Masher Referendum: 2nd Meeting

Also to add i could then put this schedule up for all the new kits i sell so they could have reasurrance of having help with first brew...and the ability to see how the progression goes maybe even partial mash. then all grain..when i did my monthly brew here at store i always had at least 5 want to be brewers and did kit and partial and all grain..jeff

to edit this spring when its wet and muddy out the club could use store in back to keep kitchens clean..just a thought if yo need another place to schedule...and yes i do now have an electric stove!!

just my thoughts on doing kit brews for new brewers...i really think they should be brewed as intended on stove top not a "system" as these dont show how its intended.. they want to see just how easy it is on there stove top not on intimidating systems that they may think they need...These new brewers may just hae gotton a brew kit for present or something..and they want to see and ask questions on regular sovetop... its is amazing how many questions i get on how to brew... they dont want to research ,,just get 'er done....and most of the time new brewers come along like every two months or so...and maybe brew kits they way intended every 3rd month and all grain for the majority of club members on "systems"....this way its good for majority...Not?? just an idea...Jeff

All who voted have attended at least one meeting in the last 2 months. No, 11 isn't a huge vote, but for us it's about average. It's actually only 2 shy of the vote held to move out of the Masherhaus.

The announcements had a lot of reads... I guess not everyone likes to vote

Did we get a good response from our club "regulars"? I know 11 is not that many people... just curious if it was a majority of active members or not.

Well said Thomas, we are a homebrew club not a debate team.

There might be some points missed with the thinking behind the kit of the month deal. We discussed it a lot, but sadly its hard when there is less than 5 people show up to a meeting to hear it. The thought is, that it will be the simplest way into getting us to brewing each month.

Another point overlooked is that brewing is a timeley process and all our members have busy lives of their own and if we keep our evening meetings during the week I doubt anyone will be able to devote 5 hours or more to do a club all grain brew meeting when we have a hard time getting attendance when we do event club brews on the weekend. A kit brew can be done in the normal time frame of our meetings.

Now I will admit that for the most part anyone who can read directions can brew a kit and have a decent drinkable beer without even knowing what they're doing. Kits don't really teach you anything and generally are pretty genaric and bland representations that sometimes lack character and complexity. However I did recently brew a Midwest all grain Hopstache black IPA kit and it is awesome.

The whole purpose of our movement is to get back to brewing. To brew every month and promote education and brewing science. We realized that brewing kits every month would give us a beer, but that is it and it doesn't offer much to our advanced brewers. For simplicity and convenience a kit will give us a style and a recipe every month. Part of the thought is that we will know what we're getting in advance so at our first meeting of the month we can break down and discuss the recipe and then come up with ideas to improve or modify it. Muddy river mashify it if you will to make it our own. Whether it is simply adding a little something to add some complexity or substituting something to enhance the style or experimenting with a different yeast, etc..... The point is it would give us a subject and style to discuss every month and hence forth get us back to promoting and discussing education and recipe development. So really it will give us both and it shouldn't be just throwing some extract in a pot and boiling it out once a month just for the sake of having a brew every month.

Mostly all of us who do all grain have a pretty good handle on brewing already, but most of us started with kits. I can't speak for anyone else, but I never really considered myself a brewer until I was constructing my own recipe's and developing my own beers. Us advanced brewers have a lot of knowledge and experience we should be trying to pass on. There are a lot of people intimidated by trying to do a kit even and we can demonstrate the ease of it to new people wanting to get into a great hobby. There are also a lot of kit brewers intimidated by the thought of trying to create their own recipe or they don't realize how easily they can do so even with extracts. Using the kit recipes and bjcp guidlines as a starting point and promoting recipe development each month we can help people understand better and hopefully make the jump to formulating thier own recipes.

