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