Back on January 5th, some members of the NBA ExComm got together at Andrew W.’s place to iron out our club by-laws. We made it through edits to everything while enjoying some beers courtesy of Andrew W. and Andrew N., the latter of whom brought six different single hop Mikkeller brews. Very tasty stuff, interesting to discuss the differences in hop profiles.
Per usual, the meeting is at Pracna on Main in Northeast Minneapolis, starting at 4:00pm sharp. Agenda posted here: Continue reading January 21st meeting agenda
During our 12/17/11 meeting, club VP Nick discussed decoction mashing. Here are the notes: Continue reading Decoction Mashing
Introductions/misc. (5 min.)
Andrew (5 years AG), Matt (5 years), Dean (new to brewing), Tim (2 yrs), Nick P (3 years), Andrew W (AG), Dan (Casual brewer 6 years), Tyler, Steve (since April – Extract), Eric (>1 year), Grant (2 yrs), Nick K. (8 yrs), Nathan (“Chief El Beardo” ; original founder)
Announcements/upcoming events/new business (15 min.)
Membership dues due ($20) for 2012 – what does this get you? Continue reading December 17 2011 meeting notes
Meeting starts at 4:00pm, Pracna on Main in Northeast Minneapolis.
The meeting on November 19th was a very important one for the future of the club. We’re looking to increase participation in 2012, so we took some proactive measures to make sure that happens.
Conversation points of note:
It seems that the club has taken a toll on us this summer. With so many events, weekends up north, and just in general…other things to do…. this club really took a beating in the participation department. We clearly need to come up with ways to keep people more active in the club.
This months meeting we will be discusing ways to get things rolling a little bit more. Here are some ideas that I think we should be considering, deciding upon, and then following through on!
1. $Club fee!$ Although times are tough and some people may be turned off by a club fee, I think that it will also do many good things for the Northeast Homebrew Club. For one, we will be able to buy some things for the club. Shirts, stickers, spare equipment. We can think about buying equipment eventually for a Big Brew Set-up. Barrels for a club Barrel aging project, money to rent a bus to go visit a brewery (can you say Schell’s in the summer time, or during Bock fest!) For two…I think that people will feel more urgency to show up to meetings if they’ve invested a little money into it!
2. Special Events – Brewery tours (or even help brew at a Brewery, aka, Fulton(?)). Visit a Hop Farm, or a the Rahr fields of Barley!
3. Competitions – Club only competitions as well as any AHA sactioned event. (I think a really fun idea would be to have every member create one style (say American Brown Ale) t0 style…. and then we all enter our beer into one competition and for that style. Try and take 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place!
4. Experiments – We did the great hops experiment, but the funny thing was, only the 8 brewers that brewed Single Hop versions for that experiment showed up for the tasting. It could’ve been a great learning experience for everyone. At least the 8 of us got to taste the difference. Don’t get me wrong, it was a huge success, but that was the only real experiment we’ve been able to pull off.
5. Education – We all want to learn. We all have something we can teach. Whether it’s extremely technical yeast info, water adjustments, or how to make better extracts, I feel we need to take this up a notch!
***When I originally helped start this group last year with Nathan, I really just wanted to have a place for Northeast Homebrewers to come together and hang out. That was fine for the first few months. It turns out that it seems like we need to have much more STRUCTURE for this to be a group where people actually want to participate. We will be stepping the club up a notch in 2012 …that is….if that’s what we all decide we want to do!
Cheers,
Nick Pederson
612.965.1144
pederson.nick@gmail.com
Hey Nordeast Brewers,
We are set for our first Northeast Home Brew Club Summer BBQ! It will be hosted by Adam Sjogren’s place in Nordeast.
Location:
Here’s what we have so far.
Side dishes
Desert
Fixins and Plates and such
Friends and Family are encouraged to come have a good time. There’s talk that Adam will be brewing something on his new equipment! Should be a fun time for all! Can’t wait to see everyone and meet the families of all of the Nordeast Brewers!
Cheers!
Nick
June 18th is the Stone Arch Festival and Pracna will be absolutely packed to the gills so we were set with either changing the location, or changing the date. We’ve decided to go with June 25th, the following weekend. This may end up being the day that we pick cherries. That depends on how the cherries ripen. Some people may be conflicted as that is the same day as the St. Paul Beer Fest. That was a fantastic Beer Fest last year, but if you aren’t going to make it to St. Paul but still want to talk shop for a few hours…come on out to the meeting!
June 25th
Pracna on Main (back room)
4pm “SHARP” – 6pm
We will be discussing ways to improve your Extract beers. Another topic that will be touched on hopefully in depth is water chemistry. This is one I personally can’t miss! I needs to know!
Cheers,
Nick