On the same note, Mike F and Dennis had some good ideas as well. Why can't we do both? I have a bunch of 1 gallon carboy's and smaller fermenter buckets(which are very cheap). We could very easily do small scale experiments focusing on one ingredient at a time. We could take a new or specialty malt and steep out a pound or whatever, ferment it out with a clean yeast and all be able to taste it to see what flavor character it gives. It would be so simple and cheap to do small scale experiments and the possibilities would be endless. New yeasts, hop tea's, spices, adjuncts, you name it. Without making a whole 5 or 10 gallons of beer we could play brewing scientist and try all these different things to get singular flavor profiles and discuss what other ingedients they would go with or what style they would compliment. The possibilities are pretty much endless.

That way we could have our cake and eat it too. In my opinion it is the cheapest, simplest, most painless way to get us to doing what we all want and why we started this movement to begin with. We would be supporting a great company that gave us a large donation and discounts and additional ingredients and experimental ingredients could be purchased locally if available or still be ordered in to be here before the brew. No matter what we have a beer to brew each month.

We might need a lesson on parlimentary procedure or wording to avoid confusion, but at the same time we're a free and casual beer club just trying to get to making some beer. We're pretty much all on the same page with the same endgoal and the kits are the cheapest, simplest, most painless way to get there that would really benefit newer or inexperienced members. I truly beleive that the kit of the month club and is the way to go for now.

It is a starting point and really everyone wins if we want to. It will be what we make it. It could possibly be getting together, opening u a box, dumping some shit in a pot, boiling and fermenting it out for the sake of just brewing ...... or it could be a useful tool to use that we can use in promoting education, recipe development, and the brewing process that would be very beneficial to up and coming brewers. I view it as taking a recipe and then we can discuss, "what can we do to make this better?" Half the work will be done for us already.

I also beleive that we all have to try to make more of an effort. I will try to let everyone know in advance when I will be brewing and I will be more than happy to host meetings and club brews. I have an all grain cooler kit that I built myself and I boil on a stovetop. I'm pretty excited about where we are going and think we will do great things in the future.

I could not agree more with Randi's point.

I think the kit of the month is a great idea. It helps new brewers get more involved and then have something to share with the rest of the club. I know it is a little dull for more advanced brewers.

I believe the homebrew club was created to share the love for brewing and we should promote that as much as we can.

Everyone that shared their options on this topic has a love for brewing and that's why we have a club in the first place. Cheers!!!!!!!!!!

Randi, I would agree wholeheartedly with you. People have to step up, and i would be a perfect example of someone who has not hosted a brew day, and largely haven't been available to attend the others. My problem is that when I brew, it's usually not the only thing I have going on, so I'm running around all over the place. They usually start at 6 am so that I finish by noon, for whatever else I have going on to take place. Not an excuse, but the reality of the situation.

All that said, I think I will take a more active role in inviting people over. I brew a lot, and granted my system is a little more extensive than most people's, but I still built it myself, and it works very well.

I don't blame you for not feeling the same enthusiasm. I've seen it in many different groups, from political to recreational, when the same 5 people come to the meetings and have to do all the work, they get burnt out. The club members need to take a more active role to alleviate that situation, me included.

mike frohlich wrote:

The club would not exist without Randi's organizational skill and dedication

i agree!

thanks Randi

Thank you Mike F. I haven't really been as up to it as I used to be.

In a perfect world, brewing everything for the club stock pile would be fantastic.

This is where the problem lies; Show of hands, how many of you have ever hosted a brew? Show of hands, who attended the last Learn to Homebrew Day or Big Brew Day this year? This number is low, way low, not even in double digits.

If we can't get folks to show up for brews that we do the grunt work for, how are we going to get people to open their homes to host and then give the beer back to the club? Not to mention the fact that the option to host a brew has been always been open, but no one offers to do it.

That's the reasoning behind the kits. To give folks an incentive to brew, open their home, share their set up. Yes, it is unfortunate that we are buying our way in. But since we no longer pay rent, the money the Premiums pay will pay for their kit, plus they'll still get the benefits of club equipment.

