February 2016 meeting preview

Welcome back for another great year of brewing!

We’ve got our first meeting of 2016 coming up this Thursday (February 4), and after a fantastic preview of BentSpoke’s new Mitchell facility (thanks again to Richard and Stagger) we’ll head back to the Harmonie German Club in Narrabundah for this meeting, starting with an education session at 7.30pm.

We’ll look forward to trialling another meeting at Mitchell when construction work at the venue allows sufficient space.

Multi-tasking: Our major fundraiser

One of the key parts of this week’s meeting will be going over the finer details of what’s happening at the Canberra Brewers’ stall at the National Multicultural Festival on February 12-14. We are still looking for volunteers to work short shifts at the stall on the Friday and Saturday – despite being a few hours of work, it’s a fun experience and great way to get to know fellow club members. Sign up for a spot on the forum here!

Get organised

We’ll kick off education in 2016 with a 7.30pm session on organising your brewing. We’ve lined up three of the club’s stellar brewers – Craig ‘Stagger’ Webber, Tom ‘Dicko’ Dixon and Stephen ‘The Law’ Lawford – to talk about how they plan their brewing. As all three have proven their ability to turn out high numbers of award-winning beers, we’re keen to glean some insights into how to make better beer, more often.

Have your say!

Have you considered putting your hand up for committee? With the Canberra Brewer’s holding its annual general meeting on March 3, we will soon be calling for nominations for committee positions. If you’re passionate about the club and have a vision for what it can do for the Canberra brewing community (or know a club member who fits the bill) consider putting in a nomination. New and long-term members should consider applying. Nominations for committee close on February 25 (one week before the AGM). The office-bearers of the association are: president, treasurer, social secretary, competition secretary, education officer, and editor. There are also non-voting positions for an ordinary committee member (recently used as assistant social secretary) and webmaster. If you’ve got any questions, a current or former committee member would be only too happy to help out.

Judge-ment day

We’ve got a group of keen judges preparing to take the Beer Judge Certification Judging exam on March 19. To help with preparation we’ll need beer to practise on, so we’d love it if you could donate a couple of bottles of beer for the cause. If you think you’ve got something suitable, flick an email to education@canberrabrewers.com.au or come and see education officer Patrick at the meeting. We’re also going to need a couple of stewards to help out for the exam on Saturday, March 19, and a practise exam on or around Tuesday, March 8. Get in touch if you’d like to help out.

Club financial statements

Treasurer Andrew Chek put up the club’s financial statements at the December meeting and has also put them on the club’s forum here. Check them out before we vote to accept them at the meeting next week. As you can see, the club is in a healthy position financially, mostly due to the annual Multicultural Festival.

The raffle returns

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Canberra Brewers meeting without a fantastic raffle! We’re kicking off the year in style, with a brand spanking shiny new 19L keg from Mashematics, some gleaming Spiegelau glassware with matching beers, some swag from Grainfather/Mangrove Jack’s and some fascinating new “Hop Shots” – from Hop Dealz Australia. These aroma extracts you can add directly to finished beer (even straight into the glass) to give your beer some more hop punch. A big thanks to Hop Dealz Australia for hooking us up, the winners will have to report back with their findings!

Club library

Don’t forget to head to the club’s online library catalogue at https://canberrabrewers.librarika.com/ to peruse this great resource. You can reserve a copy of something and we’ll deliver it at the meeting. If the book is currently on loan, email education@canberrabrewers.com.au and we’ll arrange to have it brought back for you to borrow. Don’t have access to the library? Email us and we’ll hook you up.