Ideas for Home Brew Club meeting topics?

Our home brewing club (Rhode Island Fermentation Technicians-RIFT) holds monthly meetings and each meeting focuses on a different topic. Any of you have ideas for topics we might want to include in a future meeting?

Some examples of past topics:
Judging beer competitions
Holiday Beers
Upcoming events with opportunity for club participation
Fermentation techniques
Yeast starters and pitching rates

Any other suggestions?

 

You could do reviews of different hop varieties, unusual ingredients, you could come up with a group experiment and discuss the results at a meeting, discuss the finer points of brewing a specific style, have a group tasting of homebrew, have a tasting of an individual's brew, see if you can get guest speakers from the local brewing community. There's a lot more you can do, but I can't think of any more right off the top of my head.

OT: I live in CT and am interested in joining a club. Y'all take out of state members? I'm just over the border in Groton.

 

All great suggestions. Thanks!

I seem to remember Groton having a home brewing club... Hmmm

 

There isn't one here. I thought about forming one, but not sure if my military obligations would allow me take on that kind of responsibility.

 

Some of our meetings have educational seminars led by an individual...some have been

thermometry
mashing
partial mash
ect.

As techinal as you want.

 

My club starts each meeting with a "calibration beer" that one member generously supplies. We all drink and compare to what the BJCP guidelines say the style is and try to find any flaws and what may have caused them. I like how this gets everyone on the same train of thought and helps develop everyone's palate.

 

Sessions to learn the flavor and aroma of various hops. Our club did a single hop experiment were we all brewed the same light bodied pale ale and used a different hop to showcase the hop. Makes me think we should do that one again

 

I think our club did the same thing with yeast in the past and everyone was amazed at the diversity of the results.

 

Mine has done "style education" where a person brings in 4 or 5 examples of a certain style and we pass around the bottles.

 

Go tour a brewery.