I'd love to see the club brew at least once a month. I would also like to see us do some recipe development for special club beers like stocking up for Oktoberfest and Hopluck (I do believe I already stated this). All the kit of the month brew does is guarantee us at least one group brew a month.

Folks are going to have to step up if they want more brewing. Frankly, we've had disappointing turnouts at our last few brews. That's why I haven't opened my home to the club for a brew in awhile. It's hard to put yourself out there for such low turn out. Jayme, knows where I am coming from here. I know it's been awhile, but if we do convert that second meeting, Mike and I can't be the only one's doing group brews. Noobs don't want to see brewing on a Sabco anyway. They want to see what you can build yourself. They want to talk to the folks that have already plotted and planned their systems.

I guess what I am saying is that I am ready and willing to help out the club in any way I can, but if you want something for the club, you're going to have to put yourself out there.

I hope we can get this all resolved and I truly hope that the Mashers will be a smarter and stronger group for having gone through this.

-randi

The club would not exist without Randi's organizational skill and dedication.

Here's my point in a nutshell about the thinking it through process... if there would have been more forethought in the past we wouldn't be having this vote right now. It that easy enough to understand for everyone, without being critical? I also voted for the kit of the month club, but I wanted the club to keep it, and serve it all at the Octoberfest, hopluck, and a new spring maifest... imagine 30 beers at the events next year instead of 16 or so.

That's the last word I have on this. Cheers mates!

when i find a recipe, i change one thing at a time to see how that one thing makes a difference, yeast is easy as you can do split batches. my thought was a simple recipe.

90% base malt (say US 2 row)
8% specialty (4%crstal 40, 4%munic)
2% head retention (carapils or wheat)

all cascade
60 min 1 oz
20 min 1oz
0 min 1 oz

keep two or three from each brew to compare later.

so say the second brew was changing the specialty grain change one or both i would prefer 1 you decide. say drop munich use chocolate or roasted barley. or change the hops replace or add Warrior, or some hop most have not used. you could add a fruit, orange peels spices, yams, bananas or what ever. that was my idea. you can easily make completely different beers. i think this would really help brewers improve thier beer by knowing how the ingredients they use change the beer they make.

as for my votes i voted to brew

Mike, I agree that the club has been lax about homebrew education for some time. That's been acknowledged and will hopefully be addressed by this vote. One can speculate how, why or when things got to this point, but at this time, it's a non-issue because our primary goal is to get back on track as a homebrew club. Obviously, that's one reason for the use of our second meeting as a brew event. Ideally, we would be able to use our first meeting date to discuss brewing technique, get feed back and learn about the finer points of ingredients, like you had suggested. Which, by the way, is something I am in favor of and agree is a very good idea that we can take to heart/implement. That said, I want to touch on something that I feel is also important.

We're very fortunate to have a reliable core group of members who contribute in many ways to the well-being of the club. That said, I think most reasonable people, myself included, would agree that Randi has either willingly or circumstantially been burdened with a lot of the club's organizational functions, this vote included. It's not fair to expect her and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the officers to come up with solution that will satisfy everyone. We don't claim to be eminent thinkers, but we try to continue working to improve our situation as fairly as we can for the members who choose to participate.

Our core group of members who regularly participate in and attend club functions that numbers in the teens. If you count those who participate marginally, that number increases to the low to mid 20s in my estimation. In my opinion, the obligation of the officers is to make sure that the needs of those who put themselves out there and are involved in the club get something back out of it. While that hasn't always been the case in the past year, we're trying to rectify that. Randi, myself and the other officers are regular people who hold jobs in the day and have lives at home. I don't believe it's fair to expect us to hunt down every person to get their opinion on a vote. If they can't be bothered to read numerous e-mail contacts or check the forum, then it's their loss. You'd know as well as anyone that voting is a "use it or lose it" situation. The opportunities and reminders we give to club members to participate in the votes that shape this organization is far more than anyone reasonably expect. If you have suggestions on how we can improve our process to somehow make it more fair or Democratic, I'm willing to hear you or anyone else out.

