pacbell.net or msn.com)

Webmeister - Jess Fisher

415/821-2413 jef520@aol.com

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* 4-6 times year. 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.

IN HEAVEN THERE IS NO BEER -

THAT'S WHY WE DRINK IT HERE!

AND WHEN WE'RE GONE FROM HERE,

ALL OUR FRIENDS WILL BE DRINKING ALL THE BEER!

It's been 6 months, & I have no other stuff from my compadres, so this column starts here & ends at the bottom of page 3. Before I stir your cockles, the KUDOS, starting in November, go to: 1) all the Malts who busted butt at Stern Grove; 2) Our sponsors (especially Dave Keene for the "benefit"); 3) the Maltose Falcons, Club of the Year; 4) Homebrewer of the Year, whoever he was (I was in the kitchen cleaning up, so I have no clue); 5) Anchor & Sierra Nevada for their continuous support of the homebrewing community; 6) Bill Stender for getting the website hosting problems fixed; 7) Jack Dawson & his kitties for hosting the post-holiday party; 8) Dave Keene for another great BW fest, Russ Wigglesworth for maintaining reasonable order amidst semi-chaos at the contest, & Schooner's for winning; and 9) Alec for all his fine HMB brews & his continuous futile attempts to have the bar serve them in room-temp glasses unless you ask.

Now to the nitty-gritty; first issue - electronic Prost. How many of you would like to receive your Prost online as a .pdf (which you can read & print with Adobe Acrobat Reader - a free download compatible with both PC's & Macs)? Once I can do this & you sign on, we'll drop your dues to $10, as we'll save $5/year/member in repro & postage costs. I've been doing the Prost forever in Adobe PageMaker 6.5, which has an export feature to other file forms (HTML & .pdf). However, when I tried to convert a recent issue to a .pdf file, it told me I needed a PostScript printer driver, which I then installed - still no luck! Ialways have the latest version of Acrobat Reader & always have been able to print .pdf's. Your electronic options are to view it at the website/get it in HTML - but it's somewhat disjointed after conversion. So ... if any of you "computer jock" members have a CHEAP & EASY solution to my problem, RSVP ASAP (Heckman, this includes you, as you were the one who got us started on this road!)

Time for beer! Luka's, a new bar/nightclub in Oakland (Broadway & Grand, former site of a Hofbrau), certainly lived up to the review I saw in the Oakland Trib earlier this year. I checked it out 3/15 before seeing Elvis Costello @ the Paramount (saw Dylan & Haggard there 3/15; will see Springsteen there 5/5). ve ~ 20 brews on tap, all local micros & imports (including Maresdous 8 & a couple other Belgians) except Pabst (a "bone" to the blue collar crowd that stops by before the yups arrive). More Belgians, including Maresdous 10 in the bottle. Prices are reasonable, & they serve the Belgians a la the Toronado. Menu is small, but attractive. My concert buddy liked the burger ($10+, depending on what you add on, Belgian-style fries come with it). I had eaten lunch that day, so I had some excellent seared scallops ($9.25) from the appetizer list & a small order of fries (served in a paper-lined pint glass w/3 dipping sauces - remoulade, spicy paprika ketchup, & dill aioli - I loved the ketchup). Before Bruce, I'll have either the burger or the lamb shank (the one I saw a server carry to another table was huge). I got there at 5:30; by 6 it was jammed. Definitely doable on an Oakland-Berkeley Pub Crawl, as it's a short walk from 19th St BART.

SPRING PROST 2005

page 3

BHJ continueth ...

Type face size increases as the mind decreases ...

More local news: Long-time Malt Ed Chainey now works for Anderson Valley as one of their NorCal reps - at the Oyster BBQ, we may see some AV samples as well as some from his former job w/a local distributor. If you didn't hear it at Stern Grove/read about it in the Celebrator, Black Diamond shut down its pub last fall & is just brewing for distribution (kegs to bars; bottles yet to come). To fill the void, E J Phair has opened a pub on Salvio St in downtown Concord, which I hope to visit soon. Didn't make the Firkin Fest 3/26 @ triple Rock; nor was I in-volved with the WCOB this year - too busy.

