Thanks to everyone who came out for April’s monthly club meeting.  We had an excellent turnout, especially considering the last minute change of location.  A special thanks to Ian for hosting us again and on such short notice.  Another special thank you to everyone who brought out beer for the night.  I think there were more kegs of beer at last nights meeting than I have seen at a monthly club meeting in quite a long time – so good work brewing and sharing the beer!

Here is a summary of the items covered last night at the meeting for those of you who were unable to attend, couldnt hear us, or drank a few too many and cant remember what was covered:

• First, we issued our new Associate’s Cards to everyone in attendance who has paid in full for this calendar year.  The new cards are awesome – they are thermal printed PVC cards like you would get issued from Costco or the AHA for example.  This card entitles you to discounts at local businesses.  Currently we have two discounts in place – 5% off at Culver City Home Brew Supply and 10% off @ City Tavern in Culver City.  As we are able to gather up additional discounts/benefits for memberships we will post about them here on the blog or you can click on the menu item above under About > Benefits to see a current list of club benefits.  If you have not paid your dues yet please do so ASAP so you can get your new card.  The only way to redeem said benefits is by presenting this new PVC ID card, last years cards will not be accepted.  Thanks again to Ramesh and Tad for putting this together for us.
• We had to do a last minute change of venue this week, which was unfortunate.  There is a newish Q&A issued by the ABC regarding home made wine and beer and where you can serve these items.  Unfortunately one of the items on that list made it illegal for us to share our homebrew at Smog City, so we made the call to cancel that location for last night and move to Ian’s.  Right now it is very important for you as a homebrewer to understand the law so that you dont expose yourself to legal issues.  Here is a link to the new Q&A.  Also note that in this document it lists homebrewing demonstrations as illegal.  Thanks again to Kingsley for rallying the troops to a new location and to Ian for hosting.
• Last night we held our vote to ratify the bylaws presented to the club last week on this blog.  The vote was nearly unanimous (the only nay being Dean – who wrote the bylaws – because he wanted there to be at least one nay).  This is really great news for our club and is the first official step towards our march towards non-profit status.  The Board and I will file our articles of incorporation as soon as possible and continue through with the remaining paperwork towards our goal of becoming a 501c3 Non-Profit club and filing for Tax Exempt status with the IRS.  A special thank you to Dean for the amount of work he put in to create these bylaws is needed – if you can buy the guy a beer sometime you should.  Another special thank you to the club associates who spent the time reading through the document.  Its not a fun read, but a lot of you spent the time and we all appreciate that.
• We handed out the LAAW & PG Cask forms last night and many of you filled out your special ingredient forms.  For those of you who did not get a chance to fill out the forms before the end of the night, you can email me @ President@pacificgravity.com and I will send you an electronic copy of the form to be filled out.  For the next iteration of this event we will switch over to using a google doc so that it is 100% online.  If you are interested, please try and get your form in to me no later than Friday May 2nd.
• The Summer Party will most likely be held on July 26th this year at Dean’s house.  We should know in another month or so if this is date is 100% set in stone.  There will be more information coming at next month’s Club Meeting regarding planning and organizing this event.
• Lastly, as I mentioned at the March meeting and last night, we have been asked to provide donated homebrew to an event on May 17th in Manhattan Beach called “Bite at the Beach”.  This is a non-profit event which allows us as homebrewers to donate our brews to be poured.  I am really excited about this event.  If you look at the website you can see our logo on it up front.  You officially have one month until this event and I would like to get an idea of how many of you are interested in donating beer so that I can let the organizers know how much homebrew to expect.  Please email me @ president@pacificgravity.com to let me know if you are interested.  I will be bringing 10-15 gallons of beer with me for the event – many of you approached me last night saying you would be donating beer as well – which is awesome.  I will follow up this post tomorrow or Sunday with a single post dedicated to this event.

Cheers everyone!

Brian