The long and the short of it is, we don't have a lengthy period of time to address all this. While we're bickering and voting and grandstanding, either in our meetings or here on the forums, prospective members and the true believers in the club will become disillusioned because we've become an empty shell of what we used to be. There's a time and place for due process and voting, but this has simply become laughable. I say this with a respect and true love for our club - we've spent more time voting than brewing in this club lately, and that's just sad. We're better than this, I sincerely believe that, and I am very excited for the time when we've moved past all this.

Now that I can understand and agree with! Thank you for clearing that up! I think that would be REALLY educational to a lot of people. This is something I've even wanted to do myself at home.

My idea was recipe formulation, and not creating a brew every week. I brew a lot, so I have an advantage of going over my process, and ingredients, many times over.

Most brewers in the club don't have that luxury or desire, etc... What I was getting at was the club buying some different hops, and making teas out of them to see the different flavors, or the club buying some different malts, and experimenting with mini mashes to see the flavor profiles and characters you get out of them. A lot of these brewers are never going to try a lot of these different varieties, because they either don't know how to use them, or they don't want to waste money on something they might not like.

The idea of recipe formulation incorporates learning about a style, figuring out your BU:GU ratios to fit in that style, and then deciding on how far you will range from that style guideline in your brew, and ways to think about ingredients, and what they will impart.

I don't think the club should create a recipe every month for the group brew. And on the same lines, I was not trying to argue any points about this vote, I was trying to get people to think a little bit more about how things are handled. There have been a lot of big decisions in the club recently, and the process of which they have been handled seems a little too simple. Keep in mind, I voted against moving the club into the Masherhaus in the first place, for this very reason, that I wanted the club to brew more. That said, I voted to pay through December, because I don't think it's possible to hammer out the details of all of this in one month, when half of the members or more won't have a chance to vote on this. I just caution everyone to think through all the steps involved in the movement to a new meeting format if that's how the vote turns out... and yes i did vote to have the 2nd meeting a brew day.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Jayme and I were just backing ours. I think that's fair.

I just don't see any positive side to the same brew all year. If you can convince everyone that arguing over a recipe every month & drinking the same beer all year long is fun then please, by all means explain.

sorry i said anything, please do what you want to do.

I agree Jayme! Kits are recipes. Personally, from the few kits I've seen, I like that they use a variety of grains, hops, and yeasts. A lot of which we don't get around here. Plus it forces folks to try something different. Not to mention it's a lot easier for me to have to manage. I know that might not mean much, but it's not easy getting stuff together for brews, especially if we end up doing them every month. I spent the last two weekends in my garage organizing a spot for club stuff and getting the lagerator set up. I love doing things for the club, but I work full time and am a part time student. Anything that makes it easier for me and gives us ingredients outside what we'd normally use is a win in my book.


Just an FYI if you haven't looked this is the list of brews for the year:
January - Nightcap Cherry Stout
February - Wurtzberger Maibock
March - European Pilsner
April - California Steam
May - Hank's Hefe Weizen
June - Aussie Light Ale
July - Honey Bee Ale
August - Irish Red Ale
September - Oktoberfest Lager
October - Midwest Red Lager
November - Excelsior Altbier
December - Rich German Bock

Well being gone on vacation I'm trying to catch up. So the thought on the brew of the month is to do a recipe over & over & change the same recipe a little here & there? I'm not liking that idea. So we are going to have 60 gallons of the same beer with a different yeast or a touch different grain? Honestly to me that sounds boring. I think doing new brews every month is the way to go. If you like a ceirtain brew then take that recipe home & tweek it yourself. That is what homebrewing is all about. Learning & doing your own thing. I have had to dump a few batches trying and failing something that happened not to work out but that's all part of it.