Not much new on the micro front - the biggest news lately (bad for homebrewers!) is that Anchor has gone to plastic bottles! El Presidente e-mailed me the other day saying that he bought a 6-pak of Liberty in that format . TJ's latest addition is Mendocino's Talon BW ($4.99/22-oz) - not bad (on the dry side), but I like Bigfoot better, & it's $8.99/6 at BevMo. Speaking of BevMo - if you have their club card & sign up to order online & get their e-mail promos, you can get some good deals when you order online. Every couple of months, they offer $10 off on $75+ orders; every $250 you buy gets you a 5% off coupon. I buy stuff I like when it's on sale & save quite a bit - I'm lucky in that the Albany store is 5 minutes from my house.

Costco still has the best every day case price on SNPA - $20. The one close to me had Lagunitas IPA for $19/case for awhile, but hasn't had it lately. Safeway's beer prices have skyrocketed the past year or 2 & their sale prices aren't as good as they once were, either. Now that I'm retired & poorer, brewing more at home is looking better every day.

I got to Seabright a couple of months ago for the first time in ages - they're still making good ales, despite the lack of competition. What's better, tho, is being able to take a nice drive up the coast on my way back from my mom's, & stop at HMB for a couple of pints & a late lunch - on a sunny day, it beats the hell out of battlling the idiots on 17. I'll be working on setting up the Boulder Creek-Seabright combo crawl for some summer Saturday; I have a connection (Brian Weatherman is now the BC brewer)

& finally runneth out of room

Oyster time is nigh - get those checks (& your dues if you've not yet re-upped) in soon! Now all we need is some warm weather - it's been too cold even on my side to ferment an ale except for that one week in March. & for sure we've had more than enough rain!

It's also time for some of you event-only folks to get off your duffs & become active again ... we've had the same basic officer corps & assistants for the last 5+ years, & we're burning out big time! We've turned into a social club as our primo brewers of the past have gone pro or slowed down, but we still need some fresh blood to set up some events at which we can socialize & compare notes about/share brews we like. You know how to reach us - DO IT!

In a future issue, I'll recount my summer travel experiences - I'll be in San Diego July 13-17, Atlanta/Nashville/Louisville/Cincinnati before/during/after Labor Day. Hope there's some decent brew available on the latter tour - I'm eager to revisit some of my favorite SD haunts. If there's one thing I miss from my former job besides the people, it's the quarterly trips I used to get to SD.

One huge gripe regarding the bars at the Paramount Theater in Oakland: THE BEER SUCKS! At both the Dylan/Haggard & Elvis Costello shows, the only brew available was Bud or Bud Light in 16-oz bottles for $5. WELL drinks were $6 - not an option! I hope it's better for Springsteen, but I'm not holding my breath. Thank heavens for Luka's - I got my quota there before Elvis, & plan to do the same before Bruce. On the other hand, if you go to small clubs in SF such as Bottom of the Hill, the Independent, Cafe du Nord, GAMH, or Slim's, it's no problem getting a decent brew - ditto for the Fillmore (tho since Clear Channel bought out BGP, prices have gone up 25% in less than 2 yrs). Bottom line: We're paying big bucks to see shows these days - I sure as hell don't want to (& won't!) drink macroswill!

Seeya at the grills & kegs on the 24th! We have to drink a toast to KJ's mom, who passed away circa 3/1. She was part of the band many times at Stern Grove & Pacifica.

Peace & Good Brewing!

(esp. to our long-time State Comp Cooler King Donn West-moreland, who's on a 2-month gig helping a Kazhakstan brew-ery clean up its act - literally - he sez their santiation sucks!)

MJK

SPRING PROST 2005

page 4

CALENDAR

f) Giants' game w/21st Amendment visit before/after (Pat/Sturdy?)

September - Another club brew-in? Bring back the Pale Ale Bout?

November - Stern Grove Comp is up in the air (SG may be closed for renovations) - more as the year progresses.

All you "locals" - GET ONLINE if you're not there already - I want to post events on the website (are you ready, Jess?) before you hear about them via "snail mail".