December Meeting
This year's holiday meeting will feature numerous hand-selected Christmas ales and winter warmers from around the country and around the world. As we encourage at all of our previous holiday meetings, all guests can bring in a dish or snack to share with the group. The club will be proving only limited foods so we ask for help out to keep something in everyone's bellies as they sample all these fantastic beers.
As some of you heard at our November meeting, we will be having a change in location over to Boatyard Brewing Company. The meeting date and time will be the same: December 16th and 7pm.
We want to make sure everyone is able to celebrate safely. Please make plans for either a designated driver or taxi cab to get your home. We look forward to see you all on the 16th!
IPA Experiment
We will also be sampling the results of our brewing project at the December meeting. Back in early November at the Learn to Homebrew event, several members each brewed an IPA based on a similar recipe but with various changes to ingrendients and process. If you participated, please bring in your finished beer and a brief write-up of the adjustments you made. This should prove to be a education experience to let everyone know how they can shape one of their favorite brews.
Hop Head Farms
Membership benefits liason Andrew VanderKlok has been hard at work and has secured yet another fantastic perk for all you KLOB members. Until the end of the year, you can use the code "KLOBdiscount" on Hop Head Farms website to receive 10% off your hop purchase.
http://hop-head-farms.myshopify.com/collections/hops
There is also a code for merchandise: "KLOBmerch20". We will have a new set of codes for 2014 but we will only make them available to members in good standing. One more reason to renew your membership!
Kalamazoo Kup Results
We had 47 entries in our inaugural competition. Eight judges (seven of which were BJCP certified) sample and evaluated and after many hours of deliberation, we have a winner! Make sure to attend the December meeting to hear the results. If you submitted one or more entries, we will also have your score sheets so you can know how your beer faired.
NHC 2014
We are officially less than 6 months away from the National Homebrew Conference which will be hosted in Grand Rapids on June 12 through 14. There's no time like the present to start brewing so of your more complex beers, ciders and meads that will need some extra time to be ready. We are looking to represent both Kalamazoo and the state of Michigan in a big way by bringing not only our best beers but lots of them!
https://www.facebook.com/NHC2014
http://www.ahaconference.org/conference/about/
Brewtoad Group
Many of us like to share recipes with our fellow homebrewers. Others like to use software to help make those recipes and catalog our brew sessions. Brewtoad.com does both of those things! Recently, they made an addition to include groups in their website to further showcase the social-network features they offer. We jumped at the chance and created our own group:
http://www.brewtoad.com/groups/kalamazoo-libation-organization-of-brewers-klob
If you've never used the site, it's very easy and intuitive. If you already manage your recipes with other pieces of software, there's also a way to import them using BeerXML. We look forward to seeing all the cool ideas our club members have to offer!
2014 Officers and Memberships
Per our bylaws, we will be having our elections for officers at the December meeting. We will also have the latest batch of 2014 membership cards ready. If you signed up at the November, we will have yours available. If you didn't, we will have forms for you to renew. Dues are still just $15 and we are constantly adding new benefits.