Any interest in a brew club to the north of Melbourne?

[pomsaleius]

See I told you putting your AHB names on your name tags was a great idea!

Yeah, well I didn't. Bet you can't guess what my real name is.
Happy to stick to first Tuesdays if it suits, but quite like the idea of having a weekend meeting in addition now and then.
OK, so assuming we next meet on 4th March, any preferences for where? If it's a commercial venue, then probably brew tasting is out, but would allow us to get down to discussing things.
The other local brewery is of course Temple. Not sure whether we might consider approaching them. Ron and Renata are very nice people, and of course Ron (and yes, I know he's leaving temple) comes from a homebrewing background, so I'm guessing they'd be pretty friendly towards us.

 

[DU99]

a club needs a regular meeting place.not going around to every brewery in the area.to me that's not a club....also does the "club" have a Official elected spokesman yet..

 

[djar007]

It worked for essendon steve?

 

[carniebrew]

I agree we need to find a place for club 'meetings'. I'm wondering if things like brewery catchups and beer tastings could be something organised by the club as extra-curricular activities done in addition to regular club meetings. Do other clubs do something similar? We could set up some kind of roster where 3 or 4 members bring their beers for tasting each meeting, rotating amongst everyone during the year.

I spoke to Kevin about this on Tuesday, I think to make sure we keep the momentum up we need to (eventually):

1. Settle on a name, so we can get an AHB section up and running and have a place to discuss our club. We've had 17 votes so far, so I'll probably close the poll off tomorrow night.
2. Get an informal committee together, 3 or 4 guys to look after the administrative side of finding a meeting location and organising events
3. Somewhere down the track, have an election at a meeting to appoint official committee members.
4. Once that's done, look to formally incorporate as a non-profit club
5. If all this works out, and we get a good regular membership, look to work with the other clubs to run an annual comp of some sort.

etc etc....and in amongst all that we'll have a club brew comp on Thunder Road's pilot brewery, visit a few pubs and breweries around the place, get some craft beer tastings going, yadda yadda....

Thoughts?

And here's the naming poll link again for anyone yet to vote: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XNT2GNS

 

[BreadMurderer]

I agree that although our meetup was great not much was accomplished. The next meet should be purely down to business with the schedule set out, goals we wish to complete and actions for the next meeting. The first few meetups will be fairly intensive with regards to setting up the club but once that's out the way (sooner the better) we can get down to what the club is really about. Participating in brew days would be fantastic and I personally would want to help with a BIAB as I should be getting my urn next week (all things going well with eBay etc). Looks like the name should finally be sorted though, think I'll have to drink to that. :beerbang:

 

[manticle]

Yeah, well I didn't. Bet you can't guess what my real name is.
Happy to stick to first Tuesdays if it suits, but quite like the idea of having a weekend meeting in addition now and then.
OK, so assuming we next meet on 4th March, any preferences for where? If it's a commercial venue, then probably brew tasting is out, but would allow us to get down to discussing things.
The other local brewery is of course Temple. Not sure whether we might consider approaching them. Ron and Renata are very nice people, and of course Ron (and yes, I know he's leaving temple) comes from a homebrewing background, so I'm guessing they'd be pretty friendly towards us.

I think Renata would be receptive. They hosted a group of us for 13 weeks or so for a BJCP study group. Brew tasting not necessarily out (obviously we tasted ours during the study group) - just approach it in the right way.

 

[TimT]

When we have a name I'd be happy to set up a blog/website for the group, along with anyone else who feels like doing that sort of bloggy-websity work. That, and mail the admins to get a sub-forum up and running.

I am ambivalent about the need for a committee - my feeling is, as I mentioned on the first meeting, it's best to keep things simple. Given that we're talking about occasional weekend meets and a competition, some organisation is required, but surely a timetable would do a lot of that organising anyway?