I thought club meetings were supposed to be fun? But to go to the first meeting to argue and deliberate to come up with a recipe every time does not sound fun to me at all. Every brew that homebrewers do is essentially a kit. It's just your own kit. What's the difference other than there is no debating & no worrying about how & what to do with the recipe? Doing a kit of the month settles all of the deliberation & the nonclub behavior. All of this deliberation & arguing is DEFINATLY not a turnon for new club members to join in with us. I know if my first meetings were in the recent times & reading this forum I probably wouldn't be a Masher.

The positive feel & atmosphere NEEDS to come back to the club. This arguing & deliberating needs to come to a hault. Lets focus on education, brewing, and fun!!

I'm not really sure where our other officers are in all of this, but I do agree with Randi. Not everyone who will be involved in the group brews will be advanced enough to be comfortable with recipe creation or customization. Think back, way back - how many of you have started as kit brewers? If we want to attract new members, some of them may be novices and we have to be certain whether we want to appeal to that group or decide to accommodate our existing members, who may prefer more advanced techniques. Unfortunately, you can't please all of the people all of the time, so some of our senior members will simply have to decide whether they are willing to sacrifice to help make the club more accessible to newer, less-experienced members or satisfy their own needs. For those member who do want to see something more exciting outside of brewing for the sake of brewing (even if they are just kits), I encourage you to host a brew event open to the public to demonstrate techniques to our members while satisfying your need for creativity and innovation.

Aside from that concession we have to consider, there's the difficulty that usually results from trying to reconcile the ideas and suggestions of 8 to 10 different club members who show up for a given recipe creation meeting. Everyone may want something different and no matter what we decide, someone's going to be disappointed. What Randi and I are trying to get implemented is a way for the club to back to the basics, back to brewing, without all the red tape that's mired us down in the past. We're not a civics and political process club, we're a homebrew club, and frankly, I'm growing tired of spending 8/10 of our time discussing what we'll do and 2/10 of our time actually doing something, if at all. Let's do this vote and move on to better things.

I don't recall the club ever developing their own recipe to brew. We've brewed from examples out of clone brews and members have brought in recipes, but we usually have a hard enough time deciding on a style to brew, let alone develop a whole recipe.

If we do our own recipe development as a club, which I think should be done for special brews like Oktoberfest beers and super hoppy beers for Hopluck, it will take a lot of planning and discussion. If the vote passes to convert the second meeting, do we really want to develop and vote/decide each meeting so we can brew every month?

i really like your idea there Mike F. maybe take a beer and develope it. start with basic grains and a single hop selection. then see how it developes as you add as specialty grain or a different hop the next brew. i used to like how the club would talk about a process of brewing. it has been a while.

not the biggest kit fan either but it will get the club brewing.

just my .02

Since it is not a bylaw change, simple majority is all we are looking for. We'll leave it open for a week. The next set of bylaws is going to standardize our voting process.

I've been putting off brews... just been busy I guess. Not a good excuse though. It's really going to suck when I run out of beer! I better brew soon

In efforts to help get people brewing and sharing brew time, we are *hoping* to roll out a new site closer to the end of the year. We'll have our own calendar (not through google), ways to comment on articles, event registration, galleries, club equipment checkouts, and most importantly - we're bringing back member quotes on the homepage!

So if you want to be quoted, shoot me a message or email. I still have some of the old ones.

Is there a online quorum number you are looking at? i was just curious as to how many members are going to vote online, and how many would be needed to say it was a valid election.

I slack a lot in inviting members to my brew days. I've brewed 6 times in the last 3 weeks, and will be brewing again this weekend or earlier. Brewed 2 IPAs, a Pale Ale, Strawberry Wheat, Bitter Kitty Brown, Hammerhead Red ESB, and Black Shox Porter is up next. Now I just need some more fermentation space

The only downside is I'll have to bottle all of it... which totally blows!

... and honestly. I really hate all this voting stuff.

