February 2024 Meeting Minutes

February 15, 2024

Fossil Cove Brewery, Fayetteville, AR

• Attendance: 19
• Homebrews: 20

Meeting called to order at 7:11PM with an airhorn by Kevin Elsken and a toast by Keith Linn.

New Attendees

• Bradford, used to deliver craft beer in the area
• Connor, brought his first 2 homebrews
• Tyler, invited by Ben Farhner

Old Business

Reigning Brewer of the Month

• Greg Newman

Reigning Ass of the Month

• Kevin Elsken

Homebrew Feedback Sheets

• Discussed feedback sheet QR code solution with bottle hang tags.
• Kevin Elsken suggested adding a flag to the tags to indicate if feedback is wanted.
• Larry McCallister suggested partitioning the beers wanting feedback on a separate table.
• Discussed adding lines to the tags for writing beer name & style to avoid having to scan the tags for basic info.

Membership

• Club membership dues for 2024 are due! Talk to Chris Abel or pay online.

Frost Fest 2024

• Fossil Cove is looking for feedback on the event.
• Daniel Stubblefield suggested moving it to the spring, but they’d have to change the name!
• Randy Germann suggested switching from individual brewery tents to large tents with multiple brewers set up underneath to avoid issues with small tents blowing over.

Iron Brewer

• Judging completed for Q4 2023—English Porter
  • 1st place: Matt Daniels
  • 2nd place: Greg Newman
  • 3rd place: Tom Mattock
  • Special recognition for Ken Gill in a close 4th place.
  • Thanks to David, James Harvey, James Spurlin, Larry, Ty, and Alex for judging this round.
• Upcoming rounds:
  • Q1 2024: Specialty Cider (C2F), April 18 (FLOPS)
  • Q2 2024: Pepper Beer (30A), July 2 (OZ)
  • Q3 2024: Imperial Stout (20C), October 17 (FLOPS)
  • Q4 2024: Bière de Garde (24C), January 7 (OZ)

Upcoming Events

• National Homebrew Competition 2024
• Great Southern Beer Fest 2024
  • April 27, 4–9PM
  • Turnbow Park, Springdale, AR
  • Need more volunteers! Sign up here.
    • Need around 180 volunteers total, expecting 1200–1800 people in attendance
    • The more volunteers FLOPS provides, the more FLOPS gets financially

Club Budget

• Need to look into getting a P.O. box.
• Larry McCallister will put the club officers in touch with his contact in Little Rock for a custom club tent.
• Randy Germann asked what percentage of club members need to be AHA members in order to qualify for AHA club insurance.
• Patrick Bohannan made a motion to approve the proposed budget. The motion was seconded and approved by the club.

Brewer of the Year Points

• Asked for more ideas of activities that support the club.
  • Larry McCallister suggested referring a new member.
  • Larry McCallister suggested becoming a certified BJCP judge.
• David Johnson suggested covering competition entry fees instead of awarding BOTY points.
  • The club bylaws to provide for covering competition entry shipping costs already, but not entry fees.
• Larry McCallister made a motion to point reduction for Ass of the Month.
• Patrick Bohannan made a motion to take the month to think about the changes. We’ll revisit in the March meeting.

New Business

Brewer of the Year 2023

• 1st place: Randy Germann with 2857.5 points!
• 2nd place: Keith Linn with 1040 points
• 3rd place: Larry McCallister with 765 points

Ass of the Year 2023

• Daniel Stubblefield took the bobble donkey.

Upcoming Education Presentations

• February: Patrick Bohannan to do a presentation on pepper beers.
• March: Greg Newman to do a presentation on using the Bru’n Water spreadsheet.
• April–December: TBD
• Ben Farhner to do a presentation on using herbs & spices sometime this year.
• Connor, the new attendee, to do a presentation on building a keezer. He just built one recently.
• No one claimed the “cookbook method” education suggestion. Maybe Tom?
• David Johnson volunteered to do a presentation on preparing koji for making sake.
• Randy Germann volunteered to do a presentation on making ciders or lagers.
• Daniel Stubblefield mentioned the University of Arkansas has a certain amount of hops from their research program that they can allocate to the club (2–3 lbs). The club members could brew beers with the hops and discuss the results as an education piece.

Upcoming Events

• Kevin Elsken (Little Boy Brewery) to host a brew-in/birthday party on February 24, 2024.
• David Johnson brought up the Mead Stampede. More info here.
  • Entries due April–June.
  • Judging July 18.
• Daniel Stubblefield brought up doing a joint homebrew event with CAF (Central Arkansas Fermenters) at a midway point, possibly at the new Prestonrose location.
• Randy Germann gauged club interest in another Big Brew day in May.
  • Discussed collaboration opportunities with Fossil Cove, New Providence, and Boston Mountain.
  • Randy will explore options.

Miscellaneous

• Club agreed that Kevin’s brew-in will be the club social this month.
• Club officers had nothing new to report.
• No new breweries to report.
• Kevin Elsken presented the idea of a club library of brewing books. There was no interest from club members.

Education

• Patrick Bohannan did a presentation on pepper beer (BJCP style 30A: Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer)
  • Patrick offered hot peppers to club members.

Kevin Elsken made a motion to close meeting at 8:26PM. Seconded and approved, opening GODS (Greater Ozark Drinking Society).