Homebrew club in San Francisco

I'm looking to start a small homebrew group in San Francisco. The goal is to have a group of people that get together to brew regularly and share equipment, ingredients and recipes. I'm focused on a group of 'brewing partners' that use each other's expertise and resources (money, time, contacts) to improve their brewing faster and with less risk than they could on their own.

If you (or anyone you know) is interested, please send me an email at fogbrewing@gmail d0t com with the following info about yourself:

* Where do you live
* how long have you been home brewing?
* what is your current setup?
* How often do you brew?
* what are your favorite types to brew/drink?
* What are your goals for your brewing?
* Why do you want to join the group?
* What can you contribute to the group - time/space/money/gear/etc?


Let me kick this off by answering these myself so you get a sense of where I'm coming from:

I live in the Richmond district with my family (wife and 2 young kids). I've been brewing for a couple of years and at this point I brew mostly all grain 5 gal batches. I'm just getting started with all grain so my focus is to improve my technique (and efficiency) while improving the taste of my beers. I keg almost all my beers and can't imagine going back to bottling on a regular basis (both because of the work and the fun of having the beer on tap). I brew 10-15 times a year and tend to alternate between a few recipes that I incrementally improve and new exploration of other types of beer.

My favorite beers are imperial IPA, Porter (the darker the better), Pilsner and Belgian dubbel/trippel. My goals for my brewing are to continue to improve my taste and provide a way for as many people as possible to try the beers and provide feedback on them. My goals/hopes for the club would be: to learn faster by having several people who are psyched on the hobby join me, to increase my batch size to 10/15 gallons and improve my gear to support the new size and add a RIMS type system to the process and to brew more frequently (15-25 time a year).

I can contribute the time needed to brew 1-2 times a month and my share of the cost of ingredients and equipment (I'm very open to building equipment but don't have much in the way of tools or experience). I can also contribute space for brewing.

Thanks for taking the time to read and bottoms up!

a quick google turned up this: http://www.meetup.com/SF-Home-Brew-Club/

Looks like an active club... I live to far south to participate or I'd be interested. I've been meaning to try to find a good club in my area, there are a couple - I just need to find out when and where the meetings are.

While you can certainly start a new club if you want you should ask yourself if your needs can be met by one of the several clubs that already operate in the Bay Area. DOZE, for example, has many excellent brewers and you'll probably improve faster with the help of those guys than by starting a new club which will likely be composed of mostly less experienced or accomplished brewers.

Brew-Monkey has a list of homebrew clubs and has links for two in San Francisco. The Bay Area Brew Crew and the San Andreas Malts.
http://www.brew-monkey.com/links/clublinks.php

You can also check with the AHA (American Homebrewers Association) to check if a club is currently listed and active.
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/directories/find-a-club

Send a message to the contacts on the websites to see if the clubs have events planned that aren't listed on the websites. Website updates are lower in priority than brewing. I wouldn't judge a homebrew club by their website maintenance.

bruin_ale said:

a quick google turned up this: http://www.meetup.com/SF-Home-Brew-Club/

Looks like an active club... I live to far south to participate or I'd be interested. I've been meaning to try to find a good club in my area, there are a couple - I just need to find out when and where the meetings are.

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I'm in this, although its more of a social club than a traditional Brew Club (with a committee, competitions, BJCP judging, etc.)

Good folks and a LOT of fun though.

man this thread is old but it's worth posting some info anyway. the sf homebrewer's guild is just getting off the ground. the guy who started it is a pretty nice guy, i think it's worth checking out if you're looking for a more traditional brew club.

Hi there! I posted the below message on a similar thread a couple days ago, it's got all the info you need to get involved in the SFHG:

There is an active homebrew club in San Francisco as of February 2012! We are the San Francisco Homebrewer's Guild and you can find out more about us at http://sfhomebrewersguild.com/ and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/sfhomebrewersguild.

We've have an amazing response, it's clear that the SF homebrew community is ready to rock! As you'll see on our website and Facebook pages we've done several homebrew shares, brew days, and brewery tours since launching, with many more planned. We do a mix of events, some that are more public facing and some that are more education focused just for our homebrewer members. Please sign up for our email list and come out to an event sometime soon!

I'm the founder of the SFHG, Chris Cohen, you can reach me anytime at [email protected].

Cheers,

Chris

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