Club Posts

Great brew today at Slack's house. Two extract batches of 3 Lions, and a supplement boil for Ian's stout. Good times.  Meeting minutes below. Dues vote to be up soon.  Safe travels Boddy. God Speed. Continue reading →

I've heard from a number of people who have expressed trepidation about meeting tonight when we will also be meeting to brew on Saturday, and just met a few weeks ago. Admittedly, this makes the week pretty Baltibrew-centric for some of us, but there are a number of reasons why meeting times should remain as regular as possible — and more importantly — as separate from brew days as possible.

So Why?

Regularity of meetings do a number of things for the club:

• They allow what we say on the website about meeting dates to remain mostly true, which means casual, prospective members who find us via the Internet are more likely to show up to a meeting without having to contact us, or us having to contact them.
• They help us to support Muggsy's which is important if we want to continue to have a regular meeting place at which we can bring our homebrewed efforts. Without a regular meeting place, we similarly affect the likelihood of new arrivals.
• They get us on a schedule. The more lax we are about meeting regularly, the more likely we are to just let them fall to the wayside in favor of lackadaisically doing business at brews when we should be focused on  brewing.

Doing business at brews breaks our focus on brewing at the brew, and reduces time at the brews that could be better spent instructing members about what we're doing. It also limits our ability to do style and technical presentations during down times at brews since we have decided not to do these at meetings.

There will be times when we have to move or cancel meetings to accommodate other events — like Opening Tap of BBW/Chilibrew II, this past year — but it makes sense to minimize this as much as possible moving forward to ensure that we don't lose the privilege to meet at Muggsy's, and to make certain we get the important business of running the club done.

So show up if you can. If you can't, comment on this post if there is business you want done at the meeting.

Current agenda after the jump. Updates if we see comments. Continue reading →

This week:

1. Tuesday 2/1 6 p.m. at Pratt St. Ale House — 3 Lions Clone War event.
   This was an RSVP event, but I know a number of Baltibrew members inlcuding John Jester, and myself will be in attendance. Hope to see some of the rest of you there.
2. Thursday 2/3 8 p.m. at Muggsy's in Federal Hill — Regular Monthly meeting.
   We'll go over last month's business and prepare for a vote on dues.
3. Saturday 2/5 after 9 a.m.  Greg Slack's house — February Brew day.
   Being that we did not have any other nominations for a brew, we'll be cloning 3 Lions as part of the Clone War competition mentioned above.
   Bring something to eat, and beer to share.

Hope to see you all there. If you've got questions, or comments to make, here's your thread.

It was a marathon, but our January meeting resulted in a fair amount of demonstrable progress.

Three positions were filled with volunteer nominees. Since they ran unopposed, their appointment was not put to a vote. Their duties can be found in the meeting minutes download-able below.

• Treasurer — Greg Slack
• Secretary — Matt McCann
• Guild Rep — John Jester

A vote will be had on an amount to charge members for yearly dues, with the proceeds being used to increase the club's current brewing volume to a level that will allow members to  take home a reasonable amount of wort. Additional monies will be spent to create kits that can be checked out. Please make comment on the notion and amount of dues in the comments as you see fit.

We will meet to brew on Saturday February 5th at the home of Greg Slack. We still need to decide what to brew.

Make candidate beer nominations/suggestions in the comments, and we'll put this to a vote starting on Friday, with votes closed on Wed afternoon.

Download Minutes

Baltibrew holds its rescheduled January meeting at Muggsy's beginning at 8 p.m. this evening, 1-13-2011.

Lots of stuff on the docket to be discussed.

Continue reading →