I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Years Eve. On this first day of the new year I wanted to share a few things the officer group has been working on and discuss the goals I would like to see us achieve this coming year. First off I want to thank Paul Brown for his years of service as President. I am happy and privileged to be able to continue to work together with him serving the Club in 2017.

In 2017, the Beer of the Month competition will change to promote discussions on various beer styles. Every other month, there will be limited beer styles allowed to enter in the BOTM. This will usually accompany a style talk related to the scheduled BOTM style. On the opposite months, all styles will be open to be submitted. Please review the calendar below to see which styles are allowed each month for 2017-18.

Pavel and I have put together a list of competitions for 2017. The list can be found here. Bookmark the link and check back throughout the year. Some dates are guesses until finalized. Key: Green lines are competitions that are open. Yellow lines are competitions that should be open, but not all dates have been confirmed. Red lines are competitions where registration has closed. Bold words mean the dates have been confirmed.

A nice blog post from Aaron Wittman at the Rare Barrel: https://www.therarebarrel.com/blog/An-Overview-on-Fermentation-at-The-Rare-Barrel Yeah, pretty much what I do 😉

Vito Delucchi was named the 2016 DOZE Homebrewer of the Year, and honored at the club’s Holiday Party on Dec. 5th.

Hey DOZE’rs, Our once a year holiday event is next Monday night at 6:30PM at Lindsey Wildlife Museum. Bring your spouse/significant other, the beer you’ve saved to share with your best beer buddies, and plan to have some fun. If you would like to showcase a homemade dessert please do so as we’ll have a prize for best dessert. Oh, and $20 or so for the raffle if you want to take home some cool stuff – we’ll have well over $1,500 in various items.

This month’s meeting will be after Thanksgiving, on the 28th!! We will have Chris Graham from MoreBeer, your BOTM table, elections for officers, and gadgets! Bring a gadget if you have one!

Tomorrow November 3rd 2016 is International Stout Day. To celebrate several DOZE members will be visiting Shadow Puppet Brewing and Eight Bridges Brewing both in Livermore to do a Stout Crawl. Shadow Puppet currently has their Mocha Stout on tap that was brewed by DOZE members Craig Danielson and Vito Delucchi. Eight Bridges has on tap their Oaty McStoutface and O’Beardsly Stout. We plan to meet at Shadow Puppet Brewing around 4pm and make our way over to Eight Bridges shortly after.

Tonight we will have a mish-mash of a meeting with several speakers talking about mashing, split batches, and getting the most out of your brew day. Bring a gadget to share if you have one. We will also have the usual BOTM. And, we will be accepting nominations for next years officers, including two new categories: Jockey Box chairperson and Event Coordinator.

Homebrew Club Night at Shadow Puppet Brewing. 5-9pm. Friday 10/7. Member plus guest welcome to come taste out first 6 beers and help us figure out which Blonde ale we should introduce to the public for the official soft opening Sat/Sun 10/8-10/9.