Homebrew Club Activities Ideas

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bknifefight

bknifefight

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The homebrew club I belong to is looking to start collecting dues and make it a more educational and formal brew club. A few ideas that I have to utilize the dues are:
- Pay for brewery tours and potentially transportation
- Commercial beer tastings
- Reimburse members who get a BJCP certification
- Reimburse members competition entry fees
- Buy an oak barrel
- Brew a large beer to fill said barrel, paid for by the club, to be given to club members at an annual party

Does anyone else have any ideas? I'd love to hear what other clubs across the country are doing to makes dues a worthwhile thing for their members.
 
Not being part of a club I can only throw out ideas.

T-shirts?
Recipe notepads like AHS sent me with one of my orders. I still love that pad.
Club equipment for group brews?
a judge for club competitions?
BeerSmith or something similar to build up a club recipe book that people can save the bsm files off of
 
bknifefight said:
The homebrew club I belong to is looking to start collecting dues and make it a more educational and formal brew club. A few ideas that I have to utilize the dues are:
- Pay for brewery tours and potentially transportation
- Commercial beer tastings
- Reimburse members who get a BJCP certification
- Reimburse members competition entry fees
- Buy an oak barrel
- Brew a large beer to fill said barrel, paid for by the club, to be given to club members at an annual party

Does anyone else have any ideas? I'd love to hear what other clubs across the country are doing to makes dues a worthwhile thing for their members.
Click to expand...

One of the most important things to do at this point is to draft up very basic bylaws that at minimum outline the mission of the club and the process for deciding how the money get's spent. A statement that the club is "non profit" is a good idea as well.

Make sure the president is given a certain level of discretion for incidental spending like tasting cups and other small amounts. $20-30 is a good amount and then after that, require it go to a club vote. It also depends on how big the club is.

If your goal is to grow the membership, spend some money on advertising via nice business cards, a formal website, etc.

One thing that is tricky is that big spends should always benefit the whole membership (or a realistic majority) and/or support the mission of the club. When an activity is exclusive at all, it should be either paid outright by the participants or only partially subsidized by the club. E.g. if you have 20 members but a barrel project only has room for 10 shares, it's not fair for the other 10 to effectively pay into it.

Ideas:
Commercial Calibration. Buy the BJCP top examples of a given category and taste them in order while reading the guidelines. Do one style per meeting.

Name that style game. Buy the listed commercial example of 5 random subcategories and have the club taste each one without showing them the bottle (use pitchers or growlers). Have them name the category (1point), subcategory(1point) and brewery (1point). Most points wins something, a book, or reimbursement of the BJCP exam costs, A bottle of each of the beers...whatever.

Buy the off flavors dosing kits and do a few every month.

Pay the entry fee and shipping for the club's choice in the AHA club only competitions.

Buy equipment and books for the club "library".. Floor Corker, books, DVDs, etc.
 
Canopy shelter
Big cooler w/ wheels (With club name and logo on it)
Banner (With club name and logo on it)
Jockey box(s) (With club name and logo on it)
Regulator with fittings/couplings for corny (pin and ball) and sanke kegs.
10# (or bigger) CO2 tank

Now you are set up to do stuff like days in the park, church picnics, beer events ect.ect. Our club has had a few donate beer and give it away at events and while it sounds silly it is a GREAT way to spread the love of homebrewing. A larger nearby club reimburses it's members for ingredients for such events.

After that look into Shirts or hats for the club to wear at events.

THEN look into barrels and other stuff.
 
A few of us from our club are getting together tonight to discuss a FeBREWary event. Has anyone ever done anything like this?
 
Do you mean a group brew day? Our club does that twice a year. In May (National Homebrew day) and November (Teach a friend to brew day)
 
We did teach a friend to home brew day. Not so much a "group brew", but we had a couple guys volunteer to do demo brews. One did an A/G and another did an extract kit. I think for FeBREWary they are wanting to do something different, maybe a competition.
 
The 12 Beers of Christmas was something I was going to pitch to the club. But here's the question: Do we just have 12 people do it and each person gets 1/12th of each batch? -or- Does the club pay for the beer ingredients and every member gets 1 bottle from each batch?
 
bknifefight said:
The 12 Beers of Christmas was something I was going to pitch to the club. But here's the question: Do we just have 12 people do it and each person gets 1/12th of each batch? -or- Does the club pay for the beer ingredients and every member gets 1 bottle from each batch?
Click to expand...

Dealers choice. This years one sent out 2-3 bottles to each participant.
 
+1 Bylaws
+1 nice-looking, up-to-date website

*Register your club with the AHA and participate in AHA events (Big Brew, Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day)

*Ask your LHBS, local breweries, and bottle shops if you can post a flyer/ad/meeting invitation in their shop

*Start scheduling annual events. My current club does Big Brew, but also does a "Cluster Brew" in the fall, a "Christmas" party in January, and a Brews Cruise in the summer where we rent a charter bus and drive to a handful of breweries, meaderies, and/or cideries. My former club had an annual holiday beer-food match dinner, appetizer/dessert-beer match in the spring, shrimp boil in the fall.

*Consider hosting/sponsoring a BJCP-sanctioned competition. It takes dedication, and a lot of volunteer support. Might wait a couple years before taking this one on.
 
