Ronnie Crocker of the Houston Chronicle blogged about our general secretary getting his brews thang on at St. Arnold.

Comrade Chris brews at St. Arnold

It's all about salsa this month. Salsa and beer, that is. The BOM is Bocks (a fitting style for the return of the real Commissar Brewski, eh?), and the KOM is Robert Chan's Palm IPA.

What more could you ask for? Well, how about the news that the 1992 death of science fiction legend Isaac Asimov is a complete hoax? Damn straight, comrades! Check it out in this month's KGB Files.

Oh, and the recipe for Robert's Palm IPA is in there, too.

What more could you ask for?

The 17th Lunar Rendezbrew was held last Saturday and three of our compatriots came away with awards.  Comrade Marc Bernard won second place in the strong ale category (19).  Comrade Wes Powell won third place in the Belgian strong ale category (18).  Last, but not least, Commissar Brewski Donald Sajda took both second and third places in the dessert wine category (33) with his orange muscat and raspberry chocolate port, respectively.

Congratulations, comrades!  I expect a taste of these prize winning beers at the August meeting.  Don’t disappoint!

Complete results for Lunar Rendezbrew 17 can be seen here.  Pay no attention to the fact that the page’s title and URL refer to Rendezbrew 16.

I’ve applied the latest DotNetNuke (Community Edition) update to the web site, so we are now up to date.  In case you’re interested (and even if you’re not), we are now using version 5.4.4.  Frankly, I was starting to get a bit worried when the previous version bombed like a witbier party at Donald Sajda’s house.

It looks like everything is working as it should.  If you notice anything weird or unexpected, please let me know.

"It's not much of a tail, but I am sort of attached to it."
—Eeyore

Here's the July edition of The KGB Files, such that it is.

It recently came to my attention (thanks, DM) that emails that are supposed to be sent by this web site (e.g., confirmation of new user registration, password changes, and possibly notifications from the forum, etc.) were not getting to the users who expected them.  I have done some fiddling around and that seems to be fixed, now.

If you are a newly-registered user awaiting your confirmation code in an email, please contact me and I will fix you up.  If you requested a password reminder email and never received it, please try it again.

If you ever have a question about the workings of this web site, please bring your concern to me.  Sometimes, I’m the last to know these things.  You can leave feedback from the home page (right margin under the blog search controls) or the (wait for it…) Feedback page.

It’s out there, comrades.  Go get it.

The KGB fared fairly well in today’s Big Batch Brew Bash.  Aside from winning the Heavy Hitters Award (which means we’ll have a half-barrel keg of St. Arnold beer at one of our future meetings), three out of the top five brews belonged to KGBers.

The Ken Rich Memorial Award was awarded to John Cotton of the Golden Triangle Homebrewers for having the highest scoring brew submitted by a contestant entering his first homebrew competition.

We had a great turnout.  Congratulations to all the winners!

Also, remember that the styles for the next two BBBBs have been announced.  BBBB 16 will be Old Ales and BBBB 17 will be Oktoberfest.

Update:  The BBBB Current News & Previous Winners pages have been updated with the latest information.

Chronicle beer blogger Ronnie Crocker gave the KGB & the Big Batch Brew Bash a good mention today.  Check it out!

Your intrepid Big Batch Brew Bash crew checked in 61 entries, yesterday afternoon, and we know there are eight to ten more that were delivered to the Commissar Brewski's house from out of towners.  Seventy English barleywines means we'll need plenty of judges come next Sunday morning, so please plan to show up early and help us knock them out.

Judging will start at 9am at St. Arnold's new brewery (some call it the newery) located at 2000 Lyons Avenue, Houston 77020.  You can find a map to the new place on the Events Page.  For more information about the Big Batch, itself, find your way to the Big Batch page.

 Hope to see you there next Sunday, comrades. 

RAFFLE!

EDIT:  Now that we've added those delivered to CB Don's house, the total number of entries stands at 70.  Ain't that a fine, round number?