Here are the notes from this month’s BAMF meeting.

Attendance: Grant, Andrew, Nathan, Tyler, Nick P, Matt – only ExComm members showed up

Club Direction:  Our club priorities have previously been established Education &Experiments, Marketing, and BJCP training and certification.  We intend to keep true to this idea.

Since the last year has seen quite the growth in the club, we should be able to accomplish more.  In order to do this, we need to reiterate an idea that has said many times before, “If you want something done, or if you have an idea, step up and become the committee chair.”  We have had a few ideas fall to the side because no one stepped up to champion them forward.  Also, being a committee chair makes you a BAMF member for the duration of the committee.

Competitions: Since we saw our first club sponsored competition come and go with success, we would like to continue to encourage our club members to compete their beers in other competitions, and to volunteer with other competitions when they can.   By competing your beer, you get useful feedback as to how to better perfect the craft.

In addition, we want to develop ourselves to better critique each other’s brews.  We will be altering our club tastings slightly henceforth.

Club Tastings: While everyone is welcome (and encouraged) to bring their beers to share and to receive feedback, we will be having one dedicated BJCP-type critiquing every meeting.  For this critique, the following requirements will be used.

• Must sign up for tasting prior to the meeting via Google Groups
• Beer must adhere to a BJCP style guideline
• Recipe must be made available to the club
• Club members will use BJCP scoresheets (provided by club) to provide feedback and assist discussion about the beer

We’re all here to brew better beer.  The purpose here is to figure out any flaws, while also highlighting how the style requirements were met.  Don’t worry, we’re not turning into beer jerks here, we just want a little more structure.

By laws update:  Our current by laws were created to give the club structure, but need a bit of modifying.  Interested people can meet at Aaron D’s place Nov 17th @ 10:00am to discuss what changes are needed.  (Check the calendar).

The ExComm has the following suggestions for by law amendments:

• ExComm members do not have to pay the annual membership
• The title of Scribe changes to Chief Executive Officer, with responsibility for club activities oversight.
• By becoming a member, you effectively agree to adhere to the by laws.  We don’t need to sign them.

Finance: Our account is slightly over $1000.  This comes entirely from member dues and the profits from the BJCP competition.

We voted to use $200 for casters for the new barrels, and set aside $250 for a club jockey box to be built by Nathan.  We might actually get by with less for the jockey box.  We are also setting aside ~$50 for the club party in January to hold a room (more on this at the next meeting).

This leaves us with around $500 in club funds, which we feel is a safe amount to have on hand.

Food Drive: From here on out, we are encouraging people to bring a canned or non-perishable food item to the club meetings at ESNS.  ESNS runs their own food drive during the holidays, and we should also help out the community when we can.

January meeting:  With club ExComm nominations coming next meeting, we will have the following activities in January:  Club election voting, Installment of new members.