January 2012 President’s Message
Welcome to 2012 Pacific Gravity Members!
Hopefully your New Year has kicked off to a great start and you are looking forward to some of the many events we have begun to plan for you.
We have a new Board that you elected into office this year- myself, Audrey Hill-Lindsay as President, Dave Mauceli as Vice-President, and long-term board member Craig Corley returning as Treasurer. We are very much looking forward to making this a great year and continuing the quality that allowed us to earn our fourth Anchor Club of the Year award in 2011.
SF Beer Week Road Trip
We will be heading up to San Francisco for beer week in mid-February and to accept our award from Anchor Brewing on the 18th. To celebrate, Anchor will be hosting a party for us and Kurt Periolat, who is continuing on as our Road Trip Coordinator, has worked hard to arrange a bus to take us up there on Friday 2/17 and return Sunday 2/19. He has also managed to block of a number of rooms at the Carlton Hotel at a reduced rate, which you can make reservations for directly and should do soon, as rooms are limited. For those of you interested, the cost is only $85, which you can leave in an envelope at Culver City Homebrew Supply Store or bring to our January club meeting on Thursday 1/19. You can contact Kurt at: RoadTrips@pacificgravity.com.
January Club Meeting: Lagers and Dark Lagers
Our January club meeting will feature Lagers as our style for the month and dark lagers for the Club-Only Competition. Please contact Carl Townsend, who is continuing on as our Competitions Coordinator at: Competitions@pacificgravity.com. If you are interested in brewing beer in-style for the upcoming meetings, please check the club website for the annual schedule. If you would like to bring a keg to a club meeting and enter it into the keg contest for that evening, please contact our Vice-President, Dave Mauceli at: VicePresident@pacificgravity.com.
Club Big Brew: Saturday, January 28th 2012
We will also be holding a Club Big Brew on Saturday, January 28th at our ever-gracious host Neil Saund’s duplex (home of our annual Holiday Party). We will be posting more information regarding this event soon, but if you have questions regarding it or anything else, please feel free to contact me at: President@pacificgravity.com
Board Member Positions
Treasurer & Fundraiser
As our on-going Treasurer, Craig Corley will be overseeing our budget, membership renewals, club merchandise, and working with our amazing Fundraiser, Terry Malloy, whom you have all see at the meetings working hard to raise money for our club. If you have suggestions or donations for our raffles or any other fundraisers, please contact Terry at: Fundraiser@pacificgravity.com
Communications Director
We have introduced a new board position of Communications Director this year in an effort to improve upon our club website, implement better social networking capabilities, and edit our newsletter and other formal communications. We have asked our previous newsletter editor and organizer of the upcoming Southern California Homebrew Festival, Victor Macias, to take on this appointment. In light of this change, we have also decided not to fill the position of Activities Director this year, rather redistributing the event planning amongst the other board members and creating specific committees for events to allow more volunteers to become involved on a shorter-term basis throughout the year. There have been some concerns expressed by some past board members that these changes are not in line with the manner in which our club and board has previously transitioned the board from year to year. In an effort to improve transparency between the board and the membership, and to allow feedback, approval, or concerns from the general membership regarding this, we will be posting the minutes from all board meetings to the website each month. So please, at your leisure, review the minutes for this month and either post in the comments section of that article on the website or send the board an email (Board@pacificgravity.com). You may also send any of us individual emails as well – we welcome your feedback.
Webmaster
In the role of Communications Director, Victor has begun to work with our ongoing webmaster, Dave Stickel, to make improvements to the website, making it more user friendly and creating a Discussion Forum for members to interact on. They are working to coordinate posting to our Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus accounts as well, so please follow us there too if you like. You can contact either of them at: Communications@pacificgravity.com (Victor) or Webmaster@pacificgravity.com (Dave).
Top Priority: Club By-Laws
As a board, and as a club as a whole, one of our first orders of business of the year (aside from all the fun stuff!) is to finalize a draft of our club by-laws which will finally allow us to become a legal non-profit entity. Other plans for the year include: more focus on style tasting & brewing education, finally an Eastbound road trip, and a fundraiser at our annual Summer Party. We’ll be sure to keep you posted with the details as they develop.
Again, Happy New Year to you all & wishing you an amazing year ahead. Please remember to join us at our first First Friday of the year tonight at The Four Points Sheraton LAX for happy hour draft prices and food & bottle specials until 9pm!
-Audrey Hill-Lindsay
President, Pacific Gravity
