Old News
October through December 2004
December 30, 2004
Here is my annual plea to play it safe on New Year's Eve. Be particularly careful this year since we are getting a nice layer of ice right now. If you plan on drinking, get a designated driver or call a cab. Why risk your life or anyone else's? Here's to a safe, prosperous, and blessed 2005!
December 29, 2004
Yet further proof that beer is good for you! This time the news comes from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston. They found that moderate beer consumption increases bone density. Just because the effect seems to be there regardless of the type of beer, that is still no excuse to drink megabrew.
December 27, 2004
Eagle-eyed Racker Dave Oldenburg noticed this thread on the Northern Brewer forums indicating that all might not be well at William Kuether Brewing aka the brewery that gak now works for. I decided to email gak himself before posting anything. Here is his short but not so sweet synopsis of the situation:
Owner hires contractor to remodel brewery building.
Contractor defrauds owner to the tune of $200K.
Owner sues contractor.
Owner's lawyers consume brewery's operating capital.
Owner is broke.
Whee.
He mentions that the brewery is looking for investors to see them through this. So if you Santa brought you some spare cash and you always wanted to co-own a brewery . . .
December 21, 2004
In honor of winter officially beginning and the shortest day of the year, I've posted some pictures from the November club brew lovingly taken by brewmaster Trevor LaRene.
Mike Schwartz from the Beer Barons of Milwaukee emailed to remind us of their World of Beer festival, planned for May 1, 2005.
November 28, 2004
I may need to do something with the Racker411 forum. Some jacka$$ keeps spamming the board with ads for cigarettes. If someone could give this guy a lead pipe to the knees, I would appreciate it.
November 10, 2004
I finally got our mash calculators converted to the new format. I figured that it would be a pain, and it did not disappoint. I had to use XHTML 1.0 Transitional (the rest of the site is Strict) to get the Javascript stuff to work right. Thankfully, the only person who cares about that is me :) Let me know if I broke anything.
November 9, 2004
Well, this is officially too easy! Trevor emailed to let me know that he would like to reprise his role as brewmaster next November. So if you want to host a club brew next year, choose May quickly!
November 8, 2004
At long last, I finally posted pictures from the club brew in July at my place that Chuck Golueke took. Chuck only sent these to me, um, four months ago.
On a related note, we are planning the club brews for 2005. January, March, July, and September are already spoken for. Please email me if you are interested in taking May or November.
Mike also sends word that the ill-named Fox Valley Cup for Keggers has been rechristened the Fox Valley Homebrew Inter-Club Cup (HICCUP). Muchly improved. gak will have an updated site available soon.
October 28, 2004
Hopefully, Bob will soon send out an email to everyone with directions to Trevor's house for the club brew on Tuesday. Remember to vote before you come over! Trevor mentioned that he shares a driveway with his neighbor, so please park on the street. He will be brewing an all grain ESB called (appropriately enough) "Bipartisan Bitter." If time permits, he will also make a New England-Style Hard Cider. The mash will begin at 4:00 P.M. with the boil commencing at 6:00 P.M. The boil will be outdoors so dress accordingly. He is even providing barbeque pork sandwiches (slow-barbequed over his grill for 8 hours). His beer supply has dwindled, so he asks us to bring some to share.
October 26, 2004
We've had a few spam spiders hitting our email page lately. Dave Oldenburg suggested a change to the code on that page that may help. I made the change--most users shouldn't notice any difference. Hopefully things will get better. I'd like to keep the email page, but not at the cost of more spam. Of course, with the amount of spam I get, any extra is barely noticable.
October 7, 2004
I added a few links to our links page. While I was at it, I updated that page and our other brewclubs page to the new layout.
October 6, 2004
Mike has set up a group on Yahoo groups for the club to make it easier to get club emails, directions to club brews, etc. out to club members more easily. If you didn't get an invitation via email, go to our Yahoo groups page to sign up.
Dave "my best friend is Wilhelm" Oldenburg sent along two possible designs for our wood sign that will be put up at Titletown. One dimension of the sign can be no more than 12" long. The wood can be red alder or walnut, lightly stained. Check out option #1 (horizontally offset) and option #2 (square). After perusing both designs, email your preference to Dave who will report back to the club.
Lastly I updated our brewing glossary so you can find out what the "Wilhelm" reference is all about. Also, Mike sent along PDFs of our September and October newsletters for your downloading pleasure.