Feburary 2002

WEB SITE NEWS
E-Man Andy Friedl

. I seem to get the News just in time to be a month late......   Ill get the winners ASAP

Style for the Month
This month's tasting for style competition is Bock

First meeting of the Taster's Guild a success
Wednesday, February sixth was the first meeting of the Forest City Brewer's newly formed sub-club, The Taster's Guild. 

Maryanne and I showed up at der Rathskeller more or less at seven o'clock to find the upstairs dining room teeming   with Forest City Brewers and a few hastily departing last minute diners.  The atmosphere of the room led me to believe that this was no ordinary gathering of FCB'ers.  There was no competition, no presentation, no club business.  Just a bunch of like-minded folks enjoying each other's company  and the Wednesday night all-you-can-eat brat special. 

The arrival of my fourth fish-bowl of Berghoff dark was met with the realization that "Perchance I should not have fasted all day in anticipation of the brat special."    The quadruple Berghoffs were definitely packing a more fierce punch than the four delicious brats could deal with.  What can I say, it had been a stressful day.  Any single minute of my life would crush an ordinary human just from the shear weight of the stress contained therein. 

All kidding aside, congratulations must definitely go out to Ken Lonergan as he somehow convinced his longtime self-proclaimed S. E. (spousal equivalent) Michelle, to marry him.  These are indeed two wonderful people who will no-doubt find a happy road ahead of them.  Best wishes.

It was about then, as was being gently escorted from the establishment by my loving and understanding bride that everything went black
Rich Theyerl

NOTE FROM PRESIDENT 
Pat Cunningham, President

 Greetings fellow FCB'ers.  I hope everyone had a great "Courir de Mardi Gras."  I managed to celebrate Mardi Gras on two different occasions.  I figured that anything worth doing is worth doing twice.

Our last meeting had very good attendance.  We had around twenty-four members and eleven entries.  We had six entries in the style category and five entries in the open category.  All of the entries were outstanding, which made voting very difficult.  In addition, our first social meeting at Der Rathskeller was also a success.  We had around twenty people show over the course of the evening.

Our style for the month of February is Bock.  I hope everyone has done their homework, and consumed at least one six pack of Bock.  I have personally consumed one six pack of New Glarus Bock.  If you have done extra credit and consume more than a six pack, you have my undying respect and admiration.  That and a couple of bucks (of your own money) will get you a beer at our next meeting.

Items for discussion at our next meeting will include our annual bus trip, setting a date for brewing our Oktoberfest style beer and suggestions for future locations for our social nights.



There are a number of beer festivals coming up in the next few months. Our own Taste of the Stateline is scheduled for Saturday, April 27 at DiGiovannis. Our annual bus trip will be scheduled several weeks later at a date TBD.  The Chicago Beer Society is hosting the Real Ale Festival on February 28 through March 2.  We have The Milwaukee Beer Festival, featuring "The Annual Blessing of the Bock" on Sunday, March 10.  Libertyville has their sometimes-annual beer fest held in the downtown Libertyville Civic Center on Saturday, February 23.  Finally, we have the Drunk Monk Challenge sponsored by the Urban Knaves of Grain on March 23, in Warrenville.

With all these beer festivals coming up, some of us might want to think about training to get ourselves into proper beer-drinking condition.  Like any athlete, conditioning and training vital to optimal performance.  We all can agree that strong cheek muscles are essential to good beer-drinking form. 
Now, as a training technique, focus on your cheek muscles. Now contract them so that they pull back and upward toward the ears. Contract hard enough so that your lips part slightly and your teeth show.
Outstanding.  Keep that up.   See you on Wednesday, February 20.
Pat Cunningham
 Please remember that our 2002 membership fees are now due!

NFO Article

Men Cite Beer as a Top Choice for a Valentine's Day Gift Stamford, Conn. -- Beer as a Valentine's Day gift? Apparently so for men, according to a national survey that asked men ages 21 - 54 what would be their ideal gift from a loved one this Valentine's Day. While beer ranked No. 3, behind dinner and a card, it beat out other traditional Valentine's Day gifts such as a box of chocolates, bouquet of flowers or a plant, jewelry, a tie and a singing Valentine.

The random telephone survey, conducted by Opinion Research Corp., Princeton, N.J., for Beck's North America, asked 340 men to rank in order of preference gifts they would like to receive for Valentine's Day. The same survey asked 318 women, ages 21- 54, what they planned to give their loved one this Valentine's Day. Surprisingly, the results were not all that different from what the men want. However, women do plan to opt for the cheaper Valentine's Day card as their No. 1 gift to give. Dinner was a close second, with a box of chocolates slightly besting beer, which was their fourth choice.

