March 1997, Volume 20, Issue 3

The State of the Club

Greetings from the President,

This year, The Draught Board celebrates it’s 20^th year, making it one of California’s oldest homebrew clubs. We have a full year of activities and events scheduled, including pub crawls, technical roundtable sessions, and, of course, social events.

We have started the year off well with a very successful 1997 National Bay Area Brew Off competition. I would like to again thank all those who made this year’s competition a big success. The first club activity of the year will be March’s tour of the Saint George Spirits distillery in Alameda on March 8^th. We will meet at Brewmaster for a very brief business meeting, and will then adjourn to Saint George’s. For more details, see the next article.

The April meeting will kick off a new feature that we hope will be popular. We will have our first technical roundtable, this one about grain. Everyone will have a chance to share their experience and expertise (we are all experts, aren’t we?).

May will once again feature a club "Brew In" in celebration of National Homebrew Day on May 3^rd (which ought to be a legal holiday) where we will all brew together and then taste the results later (probably at the picnic). This year’s Brew In will offer a choice of styles to brew. We’re looking for a volunteer who wants to host this year’s Brew In.

For an in-depth look at the year’s activities, check out the Activity Calendar at the end of this issue.

We’re still looking for a club archivist to maintain the photo albums, make a "morgue" of old issues of the Draught Notice, and help compile a history of the Draught Board.

I hope that this, our 20^th year will be a successful and prosperous year for the club and am looking forward to working with each of you to make it so.