To that end I suggest something like the following:

MARCH, first Tuesday
Brew club committee discussion, maybe have a talk by someone from Grain and Grape or Home Make It or some other brewing supplies store? And maybe we ave a tasting of a few more beers from members.

APRIL, Sunday arvo
Tasting session at Carwyn Cellars in Thornbury, suggestion by one of our Carniebrew.

MAY, first Tuesday
Maybe a talk from a member about a certain beer style they have expertise in? And, of course, tasting of member's beers. (Hic!)

JUNE, first Tuesday
Another talk? More tasting (ya drunkards!)

JULY, Sunday
Winter beer-cookery session/brew day. Go on, have some more tastings. Don't mind if I do.

AUGUST, first Tuesday
Another talk? More tasting!

SEPTEMBER, Saturday/Sunday
Is winter over already? Damn! But - high time for a brew competition!

OCTOBER, first Tuesday
Whew, it's getting hot already. Still, I'd like to propose something different for this month - I give a reading of poetry for everyone. Beer-related poetry, naturally. Not long, 15 minutes each poet? (I don't want to grandstand here, just if there's room for people to give talks I'd be happy to volunteer myself. So feel free to knock this back if you like.) (Sample).

NOVEMBER, first Tuesday
Exhausting just thinking of summer. Time to have some more beers from our members.

DECEMBER, Sunday arvo
Pre-Christmas drinkies!

What do you think? I feel drunk just writing that.

 

[DU99]

First tuesday in November is a holiday in melbourne..

 

[TimT]

Oh yeah.... the horsie-worsie thing....

Well that month could be a weekend thing or we could shift proceedings to one or two days after.

 

[pomsaleius]

First tuesday in November is a holiday in melbourne..

Not for me. I work for an online betting company.
Anyway, there are obviously differing opinions on the whole committee thing. As there are about so many things. And we may not be able to solve them all in one go.
Personally, I especially think there will be a need for some kind of formality around the responsibilities when we start dealing with money. The other thing is we are sometimes likely to be dealing with hot liquor, open flames, gas bottles of one sort or another. There's an argument for potentially getting some kind of insurance for the club. And if we have a written constitution, then there can be no arguments about how we run the club and what we do (and without this, I predict there definitely will be). And if the officers are elected, there can be no arguments about who makes what decisions. We can't possibly set up online polls for every single decision going forward. Unless we do this, then we're basically just a bunch of blokes who brew, and who get together now and then and call ourselves a club.
On this, I'd especially like to hear the opinions of others who are in other brew clubs. How are they run?

 

[Spiesy]

When we have a name I'd be happy to set up a blog/website for the group, along with anyone else who feels like doing that sort of bloggy-websity work. That, and mail the admins to get a sub-forum up and running.

I am ambivalent about the need for a committee - my feeling is, as I mentioned on the first meeting, it's best to keep things simple. Given that we're talking about occasional weekend meets and a competition, some organisation is required, but surely a timetable would do a lot of that organising anyway?

To that end I suggest something like the following:

MARCH, first Tuesday
Brew club committee discussion, maybe have a talk by someone from Grain and Grape or Home Make It or some other brewing supplies store?

Or you could support someone who is actually part of the club.

 

[TimT]

Works for me!

 

[Spiesy]

I was just being cheeky… but more than happy to look after fellow "Northern Brewers" in some way, shape or form.

 

[New_guy]

Not for me. I work for an online betting company.
Anyway, there are obviously differing opinions on the whole committee thing. As there are about so many things. And we may not be able to solve them all in one go.
Personally, I especially think there will be a need for some kind of formality around the responsibilities when we start dealing with money. The other thing is we are sometimes likely to be dealing with hot liquor, open flames, gas bottles of one sort or another. There's an argument for potentially getting some kind of insurance for the club. And if we have a written constitution, then there can be no arguments about how we run the club and what we do (and without this, I predict there definitely will be). And if the officers are elected, there can be no arguments about who makes what decisions. We can't possibly set up online polls for every single decision going forward. Unless we do this, then we're basically just a bunch of blokes who brew, and who get together now and then and call ourselves a club.
On this, I'd especially like to hear the opinions of others who are in other brew clubs. How are they run?

