Welcome back everyone for a new year of Libations! Our first meeting of the year was on Zoom due to COVID and about 12 attended.
Old Business:
- 1) our Christmas party was a lot of fun. The Raffle brought it $289.73 and we thank all who donated prizes for the raffle and participated. We also want to thank our sponsors for donating prizes and continuing to support our club.
- 2) A big shout-out to Ken for his years of service as VP and then President!
New Business: 1) we are a new board and are thinking of ways to spice things up for our meetings, heighten interest in the club and our meetings/events. We welcome feedback and suggestions!
We want more emphasis on education as brewing is changing a lot every time. We will implement a few steps for this:
A) we will provided printouts with the style of the month ahead of time. One page will have the BJCP description, the other would have a sample recipe. This way, one could compile a style and recipe book and include own recipes or notes. George suggested we should include extract recipes as well.
B) We would like to set aside 15-20 minutes each meeting for mini-Tech Corners that illustrate a certain topic. Months that have a style picked would have a Tech Corner pertaining to it. For this to work, we need suggestions as to where to carve out time. We have 2 suggestions we will implement so far:
- B.1) Have a table set out to the side for all commercial samples that members bring over for sharing. This will also include the club’s offerings for months with actual styles. This will save time on passing beer. We will discuss those commercials briefly before discussing home-brew.
- B.2) We will send out an agenda for the month, likely on Slack, for everyone to be aware. It will include the Commercial Beers provided by the club.
2) Impartial Judging will be available once we reconvene in person. A table will be set up outside in the hallway with a cooler for dropped-off beer. We need the style that the beer should be judged as. That same table will have an envelope with the judges’ sheets next meeting; it’ll be labeled with the style of beer. The beer will be judged within two days of drop-off by at least 2 judges following BJCP norms.
3) HomebrewCon is in Pittsburg this year. Watch out for submission deadlines if you are interesting in submitting beers. We may also look into doing something there as a club.
Special Projects: 1) LABS on Lambics and Geuzes was at Gregg’s. There is a project supported by Chris for a White Stout to be hosted by him at some point in March. We need more styles volunteered: Matt would like to host an event on English Beers but is unsure which style he will pick. Adi and Linda would like to host a Historical Beer sometime in the Fall. Art would like to do an experiment to see between extract and all-grain using the same recipe. The Utopias project had their first meeting and will have a recipe discussion next.
2) We would like to request anyone with graphic design experience to reach out to Marc as we want to revamp his brewery's logo.
Financial Report: we have 30 paying members and a total of $1,264.87. There are 6 unpaid yet active (not life-timers) members.
Upcoming Events: 1) Paint your Pet Night at Alecraft 1/26; 2) Learn to Brew at AleCraft on 2/12. 3) Kenneth Square Winter Fest 2/26. Please check websites for latest in times and updates.
Tech Session: we had a mini one on forced carbonation and a discussion on water chemistry/pH at the end. Our next one will be in February and related to Schwarzbier.
January 2023 Style: we will vote on it next time. We also had a discussion whether we should leave the month of January open instead. About half were in favor. Suggested styles are Czech Lagers (Ken), Bock Beers (Marc), Kellerbier (Adi), American Amber (Kelly) and SteamBeer/California Common (Marc).
Hope to see you all in person in February for Schwarzbier! Cheers and Happy Brewing!