ECHO-GRAM: BREW NEWS IN NW FLORIDA
Michael Theobald
ECHO-Gram: June 30th, 2010
The Emerald Coasters Homebrew Org (ECHO)
Beer and Homebrewing news for Panama City and Northwest Florida.
We held a business meeting at Beef’s Lynn Haven on Tuesday, 29 June to talk about our upcoming events. One of the decisions we made was to not rely solely on the Blog and the Forum to publicize club news. Meeting notes and announcements will come out in ECHO-Gram and you can find more details and updates to scheduled events and topics in the blog http://echobrewers.com/ and threaded discussions in the forum. http://echo.lozt.com/index.php
Cool Projects: We are building a 5-faucet Jockey Box to serve homebrew at public events. So far we’ve collected 4 faucets and acquired a 5-circuit cold plate. We all like the SS Coleman cooler, but it’s a bit pricey. What’s a Jockey Box? It cools beer through a heat exchanger which can be coiled stainless steel tubing or in a cast aluminum heat exchanger as a “cold plate” mounted in a cooler. Here is a great example of a 5-circuit cold plate Jockey Box. See the forum for this and more project discussions.
24 July 2010: Brew Day at Beefs LH. Come brew with us! Pending Pat’s approval, we will be brewing for upcoming events, sampling and sharing club brews on tap. We will also be discussing the finer points of Jockey Box design and have parts on display. We’ll have the tip jar out to collect donations to complete the project.
7 Aug 2010: AHA National Mead Day. ECHO will not have an event this day but we encourage you to make Mead on your own today!
14 Aug 2010: Project Day! We’ve collected money and bought the hardware. Today we’ll meet at a workshop [TBD] to assemble our Jockey box, have a BBQ, sample beer and have fun.
2 Sep 2010: Business Meeting. [Location: TBD] Logistics coordination for the Emerald Coast Beer Fest and PC Oktoberfest.
9 – 10 Sep 2010: Emerald Coast
Beer Fest, Pensacola. This will be ECHO’s
first year as a club serving our beer at the Friday Night charity fund-raiser.
Hotel details are on the website. The charities which this year's
Festival is supporting are:
Big
Brothers/Big Sisters: Helps children reach their potential through
professionally supported, one-to-one relationships.
The Independence Fund:
Provides the necessary tools to assist our wounded veterans in regaining their
independent living, and physical and emotional well-being.
The Belmont Arts
& Cultural Center: Provides art education in the Belmont-Devilliers
community with the goal of revitalizing that community'a art and cultural
heritage.
However, the main event is really Saturday. It will be a chance to meet and greet the professional brewers from some of the best craft breweries in America. There will be over 75 beers on tap and all the leftovers from the night before. Challenge the other clubs in the Beer Olympics. A business meeting is scheduled of all the homebrew clubs from the region to plan regional events. Big Bob’s Barleywine Bash kicks off at 8pm.
More details of the festival can be found at: http://emeraldcoastbeerfest.com/ However, the brewers section contains the behind the scenes Saturday agenda (above) not available to the general public. Access is password protected and available on our forum.
2 – 3 Oct 2010: Panama City Oktoberfest. We will again be partnering with the Knights of Columbus to serve homebrew along side their charity bratwurst sales. See the forum for details and tap list.
Miscellaneous:
- Interested in a bulk grain or hops order? We are opening a discussion in the forum to see if there is sufficient interest.
- Just a reminder this newsletter is published via LISTSERV. If you received this from a friend, you can sign up to get your own ECHO-GRAM at http://echobrewers.com/. E-mail addresses can be added or deleted ONLY from the link at the very bottom of the Blog homepage.