We are hoping to get it all said and done with before the end of the year. So we can get on to what the club is really about; brewing and brewing education. We have had a lot fewer group brews than we did when we started. The few AHA event's that we have done, have had very poor member turnout. I personally, would love to see some folks step up and host a brew. That's what the club should really be about: Brewing. Not voting or formalities. We should be brewing!

... I really need a beer.

Warning: There will be one more vote. It is an update to the bylaws and lingo.

I hear ya... I am in desperate need of a beer.

I agree wholeheartedly. We need to start making more beers as a club. I am really looking forward to that possibility again. I know Mike and I have both been slacking as hosts...

Problem is, group recipe development has never really worked well. I definitely think we should look into more informative meetings, and maybe bring back the meeting topics. Encourage folks to bring in recipes they are working on and talk about it.

The best way to learn is by doing. The all grain kits are a convenient way to get the supplies in the hands of members to brew, share their system, add their own special twist to the brew. By no mean's does having a KoTM mean we can't have non kits for group brews. I think this is especially true for beers that the club want's to have at Oktoberfest and other events.

Personally, I think we need to look at recipe formulation as well.

Brewing kits are fine, but for the advanced brewers in the club, there is not much learning going on by just brewing a kit. I think the club would really benefit from doing some work in this area.

Again, speaking personally, I have zero desire to brew a kit beer. For me, there is almost zero learning going on at the club. I'd like to see us start experimenting with some new specialty malts and yeasts, learning about different hop varieties by creating teas, making single grain beers, etc...

Not saying the club is about me, and I am not the normal club member, but there needs to be some furthering opportunities for those that want to take it up a notch. Just my opinion though.

I'm in a contentious mood today.... I need an IPA!

Mike T might be the better one to answer that.

We have 8 premium members now. My understanding was that when/if we got to the point of having 12 premium members or higher we'd just order the kit of the month that the member wanted to brew as an extra. In this case we could have multiple systems brewing the same beer, or the brewer could throw in additional ingredients to change the kit to compare the original to the modified.

Premium Memberships would basically buy you a brew kit, the club wouldn't make any money off of it. It would just encourage folks to host brews.

Mike T or any other Officers, feel free to weigh in.

Well, I have no intention of becoming a premium member, as I already have more than enough equipment, space, etc... but would happily host brewing events.

Just wanted to be clear as to how that worked. Personally, I don't see the benefit of premium membership, unless you are lacking equipment such as lagerator, or kegerator.

On that same note, how many premium members are in the club? This could also affect how many brews were available, and how people may or may not vote on what happens to the beer?

You might have a contentious point arise if you have too many people vying for beer kits. If you take a beer kit, would you then have to host a brew day?

Mike beat me to it...

I know you weren't insinuating anything, Mike F. I had put that specific wording on the vote because I know how few folks actually check their reminders. So if we go with the 'anytime' option, folks are going to have to take some effort on their part to plan. In retrospect, voters will probably take that into account when making their choice.

Also, regarding the Premium option, this is kind of Mike T's baby. Another thing to note is that kit of the month club beers that are brewed by premiums that have already taken their one brew per year or by non premium members will be used by the club for events like Hopluck and Oktoberfest.

mike frohlich wrote:

And just a clarification of the idea of the premium membership...

Do you have to be a premium member to host a brew day? And if not, can the host of a brew-day keep the beer (if said vote passed )?

Good question. Short answer is no, you don't have to be a premium member to host a brew day. However, to be eligible to keep the brew, you do have to be enrolled as a premium member.

And just a clarification of the idea of the premium membership...

Do you have to be a premium member to host a brew day? And if not, can the host of a brew-day keep the beer (if said vote passed )?

And I wasn't trying to insinuate anything either... I just wanted to bring up the points to raise awareness to it. I really don't care how the vote turns out, I'm just happy the club is moving in the direction of brewing more beers.

I would like to see the option for taking the club beers (beer of the month kit) and serving them at the Octoberfest, and a spring Maifest. Just another idea

That's my bad. I removed the text from the question.

