We Brew Beer

Perhaps the first question anyone who hears about the brew club known as Knights of the Mashing Fork would have is: How in the world did they come up with that name? Club member and webmaster Bryan Peretto fills us in on the club’s unusual moniker: “I found the name ‘Knights of the Mashing Fork’ in a reference card set my mother gave me. The first guild for brewers, the Knights of the Mashing Fork was formed in Brabant, Belgium during reign of Duke Jean I (’Jan Primus’) corrupted today as ‘Gambrinus.’ He is honored throughout the world as the so-called King of Beer. Legend portrays him as the inventor of the ‘toast’ as a social custom. When I found out that no one was using that name, there was no contest—we never considered anything else.”

The club’s logo (which most of the members had a part in designing) nicely reflects the club’s whimsical name. (The words down the middle are Dutch for “Guild of Brewers.”)

Founded in October 2005, Knights of the Mashing Fork consists of six members in the Greater Hartford Connecticut area. The Knights’ origins lie in dissatisfaction with a previous brewing club. According to Bryan, “The Knights were all members of another local homebrew club. The other club was about twice our size, disorganized, and some of the members didn’t actively participate in the club. It seemed that a lot of our time was spent debating the bylaws rather than focusing on beer. Things came to a halt when one member became quite verbally harassing with me when debating those bylaws. Those who disagreed with that behavior formed the Knights of the Mashing Fork.”

Lessons learned from that previous experience have guided how KOTMF is run. “There are really no club positions in the Knights. There is no president, no treasurer, and there are no ‘founding fathers.’ Everyone is considered equal.”

The club meets twice a month—once at a bar or pub to conduct club business and a second time for an event, usually a club brew. “Our best meetings are usually the club brews. We gather together in my garage anywhere from 7 to 9am to brew on our 45 gallon system. One member is the ‘host’ of the brew and he’s in charge of creating the recipe, researching educational material, coordinating food, and securing ingredients. Generally, we encourage brewing off-styles that people don’t normally think about brewing such as a Sticke Alt and DoppelWeizen. When all is said and done, we use a plate chiller to cool the wort and each member takes home 5 gallons of wort. We like to use different yeast or other ingredients and then compare our individual results. Of course, during the day, there is plenty of beer to be had. We especially encourage bringing beers that match the style we’re brewing that day.”

KOTMF maintains a website which they use to conduct club business as well as offer resources to the larger brewing community. “I’ve tried to make a great home brewing portal on the web—especially for people in the North East United States. There are a lot of brewing articles, tools, calendar, and other information. The forum is the biggest area of activity and where most people introduce themselves to us,” Bryan tells us. “I couldn’t imagine having a club without a website—it would be more trouble than it was worth.”

Bryan and others have also developed an online recipe calculator and database named Brewthology. (The software can be downloaded for free from Brewthology.com and a live demo is available on the KOTMF website.)

For anyone thinking of beginning a brew club of their own, Bryan offers this advice: “I suggest keeping it small. Take a look at our codes (http://kotmf.com/articles/codes.php) to create a basic framework for club operations. Rules are needed so that everyone is on the same page, but having too many regulations also causes trouble. Pooling club resources to buy brewing ingredients in bulk is a great way to save money. Finally, having a website is a great way to organize people.”