Hello Brewers,
As the new year begins, lets take a look back to see what made last year awesome and look ahead at what 2013 will look like.

2012 wrap-up – the Mayans were dead wrong! | We started 2012 with 18 BAMF members, 6 (33%) were officers in the club. We collected everyone’s money and set up some by-laws to guess at how we would use it. In May, we determined that the club would focus on four things in 2012. We wanted to keep our trajectory narrow enough to achieve and broad enough to attract a wide range of members.

Experiments and education | We did an awesome job with the Single Hop Experiment. There were 16 different beers brewed using the same base beer and only changing the hops. This event brought us a lot of new members when we promoted it at the farmer’s market. There were many education series. We did our best to give you all something to learn each month related to your brewing. We talked about high gravity beers, decoction mashing, electric brewing, upside down fermentation and an in-depth presentation on water chemistry. Check the blog to see it all. We also got the chance to see the setups of our club members and trade ideas for getting things done more efficiently. A group of us also embarked on barrel aging. This project – for club members only – went into phase two in a BIG way at the end of the year. We’ll have five barrels full of beer by the end of March.

Marketing the club | We set out with the idea to grow and market our club. We brewed at the Northeast Farmers Market five times and had 19 members join in the month of June. We also got our club name out there by facilitating the Big River Brew Fest Homebrew competition. The contest was in October, where we added six more brewers to the fold.

Start an annual homebrew competition | As stated, in October we put on the first annual Big River Brew Fest Home Brew Competition. We had 150 entries and even made a little money. We had new members join and learned a lot about how to put on a competition. A large portion of our members entered this competition and for many it was their first time competing.

BJCP Certification and Sensory Education | We tabled BJCP certification for 2012 as the aforementioned competition took up more time than expected. However, there was a group of members that chipped in to purchase an off-flavor sensory evaluation kit used in the cicerone exam and had a few meetings to taste their way through some nasty off-flavors in the spirit of educating their palates!

All in all, it was a great year. We started with 18 members. We’re now 67 strong! We drank, learned about and judged each others’ beer. There were countless discussions and questions answered via our Google Group. We took in just under $2,000 and spent $1,600 on club activities and registration information.

2013 objectives | We recently had our BAMF meeting to plan for fun brew-jucational times in 2013. We will maintain course, targeting the same objectives as in 2012 with the addition of community outreach.

1. Experiments and education
2. Marketing the club
3. Annual homebrew competition
4. Sensory education
5. Community outreach

THANK YOU for being a member of the Nordeast Brewers Alliance in 2012! We would love to have you again as a part of our club in 2013. Please get in touch with a member of the ExComm or come to the party this Saturday January 19^th at North Loop Wine and Spirits (12p-5p) to renew your membership ($20) and get your new 2013 membership card so you can continue to enjoy all the discounts and perks the NBA provides. I look forward to the strong beer competition and good times with you all Saturday. Oh, and bring some food to share. We’ll be voting, eating, drinking, judging and voting again.