[THC] the "Teach a Friend" beers progress report, also, save the date Dec 27 for our LBC meeting if you can.

[L Swihart]

Hello new list members you know who you are!  Talk to us.  And if you 
prefer to have a conversation on the bulletin board instead of in front 
of everybody here, a good way to get some attention from people who 
might not be checking the BB real often is to post a short note to this 
list.  "I'd like to have a conversation on the bb about growing hops..." 
or something like that.  (And I think I'll start that one.  It's a 
popular topic right now.  Hops are getting PRICEY and it's likely to get 
worse.

Sorry that some people weren't able to make it to this past Saturday's 
"Teach a Friend" day at Lloyd's.  It was really great.

Ryan's and John's batch of "West Coast Blaster" is in my kitchen, 
fermentation was vigorous, but no spewing (which is good) and the 
bubbling is slowing down a lot now.  Sad that they have to miss the 
chirping of the airlock, that happy sound of beer being born, but if you 
don't have much space right now, you just don't have much space right now.

Jeff and Jen were also not hearing that happy sound of beer being born, 
and were concerned that their bucket of American Light Ale was not 
bubbling even after three days, and in fact that is a matter of 
concern.  So I dropped in on them to see what was going on.  There was a 
small amount of pressure in the bucket, pushing on the water in the 
airlock... but no bubbling.  I was prepared with more yeast and some 
sanitized means of re-pitching, and we opened the bucket and saw....... 
well, it's done, pretty much.  It's beer.  All fermented, the level to 
which the krausen had risen indicated by the hops residue on the inside 
surface above the liquid bucket.  Smells good, looks good.  As good as 
the inside of a freshly fermented bucket of beer ever does look anyway. 

This is called a "stealth fermentation" by many people, and it happens 
when there's some imperfection in how well the bucket is sealed, either 
at the lid, or at the airlock.  In this case I suspect the grommet where 
the airlock plugs in was a little stretched out from being used with a 
slightly larger stemmed style airlock.  It felt pretty loose.  So it 
could let the CO2 out and nobody could see it.  But everything is fine 
and we'll transfer it to a secondary next week and bottle it five or six 
days later.  Or up to a month or two later but it's doubtful they want 
to wait that long.  :-)

NEXT meeting is Dec 27 at LBC.  I don't know the details; Nancy 
Hartman's working on those.  Generally we start socializing around 5 or 
6 and then there's food, then more socializing, and door prizes, 
beverage exchange.....  brewery tour... often a taste of the new Big 
Boris.  (No promises.)  Homemade beverages are quite welcome, but please 
no commercial brews.  And no food brought in either.  Bring yourself and 
homebrew if you got it.  Don't stay home just because you don't have 
much or any brew to bring.  We'll be asking for RSVPs when we have more 
info.

Linda