Beck's is currently running its first national promotion ever for Valentine's Day. According to the folks at Beck's, men will most likely spring for dinner out with their loved one and get their Beck's anyway with their meal, which leaves women with the only option of buying a Valentine's Day card and a dozen Beck's to satisfy their man's desire when they get home. John Lennon, president and CEO of Beck's North America, added that opting for a dozen Beck's over a box of chocolate would consequently be a wise move for women considering the survey findings.

``We had a strong gut feeling that premium beer would rank fairly high based on some previous industry research and our own findings. This confirms that and also reinforces our decision to heavily promote Beck's this Valentine's Day period -- the first beer company to do so,'' Lennon tells http://www.HappyHours.com. ``Valentine's Day is a natural for Beck's
falling neatly between Super Sunday and St. Patrick's Day,'' Lennon
added.

Special Beck's Valentine's Day point of sale materials feature the message, ``Give him a dozen for Valentine's Day!'' and depicts a beauty shot of 12 refreshing Beck's bottles presented like a dozen roses with ribbon and tissue paper. In key select markets, Beck's is airing special promotional radio commercials.

John Hooper in Berlin
Saturday February 2, 2002
The Guardian The bartenders in the club on the corner of Münzstrasse are all just under seven feet tall. One serves wine and spirits; another, beer. The third will provide you with a range of snacks in packets. The bartenders in the club on the corner of Münzstrasse are machines. Everything, in fact, in the Automaten bar is - as its name suggests - automated. I don't know for sure, but it could be the world's first robot hostelry.

It is strictly a members-only establishment, yet there are no bouncers on the door. You get in by swiping a card through a reader attached to the frame. When I dropped by this week, my bottle of beer was served by a robotic arm that fetched it off a revolving platform inside the vending machine. And when I had finished with it, I put it on a conveyor belt and pressed a button. The conveyor belt jerked to life and carried the bottle unsteadily out of sight.

The entertainment comes from a kind of jukebox. The tracks, or
"entertainment units" as they are called on the jukebox screen, are all of electronic music. Some are accompanied by video footage which can be seen on a monitor suspended from the ceiling.

While enjoying a drink, you can look out on to the street through the broad window at the front of the club. But if you feel it is somehow cheating to indulge in anything so innately human, you can watch the screens above the window, which give a view down
the streets on either side.

There are surveillance cameras inside the Automaten Bar too.
"Quite soon", said Gereon Schmitz, one of the founders of the club, "we're going to get the output from the cameras streamed to the web. That way, people will be able to see if their friends
are in the bar."

Or their partners. With another man or woman... or maybe a dishy
young android.

"Already, when you come into the bar, your card swipe triggers a database. What we plan to do is make it possible for people to arrange for SMS messages to be sent to them whenever such-and-such a member enters the bar," Gereon enthused.

The possibilities for bores would seem to be endless.

But then who am I to argue with the future, or indeed art? There is more than a touch of self-reference about the Automaten, which dangles between being an installation and a place to get a drink.

That said, he and his co-founders have found a market. After just two weeks in business, and with no advertising, the Automaten bar has 130 members. Late at night, it gets quite lively. Or, as Gereon put it, "There's a lot of inter-member conversation."

What is it that makes Berlin so enamored of everything electronic, technological and robotic? This is the only city I know where Techno has entered mainstream culture. You hear it in the most unlikely of places - filling stations and snack bars, and otherwise conservative hotels.

"Maybe it's because it's so cold," said Gereon and laughed. I don't think he was referring to the weather.

Then he sketched out a more elaborate theory. Berlin is not a beautiful city, so people are not always looking back in admiration at the past. Quite the contrary - its history has been grim.

"It could be that people in Berlin all want to get away from the past and into the future," he said.

Suggestions for the siphon challenged. After being a member of the siphon challenged for five or six years of brewing, I ordered the self-starting siphon from Hoptech (NAYYY) and haven't looked back.  It's easy to sanitize and works every time.  Basically, it consists of a large tube with a check valve on one end, and a smaller tube that fist inside, with a ring-shaped seal on the end that allows the combination to act as a pump.  When racking, you pull back on the inner tube as the larger tube fills with beer, and push down as beer is forced up the inner tube and into your racking tubing, quickly starting the siphon.  Experiences may vary, but as far as I'm concerned, this falls in the category of simple brewing equipment that takes away a fair amount of frustration.

Anyone else have similar gadgets that make their brewing easier?

Bob McDonald
Washington D.C
!

TREASURER'S REPORT

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