OLD BUSINESS: 1) We had an April Social at Hopkins Farms and had low to moderate attendance but a fun night. Aaron, Colin, Steve brewed together for the prize that Colin won in the December raffle and had a great time brewing an IPA in the 10-barrel system.
2) Big Brew had to be scaled back due to the weather. Lots of club members showed up though, thank you. AleCraft did a great job hosting us. Very slight interest garnered and poor attendance. We still need to brew the 2 beers and we discussed returning to AleCraft for this. There may be a Poll on Slack to check on availability.
NEW BUSINESS: 1) HomeBrewCon: we’ll try to plan a get-together. Lots of secondary activities available: use the #aha channel on Slack to discuss. Since nobody submitted a beer for judging this time around, we discussed possibly submitting our club’s Imperial Stout to a regional competition.
2) Adi attended the Guild meeting on Zoom and minutes are posted on #general. They have a cookout and a bus trip to Eastern Shore. They have “Guild Shirts” on their website: $45 personalized, $37 without the name: please Slack Marc if interested in getting any (members wanted a preview/mock-up). The picnic will be on 6/4 at a park in Sykesville ($6/vehicle).
3) We’ve set up some dates for the upcoming year: our Libations Cookout will be 9/17 at the Barn ~12-5PM for members and their families including kids. Our mid-year raffle will happen then as opposed to our customary date in June. This gives us more time to plan since June will be busy with HomebrewCon. Our Christmas Party will be Friday 12/2 at the Barn for members, guests, family members all being 21y.o. and over.
4) The next class at AleCraft is on Off-Flavors on 5/17, taught by Adi and Linda. Marc will teach a class on Recipe Design in August and Art will teach a water chemistry class in November. If anyone is interested in a topic to teach or learn more about, let us know. Sign up for these classes with AleCraft ($25).
5) We sent a survey on Slack termed Incognito that is completely anonymous. We want to know if we are doing too much or not enough with the Club and if members’ expectations align with the current direction.
6) We had a vote regarding a motion to allow members who brewed the “style of the month” to have their votes count double towards the next year’s Style. The motion passed.
7) The Board meets monthly and we extended an invitation for one member/month to volunteer and join the Board for input and for additional insight as to how these meetings work and what the Club is dealing with. Matt volunteered to be first and he will join the Board on 5/31.
8) Next LABS will be hosted by Matt on Milds and Dark Milds. He will post on Slack as to available dates. Next will be Art with grain vs. extract.
9) Granite Run is having a disc golf and brewing competition on 5/21 in Rising Sun. Link is on our FB page and in the Guild notes. We voted to invite them to the cookout and to discus a potential open membership between our clubs.
10) Our next style is Farmhouse/Saison in July. Next year’s May style was voted to be Italian Pilsner.
FINANCIAL REPORT: we have $1,072.50 in our account and $105 in cash. Our recent purchases were for the ingredients for the Big Brew beers and a banner.
EVENTS: Burley Oak’s Sour Fest is on 6/4. Slate Farm is also having a Sour Fest on 7/9.
MINI-TECH CORNER: Adi and Linda talked about ways to repurpose stale beer.
BEERS: Style of the month was IPL. We had 2 commercial examples and only one homebrewed sample: Marc+Mike. As off style, Art+Claire brought an Irish Red, Colin a Basil Wit (he also shared a keg of his Dopplebock), George brought a sour, Steve an ESB, Kelly a Lavender Tripel, Ken a NEIPA, Will a Stout and Marc+Mike shared their LABS White Stout.
See you in June! Cheers!