Big thanks to Midwest Supplies, Northern Brewer, and Brew & Grow for their
kind donations for Saturday's Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day!
Bigger thanks to Barley John's for hosting the event!
Biggest thanks to club members Greg Van DeMark, Brock Ray, and Chris Smith
for volunteering to be demo brewers. Each brewed identical batches of
British Bitter, with one variable-the timing of the extract addition. At
the Christmas potluck you can taste if there's any difference between
boiling the extract for 60 minutes, 30 minutes, or zero minutes.
Thanks also are due to Earle Stewart for giving the technical talk about
mashing techniques, and to Al Boyce for bringing all the all-grain and
bottling equipment. Many other club members pitched in at various points to
make things go very smoothly, so thank you to you, and also to all the
attendees!
Big thanks to Mark Glewwe and Andrew Ruggles for putting together the cider
pressing event yesterday! Mark also kindly brought tons of cider to Teach
Day for those who had purchased it in advance.
Please put on your thinking caps, as it is time to find a new home for 3-4
club meetings each year. After a long and fruitful run at the CSPS Hall in
Saint Paul, they have decided to reserve Saturdays for large evening events.
It just doesn't make sense for them to get $85 from us for 12-3 on a
Saturday when it then screws up their chances of booking an $800 Saturday
evening event. They either have to pass on getting some real money for the
day or ask us to change our meeting, and it just doesn't work either way.
Soooo . . . start looking around your neighborhoods for meeting halls,
community centers, VFW's, etc. that might be conducive to hosting club
meetings. We typically meet from 12-3, one Saturday per month from
Feb.-April. We would also perhaps use the same place for a Christmas
potluck on the second Friday in December. We need space for about 50
people, and obviously, homebrew would be brought in and consumed. A kitchen
wouldn't hurt, and bathrooms are a must. We could pay up to $100 per event,
but probably not much more. Someplace in Saint Paul or Minneapolis would be
ideal, but first-ring suburbs wouldn't be bad. We just don't want to go too
far from the club's geographic center in any direction.
The one thing would be that our reservation needs to be set in stone. If,
when contacting these places (you didn't think that I was going to do all
the leg work, now, did you?), they hedge in the least when being able to
commit, then we're better off elsewhere. Once we set our dates, we need the
space owner to honor that reservation, since we don't want to be scrambling
for a new spot at the last minute should the owner decide to give the time
to another group.
So-please contact your various halls and meeting places and get back to me
if a lead looks promising.
Thanks much,
John