April 2014 Meeting – Notes

Thanks to Kimberly and Rob for letting us enjoy a wonderful day outdoors at their property in the woods, especially on such short notice!
Treasurer’s report: $1697 in the bank, 59 members (27 family memberships, 5 individual memberships)
A 50/50 raffle was held at the end of the meeting, netting $17 for the club.
Future meetings:
  • May 3 – James and Joan B. (Big Brew)
  • June – Kim and Lizbeth (Belgian Golden Strong ale competition)
  • July – Doug and Kel M. (Oatmeal Stout presentation)
  • August – Dan & Terri
Discussions
  • Big Brew – May 3rd: request for brewers given (only volunteer is John M.), status of club tent is unknown, only one club table accounted for.
  • Virginia Beer & Wine Festival – May 10th: new event in Botetourt County. Requested volunteers to pour, but no interest from the club. The event organizer is interested in us having a “booth” to give out information about the club.
  • Teach A Friend, Spring Edition – May 17th: discussion whether the club should provide food (in an organized fashion) or just bring stuff individually per normal meetings.
  • Stainless steel pint cups: some discussion about the risk of recovering the money, but since we are focused (at this point) in generating additional income to run an external competition NEXT year, your president decided to proceed anyway
  • BrewBug – sharing between members & long term plans: members will have a chance to use this device until the December meeting when we will auction it off to raise funds for the club.
  • Experiment brew @ Chaos – experiment parameters and methodology: no definitive consensus reached but we seem to be leaning to repeating the yeast experiment with more controlled starting/finishing data collection (Will offered to do some analysis on the finished beers). We will need to discuss this further.
  • Local brewery of the year: There still seems some interest in keeping this going, but voting is still a challenge. Survey Monkey was suggested, but we need a volunteer to look into this and other options.
  • FastRack Challenge: We are getting two free FastRack drying racks and a drip tray. During Big Brew, we will video tap the people filling a rack with empties and capping it with a box. The video with the fastest time will be submitted for a chance to win a trip to NHC. We will auction off the racks and tray ($31.49 MSRP, plus shipping).
  • Open floor (local beer/brewery updates, brewing tips/questions, etc.)