Webmaster's Introduction

Welcome to the third volume of the Internet based "Draught Notice". This month we have some great reviews and articles on February events. In addition, we only have one article reserved for "members-eyes only" which has to do with our recent competition BABO so there’s less passwords to mess with. Here is a brief summary of the articles, not necessarily in order:

Portland Brew Crawl

This is the largest of the articles. I felt it my duty to travel and do some investigative drinking, I mean reporting, of some of my favorite places in Portland. I only had two days mind you so its not in anyway complete. Be aware that the opinions are my own and if you dont agree that’s fine by me.

Tornado’s Barley Wine Fest

This is a great annual event worth marking on your calendar. Bryan Gros writes a review of the event and talks about some of the better beers there. The winning barleywine I coincidentally reviewed up in Portland in the above listed article.

Celebrator’s 10^th Anniv Party

This article is currently being written. The party was a lot of fun and I picked up some great photos. The slide show is all that's there until the article gets written.

Homebrewing Volume 1

A quick review of Al Korzonas new publication taken from the HBD with permission of Sam Mize. The Table of contents and highlights come from Al’s web page. It looks like a fine book to add to your homebrewing shelf.

Brew Quiz

The ever popular brew quiz is back. This time the subject is people in brewing. The quiz is not as difficult as Jan 98's so put on your thinking caps and match your wits against your brewing peers. I'm still looking for ideas for next months so if you have any ideas...

BABO 98

Bryan Gros, the organizer of our Bay Area Brew Off competition writes a summary of the competition and its areas of improvement for next year. This years competition was a great success in terms of turn out and organization. A great big thanks to all the people who helped make this event a success.

Beer troubleshooting guide.

Just some humor to lighten up your day. If you have some emailed beer humor that you think might be appropriate, send it to me for next month.

Editorial Comments

In order to improve our newsletter and give a voice to its readers, I’ve added this form for feedback. If you didn’t think one of the reviews was fair or you have a difference of opinion, this is your time to speak up. The same goes for if you want to see different types of articles or whatever. I know your out there so tell me so I can hear your voice first hand.

Event Calendar

This area is dedicated to club activities other than meetings and beer competition. The latest event coming up is the Northern California Homebrewers Festival organizational meeting on March 14^th. Get your calendars out and check out this section to see what’s up. For competition information, be sure to check out the competition calendar on the left menu bar.

Big Changes to the Web site

Competition Calendar Script

Due to the number of requests I was starting to get to add people's competition to our calendar, I set up a script to do the work. If you have a competition coming up and what to list it on our calendar, you can now add it yourself. This should get rid of any delay inherent in having me enter it in. The calendar is being added to all of the menu bars for easy access.

Discussion script

I’ve added the discussion script to the menu bar and reorganized the menu bar to make it easier to navigate. I'm sure that the menu bar will continue to change and evolve as the content changes so don;t get conformable with the current one. The discussion script, for those who didn’t read about it last month, is a way for member to discuss issue concerning the club and activities. It was created after the January meeting to allow discussion of club business and further communication to make the meetings of manageable length and enjoyable to all. BUT if you don’t use it, then its not going to work.

Draught Notice Subject Index

I thought it would be nice to have an index of Draught Notice articles organized by subject rather than date. This format is more intuitive to use when you are interested in something in particular and want to check out related articles. It's currently in its embryonic stages and I think I’ve gotten up to about 6 months or so. It's going to take a while to categorize everything. I might be done by the end of the year.

For a complete listing of changes to the site, check out the Whats New section.

February Whats new...