Pacific Gravity response to the Coronavirus (COVID -19)

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Dear Club Members,

Considering the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), we want to assure you that Pacific Gravity is taking every precaution to ensure the health and safety of our membership and guests. In an abundance of caution and to avoid exposure the Board has decided to suspend club meetings and events for the short term as this situation develops.

As of this moment, judging for LABBC will still happen this Sunday (3/15), but this could change, so please check for any last-minute notices. Given that this is a discretionary event, we recognize that some of you may wish to not participate. If this is the case, please contact Carl Townsend (Head judge)  as soon as possible.

We will be taking a number of precautions at the judging site to avoid any unnecessary exposure. Specifically,
1) You will be asked point blank as you enter if you are sick, or even think you might be sick, or if you have been exposed to anyone with Covid-19. (We would hope that you would refrain from even coming out.)
2) Please avoid unnecessary body contact. Do a fist-bump if necessary, but avoid shaking hands or hugs. We will be spreading you out to avoid crowding.
3) Please wash your hands thoroughly using the CDC guidelines a couple of times throughout the morning. We will provide plastic gloves for use if desired. If you have hand sanitizer, please bring some along.
4) Do not pass around cups of beer. Do not swig out of the bottles, even if they are nearly empty. We will have plenty of cups available.
5) Lunch will be served up by our chef. Please do not serve yourself. If the weather cooperates, please spread out to eat using the outdoor tables. (This also avoids food smells in the judging area.)

Other Upcoming Events:
The March meeting scheduled for March 19th is cancelled.
The Monster brew scheduled for March 28, 2020 at Smog City Brewing is postponed, tentatively until May.
AHA has notified us that the first round judging for the National Homebrew Conference has been postponed.
We are staying in contact with the CHA and monitoring their response and will provide updates about SCHBF (May 1-3, 2020) as they become available.

While there are no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in our club’s membership and public health officials assess our risk to be low, we are focused on caring for the health and well being of our members, their families and our community at large.

We apologize for any inconvenience this situation has caused.

Please maintain your focus on keeping yourselves and your families safe and healthy.

Sincerely,

Ian Fraser
President
Pacific Gravity Homebrewers

June Club Meeting

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Hey y’all,  I hope your summer is heating up and you’re finding some shade during brew days.

Quick reminder: We’re holding our monthly meeting at Terry’s house this coming Saturday June 16th.  We’ll have all of the typical activities going on, plus a jockey box build session. On the grill we’ll provide bbq chicken but we could use some side dishes. Homemade or store bought, doesn’t matter to us. Bring salad, corn, rice, bread, whatever – Let’s have a cookout.

If you’re interested in watching (or if you’re participating in) the jockey box build, arrive at 11am. Noon if you just want to come for the meeting.

Looking ahead, we’re confirmed for July 28th at Dean’s for this year’s summer bash. Please help us spread the word to other members. It seems like somebody gets the date too late every year, so talk it up.

See you soon!

– Michael

End of a GREAT year!

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Hey PG,

 

Michael here, I hope this message reaches you all well rested and satisfied now that the busyness of the holidays are over. As I look ahead to 2018, I can’t help but reflect on what a great year we’ve had.

 

The first milestone of 2017 that comes to mind for me is all thanks to our member of the year and vice president, Terry Molloy. This year, thanks to Terry’s diligent work, we became a recognized 501(c)(3) organization which opens many doors for us for growth and events. Terry’s work as VP over the past year has been hugely helpful and I am very proud to volunteer alongside him again in 2018.

 

Then more recently, the holiday party, and what a festive and fun party it was. Chef Ian, who chopped his index finger pretty good just days before the event, directed a gang of volunteers and put together a fantastic feast (picture him waving around that bandaged finger.) Neil’s generously donated property was mobbed with members & friends and tap after tap of delicious homebrew. Rare bottles were abundant and smiles were ear-to-ear.

 

2017’s Southern California Homebrew Festival, our Monster Brew with Smog City, the 3rd annual Los Angeles Belgian Brew Challenge, the summer party at Dean’s, and our hosting of Pacific Brewer’s Cup this year are others that shine brightly for me. All of the above were made possible by volunteers (like our Competition Coordinator Carl), and I’m very proud of and thankful for each.

 

A few things to be aware of as we get ready to step into the new year…

 

  • Rob Ruben’s Distilling & Brewing in El Segundo has invited us to a homebrew share on Saturday January 6th at 1pm. We can bring bottles or kegs of homebrew to share and there is room for 40 of us. Please drop us a line at board @ pacificgravity.com if you’re interested in joining, to reserve your spot(s). Friends and family are welcome.
  • There is currently a Pacific Brewer’s Cup Best of Show Pro-Am beer on tap at Yorkshire Square and the runner-up BOS will soon be available at LA Ale Works. Make sure to tell them you’re with Pacific Gravity!
  • Adam at the brand new Harajuku Tap Room in Culver City (previous location of Grey Block Pizza) has offered us a 10% discount on dinner. You’ll simply need to print the email at the following link and bring it with you. http://mailchi.mp/38e9b26f9610/enjoy-a-meal-at-the-harajuku-taproom-5456499 
  • Finally, a quick reminder that the 2018 Southern California Homebrew Festival is approaching fast!  Ask a fellow member who has been if you’re not familiar, it is an awesome time and I highly recommend you put it on your to-do for May. We’ll begin collecting reservations in January but if you want to reserve early, reach out and we’ll get you on the list.

