Thanks again to Carrie and Justin for hosting us. In addition to excellent beer for sampling, plenty of dishes were prepared including Carrie’s amazing Chili which hit the spot on the breezy & chilly day. Our November meeting was attended by 24 members and three youngsters for a total of 27. We welcomed Mario, Dane and Ben as our newest members. Thanks to all who attended and contributed to the discussion.
Meeting summary:
- Next meeting is December 16th at Chaos
- Baltic Porter competition & Brewer of the Year (BOTY) crowning (judging begins at 3PM)
- Officer voting
- Unless other nominations come forward before the meeting, Allen Francis and Chris Gray will be unopposed for President and Vice President, respectively. Thank you Allen and Chris for offering your time and passion to the guild.
- Christmas party/Dirty Santa
- Treasurer’s report-Diane L
- $3872.68 bank balance
- Learn to Homebrew Day update-Doug B
- Poor attendance due to the cold & rainy day.
- Thanks to all that made the event a success (an email was circulated with details and credits)
- Meeting locations & dates 2018 (see table)-Rudy L
- Plan developing with locations identified for all but August, September & October. Let me know if you would like to grab one of those remaining. Also, I have defaulted dates to Saturday’s. It is the host’s choice of Saturday or Sunday, so let me know if the schedule needs to be changed.
- We discussed the option of holding meetings on Monday or Tuesday to allow meetings at craft brewers. There was little, if any, interest in changing from our Saturday-Sunday schedule.
- Carrie suggested we consider combining Home Brew Demo day with Big Brew and May meeting. SH offered to host. All seemed at agree. If it continues we will alternate years with BRH. So, this change is reflected in the 2018 schedule
- Competition styles for 2018-Rudy L
- Winners are….English Brown-13B, Specialty IPA-21B, Czech Pilsner- 3B, RIS-20C-accepted.
- Quarterly alignment proposal Mar-13B, Jun-3B, Sep-21B, Dec-20C-accepted. (see planning chart for style presentation timing).
- We briefly discussed opening up a style to all or a limited group of substyles. While it was generally agreed to stick to one sub-style per competition, we also voted for 21B with six sub styles. I suggest we debate this again next year before we begin the voting process.
- Throwdown wrap up-Kathy
- Team organizing-Kathy & Jason, Team judging-Matt, Team grovel & prize allocation-Doug M, Rudy L & Dan T., our webmaster Rodger T and Harry M for his raffle effort. Thanks to Carl Y for his masterpiece tap handles.
- Extra special thank you to Kathy for leading us through our third and her final Throwdown.
- Thoughts on future Throwdowns:
- In order to balance event load on the guild, it was proposed that we skip a 2018 Throwdown and move the 2019 event to March. We generally have less competition for guild resources and also looking for something to do at that time of year coming out of hibernation. With Kathy’s retirement, this will also give a new team more time to get organized and assign responsibilities.
- Community building update-Carrie
- Carrie reported the team has met and offered a snapshot of two ideas for guild improvement. The first involves building a team of ambassadors that are responsible for welcoming and explaining the ways of the guild to new members. The second is to make a welcome pack for new members explaining guild mission and how we operate. More to follow.
- SCBG name tags-Beth Durham
- Beth has proposed getting guild-branded name tags to stimulate conversation about home brewing while out in public at breweries and the like. A survey will be sent to size up interest and see what quantity we might be ordering. Estimated cost is $10, likely quantity dependent. Assuming this may wind up being a guild purchase; members will reimburse the guild as they are distributed.
- In a related discussion, the topic of more work shirts and other guild-branded clothing such as ball caps and tee’s came up. They will be added to the poll also.
- Officer nominations
- Allen Francis-President and Chris Gray-Vice President
- 50/50 drawing-Harry M
- $65 split between club and Chris Gray