Agreed - we need examples from other clubs as references.
Instead of a constitution we could generate terms of reference. This would define objectives , scope, membership, attendance , location and regulations
A subsection of this is meeting minutes.

We could start at next meeting by defining our terms of reference.

Happy to assist in development.

 

[technobabble66]

I was just being cheeky… but more than happy to look after fellow "Northern Brewers" in some way, shape or form.

Too late, Speisy: I reckon you're pencilled in for a 1 hr power point lecture on march 4th!

Ooooh - and I believe that could be a sneaky attempt at influencing the name! I'm a cheap *******, so I'm happy to call ourselves the Fat Hairy Boozers, or anything else, if it gets us a 2% discount ;-) Or were you just referring to enlightening us in your 1hr presentation?

 

[technobabble66]

+1 on checking with the other brewing clubs.
There's no harm in seeing how they've done it and what worked best, rather than us theorizing on the best course of action.
I'm keen to keep it low key, but a little formal structure might be smart. And just because it's there doesn't mean it has to be taken to the extreme.

 

[TimT]

Yeah - maybe we should just get someone round from another brew club to give a talk. I did suggest that on the first meeting, though nothing was formalised.

I guess I've been involved in a few sort-of clubs around Melbourne. Everyone does things differently. One group meets every month in a library for a talk and asks for a gold coin donation to cover costs - no committee structure or anything like that. Another group, my poetry mates and I, just meet at the pub every Saturday. There's a feature poet who the bar pays and the rest of us just read a few poems for free. This year we're holding a competition and have raised over $1000 for prizes so far - just through a few people making a donation every week. There's a group of friends who run that and are responsible for the MCing, but they're not an official committee - everything is very low key. No terms of reference or elections. We're all friends and it works fine.

Above all, the point of a brew club is not having a committee or terms of reference. Being 'just a bunch of blokes' (and/or blokettes!) 'who brew and get together occasionally' is, I submit, the point. We get together, share a few drinks, have a few laughs, learn a bit more about brewing.

 

[Spiesy]

Too late, Speisy: I reckon you're pencilled in for a 1 hr power point lecture on march 4th!

Ooooh - and I believe that could be a sneaky attempt at influencing the name! I'm a cheap *******, so I'm happy to call ourselves the Fat Hairy Boozers, or anything else, if it gets us a 2% discount ;-) Or were you just referring to enlightening us in your 1hr presentation?

lol

 

[carniebrew]

I think it's time to close off the poll. We got to 19 votes pretty quickly, and have trickled along to 26 in total now, with the last vote from about midday today.

I was about to post a screenshot of the final result, but for some reason AHB won't let me attach files in this topic?? Here's a link to the screenshot on my Google Drive, I hope it works...if not someone let me know and I'll work out something else: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9zdUsr9umgXRW9lSlpzdHZmMWM/edit

In summary, Merri Mashers shot out to an early lead, and held on solidly from there. At one stage it was 13-6 in favour of Merri Mashers, but the Northern Brewers made a late charge to narrow the gap. In the end it was 15-10-1 (yes, one person couldn't stand either name). In percentage terms we had:

Merri Mashers - 57.69%
Northern Brewers - 38.46%
Hate 'em both - 3.85%

Certainly a close result, although I suppose one way to look at it is that "Merri Mashers" had 50% more votes than "Northern Brewers".

Thanks for all taking the time to vote, and I guess if nobody lodges an objection with the court of disputed returns, hopefully we can move on with getting our own area created in the AHB Brew Club section. If there's a Mod reading this, can you PM me to let me know if you guys can set this up for us please?

 

[TimT]

Don't think all moderators can set up a sub-forum. Bradsbrew and someone else - forget their name.

I've sent a PM off with the request.