 

Again, thank you all for helping to make 2017 such an exceptional year. I’m honored to be President again in 2018 and pledge to (with help from our board and all you volunteers) make 2018 just as memorable and exciting as 2017.

 

On a personal note, I’m excited to announce that Tania and I celebrated the holidays at our new home in Downey. Housewarming gifts (beer!) are encouraged.  😉

See you on the 6th at Rob Ruben’s, if not sooner!

October Meeting & PBC Awards

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Good evening PG members!  First Friday at Phantom Carriage was very fun and comfortable in our reserved seating made even better by our special guest, the founder of Kauai Beer Company. VP Terry and he hang out from here to Kauai and back, both are a lot of laughs.

Tomorrow night at 7:30pm we’re meeting at Culver City Homebrewing Supply for our October meeting. Lederhosen are completely optional but we will have some German food in the spirit of Octoberfest. The one and only Elijah has been collecting British Style Strong Ales all year long for his commercial tasting too, so prepare for that. As usual, we’ll be collecting pitch-in for the food so bring a little mad cash. 🙂

We’re slated to discuss some current and future events, including the fact that our annual holiday party is officially scheduled for December 9th at Neil’s duplex. That’s Saturday December 9th, 2017 at Neil’s duplex starting at 5pm. It will be a ton of fun and more info will be coming around on that topic soon.

Keep in mind that we rely wholly on volunteers to make these events successful so please take a look at your calendar and let’s discuss how we can work together to get everything done during our meet up tomorrow.

Until then, cheers!

Michael

September Club Meeting @ CCHBS

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Good afternoon PG!

I hope this reminder reaches you all well and enjoying your end-of-summer. Thursday is our September club meeting at Culver City Home Brewing Supply and it should be a very fun one, so I hope you’ll come out. We get started at 7:30p and finish up around 10:30p usually.

September’s host Keith is bringing out a flight of IPA’s for the commercial tasting and we’ll have some hot food on hand as well. Bring out your IPA styled home brew for the Best of Meeting competition. It’s a great way to get feedback on your beer and winner takes a nice prize.

In other news, the board and I are looking ahead to the chili cook-off on November 11th, and we’re thinking elections too as they are usually held around that time of year. If you are interested in running for an elected position (President, Vice President, Treasurer) or might like to be club Secretary or any of our other volunteer positions please reach out. Having been on the board for almost two years now, I can confirm it’s a satisfying way to spend some free time. There is a work aspect to it, but that’s really about perspective. If you already attend most events, and have enough time to put in one more evening per month to help plan (and talk beers,) it’s worth considering and we’d love to have you on board.

I’ll end with a link to our events calendar for you. Take a peek at the next few months and plan ahead. I realize there are hundreds of things to do in this city but I’m hopeful you’ll keep us on your radar!

http://pacificgravity.com/event-calendar/

Thanks!

Michael

Countdown to Party!

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Hey PG

Michael here, I hope this message reaches you well and I hope your spring brew sessions are paying off big! We have definitely had plenty of beer drinking weather, and finally the good sun has landed on the weekends for once. I put a Belgian Saison in the fermenter (at 75F) just this past Saturday and I’m already planning my next warm fermented beer.

In just a few days now, we’re meeting at Dean’s place for our annual Summer party. There will be plenty of food and home brewed beer, lots of fun people, and we’ll have our door prize raffle as always.

I want to make sure everyone who can make it comes out and if you’ve never been to a PG event before, it’s a great one to start with. Members enter free and non-members pay just TEN BUCKS each for free reign on food and access to a wide range of unique and delicious home brewed beer, cider, and mead.

Pick your preference of Uber, Lyft, or carpool. Dean’s house really isn’t difficult or far to get to and from the Culver City area and I don’t remember much traffic in previous years.

As usual, we need help from members to make this event a success.

First, if you’re bringing a beverage to put on tap with us, be it a keg of beer or soda; Reply back to this email and let us know what you’re bringing. Carl will make a tag for the tap handle and everyone will know who made it and what it is.

Next up, we need help most on Friday night starting around 6pm and Sunday morning starting around 10am for setup and clean up. It’s a fun way to give back and usually involves a beer or two and some creative thinking. Please, please, please, if you volunteer just one hour – Make it at either Friday’s setup or Sunday’s cleanup. We need the help.

Chef Ian may tap you on the shoulder for help too, there will be plenty to do around the BBQ.

We need some items too, if you can bring an item or two from this list we would be much better off.

