June 2020 Newsletter

Brewers,
It’s been a while since our last newsletter and plenty has changed – but we hardly need to point that out. The club has some important updates.

2020 Club Competition
We’ve arranged a club competition for paid members. Entries close this Saturday 27 June 2020. More information can be found on the forum.

Monthly Club Meetings
With gradual lifting of social restrictions, the committee is looking to resume monthly club nights as soon as practicable. We’ll be doing this a little differently to usual in order to minimise risk – but nothing drastic. Our goal is to get together, enjoy beer, and have some good banter – plenty of isolation stories to be shared I’m sure.
We’re on track to host an August meeting, but this is subject to restrictions. Watch that space.

Oktoberfest
The annual Oktoberfest event will be a little different this year – but we’re committed to getting it done. We’re looking at options for catering and venue at the moment. Now is a good time to brew your favourite German beer for the event as they often benefit from a long conditioning time. We’ll be running a German beer comp to recognise the best entries.

Craftbrewer Discount
Our member discount for Craftbrewer purchases has been revised to add value for paid members. We now have a 5% discount code for the overall purchase price! The code is CBC.Discount.Code.2020 and is valid through to June 2021.

Membership expiry
On 30 June 2020, we’ll be disabling forum access for members not yet having paid for a 2020-2021 membership. We’ve emailed unpaid members with information on membership renewal.

We’ve extended the expiry date of club memberships to 30 June 2021, which means paid members have gained six months of free membership courtesy of the club. June 30 will become the new membership expiry date moving forward.

Social Activity
We’ve increased focus on the social aspects of the club – most notably the Canberra Brewers Members Facebook page, and brewer catchups on Zoom, including beer tastings and collaborative brewdays. We expect this platform to continue post-pandemic as online comms are of great value to the club.

Education
We were privileged to host brewing historian Peter Symons earlier in the year for a presentation on Old beers. We’re working on the video for that presentation and will have it ready soon.

If you’re in our Canberra Brewers Facebook Group you would have received an invitation to a tasting session for the limited-run Russian Imperial Stouts recently released by Canberra’s own BentSpoke and Capital breweries. Richard Watkins from BenSpoke and Adrian Graeber of Capital will be joining us via Zoom to talk us through their respective beers as well as join in some brewing chat. This is a great opportunity to hear direct from two of Australia’s top breweries how they went about making these rich and complex beers, as well as to ask some questions and drink a couple of tasty distanced beers with your fellow club members.

With the potential for in-person club meetings on the horizon Kip is keen to get some in-person education sessions going as well. These are a key part of our monthly meetings, for new and veteran brewers. Some ideas are in the works but get in touch with Kip or keep and eye on the forum if there’s anything in particular which you’d like to see or if there’s something in particular you’d like to demonstrate.

Lastly, the club library! This is a really great resource – two huge crates crammed with books on beer and brewing. We manage the library through an online system called Librarika (some of you know this, some may not) so if you haven’t got access/an account get in touch and we’ll get you set up. If you get an account but find it a bit hard to decide on a book since their titles are almost exclusively variations on the words ‘beer’, ‘brewing’, ‘how’ and ‘great’ then put something up on the forum for advice or drop Kip a line to arrange a time to have a look.

BJCP
We’re working on lining up some BJCP Judging events soon – watch that space.

Stay safe and brew strong!

Michael Brown (MTB)