I know our members are smart enough to make their own decisions.

Explanations like:

"Having the brew dates set to a specific time might help folks keep brew events in mind. If you vote for "Anytime" you are responsible for checking the calendar, forums, and email reminders for those dates. " are very leading.

If you also put:

"Choosing third Thursday -Sunday will likely eliminate any chances of brew days being hosted during other times of the month." you would likely influence voting as well.

In completing my 491 Seminar Class for my BA, writing unbiased, non-leading questions was one of the most difficult things I did. My guess, is from the current stated explanation, you are going to influence people to vote for the third Thursday-Sunday option.

Maybe a better question set would be, When do you want brew days to be held? How would you like to be notified of brew days?

It's very easy to get people to vote the way you want them to by framing the question or debate.

Just want the results to be valid.

I appreciate your input. We just added a comments section to the form a moment ago. Our goal is/was to translate the statements and discussion points from the officers into a moderately simple, straight-forward voting process. If too many options or points are included, thing can get convoluted and needlessly complicated in a hurry. Hopefully, this voting process will be relatively pleasant and painless.

Couple of points here:

I think you need to offer a comment section on the voting page, as I voted the way I did for a reason, but was unable to explain my reasoning with the limited questions.

And secondly, from a sociology point of view in creating questions, the questions posed, or explanations, are very leading and not unbiased. If you wanted to create a more valid questionnaire I would be happy to help, but these tend to lead the "voter" to a conclusion already supported by the question writers.

My two cents on the subject.

Hello Mashers,

We’ve got an important vote for you to take part in. Because the holidays get pretty hectic, it can become more difficult to attend regular meetings. As a result, we’ve decided to hold this vote online. The online voting form will be available up through December 5th. There is a lot of information below, but please take the time to read it all before voting. We really want to get this important club business dealt with so we can get back to doing what we do best, being a homebrew club. If you have any questions please feel free to ask before you place your vote.

At this point, you’ve probably already heard about some of the suggestions that we are voting on. The officers have been working out the details and want to make sure everyone's voice is heard. Below are the topics that are in this referendum.

Conversion of the 2nd monthly meeting
Converting our 2nd meeting of the month would allow us to do a club group brew every month. With this conversion, we would only need a host for the official meeting, rather than two meeting hosts per month. The most important reason for this change would be to bring brewing back into the club. It would encourage members to host brews and invite friends. With brews happening once a month, we can show others what we're about, brewing, which will encourage new membership and word of mouth.

Brew Date
If the club approves the above conversion of the 2nd meeting to a brew day, we’ll want to know well in advance who is hosting and when. For the past 3 years we have had a third meeting of the month. We believe, for consistency, that making the third Thursday through Sunday would be the best available times for hosting the brew day. This way people will always know when to expect a brew day. The alternative is to allow the range of the entire month to allow more flexibility for people to host brews. The downside, of course, is that there will be inconsistent, more unpredictable scheduled dates for the club group brews. No matter which is chosen, though, we do know one thing and that’s that more brewing is a good thing.

Kit of the Month Club
If the club approves the measure to convert the 2nd meeting to a brew day, we are going to need some ingredients. One suggestion is to try the Midwest Kit of the Month club. The kits come with everything necessary to host a brew. They are mailed out the last Monday of the month so you get it just in time for the season. You can cancel the plan at any time. Midwest has offered an additional 5% off. For more on the kit of the month club please visit Midwest Supplies: Kit of the Month Club

Premium Perk
This perk is only applicable if the “Kit of the Month” vote passes. With the kit of the month, the club will have plenty of brews and beer available. Some of these will be used for events like the Hopluck and Oktoberfest. The remaining kits could go to the Premium Member who hosts the brew for the club. We would set this up so each Premium Member picks one brew for their membership year. They host that brew for the club and they can keep the beer. Of course, they can always share it if they like.

VOTE HERE