April 2023 - Meeting Minutes

GOAT Lab Brewery, Lowell

Meeting called to order with a toast by our Secretary James: "Some ships are wooden ships, but those ships may sink. The best ships are friendships, and to those ships, we drink."

Education Piece: Brewing Salts by Jason Kanak

Jason presented a great presentation about brewing salts that created a lot of discussion, including some valuable additions from Bill Adams, our host and newly appointed Sponsor member.

The general consensus was that we can certainly brew good beer without brewing salts, but in order to brew GREAT beer, paying attention to the finer details will absolutely yield better results!

Old Business:

Changes to the Brewer of the Year and Iron Brewer that were voted on two months ago were reiterated. New rules for Brewer of the Month/Year can be found HERE along with the current standings!

Iron Brewer judging will now be done the weekend after they are turned in at the meetings. This will allow us to all get practice at judging beers, filling out BJCP scoresheets, AND we will all get valuable feedback. A win win for both clubs as we continue to grow!

Annual membership dues are due now! Please see our Treasurer Keola Ingerson. Dues are $25 and may be paid in person via cash or check, and may also be paid online with a small processing fee.

Remaining Iron Brewer comps for the year:

Q2 Saison (July 20th @ FLOPS)

Q3 Kolsch (October 3rd @ OZ)

Q4 English Porter (January 18th @ FLOPS)

New Business:

Bruce Ingerson was officially awarded an honorary membership for 2023 by assisting the club with making the officers name tags. This was something we had talked about doing to help new folks learn some names. Bruce did an excellent job!!!

Bill Adams of GOAT Lab was awarded a sponsor membership for everything he has done for our club. Meeting at his brewery has been a great experience and he often hangs out with us and makes us feel at home!

Our Spring Community Service day for the Beaver Watershed Alliance will be on Sunday, April 16th at Lake Atalanta from 1-3PM. We will be meeting at the Clark Pavilion, 800 E Walnut Street, Rogers. Please wear closed toe shoes, pants, and long sleeves. Tools, gloves, and water will be provided. Feel free to bring your own gloves and water bottle if you prefer.

National Homebrew Day is May 6th - Randy and Doc have something special cooking up. Find out all the details HERE. Randy made a motion for OZ to donate $100 to help put on the event with the hopes that FLOPS would also donate $100. Greg assured us that the FLOPS financial committee will be discussing it soon. The motion passed unanimously.

Bill Adams spoke about our partnership with Ale-Truism to help us realize our dream of hosting the Great Southern Beer Festival this fall! They want both clubs to have a pro-am where the top 2 Festbiers from each club will get brewed at GOAT Lab! What an opportunity! Lagers take a bit longer so start working on your recipes now! It was noted many times that it would be a crying shame not to have a homebrew village. Bill said he would see what he could do to make that happen.

Bill Adams mentioned that he thinks the Great Southern Beer Festival has been scheduled for September 23rd instead of the 30th as we had previously thought. The Girls on the Run - High Gravity event was scheduled for the 23rd so stay tuned for updates to our Events Calendar.

Greg Newman has volunteered to head up a committee for the Barrel Project. The committee will work on nailing down a date to pull half of the barrel and add in fresh beer. The recipe can be found HERE. We are asking that everyone with 10 gallons pull at least 5 gallons out. Anybody else who would like their portion pulled out is also more than welcome. We will just need to make sure that we are only pulling out half and that we have enough volunteers to brew 5 gallons in order to add that same amount back in.

Keola mentioned that the Red Earth Brewers Spring Brew-Off has been announced. Several of that club's members helped us judge Heatwave so it would be appropriate for us to send some folks to help judge in return. If you would like to enter and/or help judge, that info can be found HERE. The events calendar will be updated soon.

Randy showed us the metal stir paddle that will be awarded retroactively for Brewer of the Year in 2019 and 2022. He also showed us a rendering of what the etching would look like. The club will vote on whether to continue with this award or if we would like to change it up year to year. A vote has been tabled until we can see the finished product.

Official OZ merch was planned to be opened up for April. We are trying to incorporate the merch shop into our existing website so that members may order at their leisure instead of only twice per year which was previously mentioned. We hope to have this resolved before the next meeting.

Closing Minutes:

We had 17 folks join us at this meeting, plus Bill Adams of GOAT Lab Brewery.

Identifying beers that were brought (15 total homebrews!!!)

Brewer of the month results:

Gregg Newman - Orange Draaank
Alex Smith - Dark and Stormy Night Oatmeal Stout*
Randy German - Drive Me Hazy

*Per our new Brewer of the Month/Year guidelines, non members are not eligible to win either. This change was voted in not to exclude anyone, but rather to encourage membership. In the event that Alex does not become a member, Randy will be bumped up to second place and David Johnson will be bumped up to third for his Midnight Hefe-Braggot.

Start working on your Festbiers now! The pro-am competition will take place in June. No official date yet, but we will update the events calendar when we know more!

Motion to close