Business Meeting Minutes January 23rd, 2018

Hello Everyone,

We had a good turnout for our January meeting.  About 20 members attended.

We recapped the several socials, the holiday party, & Santas of Swig fundraiser that we had since the last business meeting.

The Taste of Buffalo homebrew competition judging is quickly approaching.  Entries were due January 20th so if you do not have your entries in, you missed the deadline.  About 50 entries were submitted and judging will take place the morning of January 28th.

Several big events are coming up in the next several months.  The largest is our Amber Waves of Grain (AWOG) homebrew competition with judging being held Friday, April 13th and Saturday, April 14th.  This is an all hands on deck event so we will need everyone’s help, no matter how small, to make this run smoothly.  A head steward is still needed to help organize the stewards during the competition.  We will also need judges, stewards, and general helpers for the event.  The judging is followed by a wonderful banquet in the evening.  The website is up and running so please check it out.  http://awog.niagarabrewers.org/

Two other events are coming up in March.  The first is Art of Beer on Friday, March 9th at the Niagara Arts & Culture center.  We staff a booth along with Niagara Tradition and teach people about homebrewing and how awesome it is.  The other event is Beerology held on Saturday, March 24th at the Buffalo Science Museum.  Our club sets up in the kitchen and we run a homebrew demonstration along with sharing samples of homebrew.  Volunteers are needed to staff the demonstrations.  We also need a person to be the organizer of the volunteers and activities for each of these events. If you are interested in being the organizer for either of these events, please contact me at skroon@niagarabrews.org.

Vince P. floated an idea to do a group Bourbon barrel aged Barley Wine.  Members would make 5 gallons of Barley Wine and the beers would all be mixed into a Bourbon barrel for aging.  After a year or so, members who put beer in would get beer back.  The idea went over resoundingly well and we are moving forward with organizing the details of the event.  If you are a member, you should have seen emails going around about signing up.  As of today, we have 100+ gallons committed.  More information will follow on the details.

The educational portion of the night consisted of learning about Doppelbocks and how to make them by John C.  Tasting consisted of one commercial and one homebrew variety that were both excellent.  John has had great success with making Doppelbocks so the information was very informative.  Thank you John.  The February style is Lambic and will presented by Mark Z..

The February social location is scheduled for Crabapple’s on Tuesday, February 13th from 7pm to 10pm.  If you have never been, it is not something to be missed.

With that, it was motioned to close business and drink beer.