Also looking at ways to take our club to the next level. We are a splinter group from another club, with the basic thought of focusing on brewing. That's been good so far, but we need to expand membership to bring in fresh ideas and people.
 
bknifefight said:
The 12 Beers of Christmas was something I was going to pitch to the club. But here's the question: Do we just have 12 people do it and each person gets 1/12th of each batch? -or- Does the club pay for the beer ingredients and every member gets 1 bottle from each batch?
Click to expand...

I figure 2 bottles from each batch. Assuming a 5 gal batch, you get to keep 1/2 of your own brew and get 22 bottles from others for the other half.
 
I am the President of the Malt Munching Mash Monsters in Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana

We charge members $10 a year, or $15 if they want to include their spouse. For that they get a membership card and also get the right to enter our annual member only club comp.

We save most of our money, we are growing fast and soon we will need to rent a meeting room. But we do spend money on our annual comp,
- supplies for a few of the festivals we attend and serve at (beer pitchers, lables, signs, etc.)
- Club Comp (update our trophy, bread, cups)
- Advertising (cards signs, banners)
- Web site/ forum (www.maltmunchingmashmonsters.com)
- Learn to homebrew day (snacks, beer kit, supplies)
- Big Brew (beer kit)

We generaly do tastings at the meetings, but those supplies are donated. I also agree that a good set of by-laws are needed. Also a good trustworthy Treasurer.

Feel free to email me if you need any additional info/ insights
[email protected]
 
intra-club contests/challenges.

My club does several of these a year. They aren't mandatory but most participate.

Some of our challenges have been:

Brew any batch you want as long as it has a smoked malt in it.

Brew a Christmas beer. We exchanged them with other participants. Some were bombs and some turned out great.

Club provides the base grain recipe but members choose how its hopped. Each person basically made the same recipe and the only thing that was different were all the hop additions. Was very interesting trying them all side by side.

Grocery store challenge: all ingredients must be purchased at grocery store.
 
I always though that a homebrewclub would be greatly educated by a club wide SMaSH brew. Everybody brews a different SMaSH and then everybody gets to try them all. You could do side x side comparisons of the different malts and hops and you could even include extract brewers by limiting them to 1lb of one kind of specialty grain with plain DME.
 
We elected officials (I was voted in VP) and started planning a BJCP competition for the fall. SO far things are going really well, even though we are probably jumping the gun on planning so early.

We also did a bulk grain buy from North Country Malts since I have an account. We quickly filled a pallet with over a ton of grain, which was exciting. It should be here today or tomorrow. My wife doesn't know I ordered 300 lbs for myself lol
 
We didn't do that this time around but will in the future. After I had collected all the money, someone suggested it lol
 
Here in Columbus our club has about 140 members, the membership has doubled in the last 4-5 years. Our membership fee are only $15 per year, but I'm always amazed buy the amount of funds in our account when it is noted by the treasurer at each meeting. Generally there is $ 5000 to $8000.

We have 3 or 4 craft beer events each year in Columbus, the club has an arrangement with the promoters to provide volunteers to set-up, pour and clean-up. Not only members are permitted to volunteer but there spouses, children, and friends. They promoter provides the volunteers with free admission, shirt, tasting glass, food, parking money and all the beer you want, and the club with a nice donation. This is where most of our funds are generated.
 
A couple of thoughts:

Build days - Have someone in the club teach people how to make equipment like their own stir plates or cooler mash tuns.

Iron Brewer - Pick an ingredient (e.g. cocoa nibs) and see what everyone can make with it. I recommend sticking to ingredients that can be found in at least one commercial beer.

Brew with a master - Have a brew day where some skilled brewer will help all the junior brewers with a technique e.g. decoction mashing or Brettanomyces.

Watch out for the club barrels, we chose the most consistent brewers to brew for the 55 gallon barrel. There were a few members that were really upset from the selection process, which was basically the senior members choosing people.
 
OneoftheBHJs said:
A couple of thoughts:


Iron Brewer - Pick an ingredient (e.g. cocoa nibs) and see what everyone can make with it. I recommend sticking to ingredients that can be found in at least one commercial beer.

Brew with a master - Have a brew day where some skilled brewer will help all the junior brewers with a technique e.g. decoction mashing or Brettanomyces.
We do something similar. Our annual competition is limited to members. We all brew the same style. Its interesting to see how each brewer interprets the styles diffrently. We choose a diffrent style each year, and try to pick one that makes people get out of their element just a bit.

The more senior brewers in our club also are very open to educating new brewers, most of us have open invintations on brew days. Our clubs main goal is education.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
my club does an iron brewer contest. Two brewers go head to head and pick a base malt specialty malt, yeast and hop from a hat and make beer with those. The finalist draw again later and the year and go head to head again. It's pretty cool.
 
I forgot our favorite activity, the "House Crawl". Twice a year we find a group of brewers within a mile of each other and we walk from house to house sampling beers and having snacks at each house. Some of the brewers are also Foodies so it is amazing. One of the brewers has a backpack that fits a corny, so we had beer for the walks. A few suggestions; limit the house to 6 or less, encourage people not on the trail to partner with houses to bring home brew(they don't need to bring more than a growler), have someone be the time keeper and hold each house to 45mins, have everyone bring their own glasses that are less than 5 oz and recognize that the last house might be up late. It is a blast and I recommend every club try this.
 
I like the idea of jockey boxes and/or CO2 canister and kegs for mutual use throughout the club and for meetings. You can also use these for rentals, I know a LHBS that doesn't rent jockey boxes but recommends a local club that will rent theirs out for a nominal fee for extra club income ( or other perks like shirts or advertising)
 

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