Folding tables
Folding chairs
Popup tents
Bottled water
FOOD and BEER! (our theme is Tropical but bring whatever!)

Finally, here’s a quick list of things I recommend bringing for you and your guests.

Cups/glasses
Sunscreen and/or a hat
Picnic blanket or a chair
Towel and bathing suit (the pool is open)
Friends!

Okay, I intended for this to be a quick one but I’m too excited for Saturday. Don’t be surprised if you hear from me again before the week is up. 🙂

See you Saturday at two pm!

Michael

29jul2:00 pm2017 Summer Party2:00 pm Dean's House

Looking Back On A Great Weekend

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Someone once told me that travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer. This past weekend’s PG trip to the Bay area was one of those times for me that the concept rang loudly and clearly. We couldn’t have ordered better weather and (thanks to the many tenured Bay area’ists with us) we found a bunch of great spots to haunt. The local food and beers were exceptional and the accommodations were well situated; thanks again to Ian for the hotel recommendation and help w/ booking.

The party at Anchor was a great time, in my opinion their brewery is one of the most unique in the country. The copper brewhouse, their open fermenter rooms, the hop room, and the tasting room all laid out as I assume they were on that first day in 1979 when they moved in.  Pretty cool history beyond, taught by Ryan and his co-host, both in their white jumpsuits per tradition. My personal favorite beer was a mix of Old Foghorn Barleywine and the Liberty Ale American IPA, it was a great mash up (credit to Tad for recommending that one).

I know there was some travel trouble flying back, which seems to be a common problem as of late. To those that were held back due to flight delays, I hope you made the best of the time over a few more local beers!

Thank you to everyone who came along and thank you to Anchor Brewing Company for the honor and the party. WE WILL BE BACK!

Looking ahead…

First Friday at LA Ale Works is Friday June 2nd at 7pm.

They have been rolling out new beers, lots to look forward to on their tap list. It’s been great watching them grow and I know they’re happy to host us.

June’s Third Thursday lands on the 15th and we’ll be meeting at Culver City Home Brew Supply. Style of the month is International and Czech Lagers and Luis is hosting the tasting.

These meetings at CCHBS are a perfect way to introduce a friend to our hobby and to the club so feel free to bring good people with a genuine interest in getting into zymurgy for a free orientation visit.

Also, as you’ve probably heard: We’ve started the process of hosting the annual Pacific Brewer’s Cup competition and we need volunteers to help out. Navigate to pbc.pacificgravity.com for more information. As always, we’re hoping to make a grand showing in PBC this year as a club, since of course we are hosting. Bring out your best!   🙂 

See you soon!

Michael

April Events Lineup & Reminders

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Hey PG! I hope this message reaches you well. I’m sending out this update to make sure everyone knows what’s up for April and to remind of a few other things in the works.  🙂

This Friday is April’s First Friday at El Segundo Brewing Company, a night that was very popular with the hop-heads last year. I overheard some chatter in our Facebook group too, about stopping into Richmond Bar & Grill for food beforehand, which I highly recommend.  Tania and I will arrive at the brewery at 7pm. Show up when you can, we will likely be around all night.  Don’t forget to bring a growler!  ESBC pours are worth taking home.

April’s Third Thursday club meeting is on Thursday April 20th at LA Ale Works. We’ll start the night with the award ceremony to close out our 3rd LA Belgian Beer Challenge, and we’ll have a bunch of leftover (cold-stored) entries to taste afterward. Member Barry will be manning the tasting table too!  We will also be collecting donations at this event, that will go on to people in need via our connection (Dianne & Mimi) at The People Concern, based out of Santa Monica (formerly Ocean Park Community Center). We’re looking for clean clothing for men, women, and children, unopened personal & household items,  gift certificates to supermarkets, fast food restaurants, or retail stores, and books & art supplies. Anything you can bring will be accepted and appreciated.

Style of the month is Belgian (a personal favorite of mine) and I can’t wait to try all of the entries into our Best of Meeting competition.

Looking ahead, we’ve got the Southern California Homebrew Festival happening on the first weekend of May (5th & 6th). We still have a few campsites available, for more info or to reserve a spot for your tent click through to http://pacificgravity.com/schf

A few weeks later, on the 20th of May, we’re celebrating our 2016 club of the year win with Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco. Now that our Monster Brew w/ Smog City and LABBC are in the books, we’re in the process of gathering quotes for a group rate on 20 hotel rooms nearby. I’ll post instructions for booking on Friday. (Update: This took longer than expected, sorry about that!) Shout out to Ian F. for volunteering to help me canvas the area for quotes.   I don’t have final pricing yet but we are anticipating the nightly rate to be in the low $200’s and almost 1/2 of the rooms are already spoken for. If you want to reserve one of the remaining rooms right now, let me know via email at President at pacificgravity.com

Further on down the line, it’s our turn to host Pacific Brewer’s Cup homebrew competition. The details are just coming together now, but we’ll need a LOT of help. Reach out to Competitions at pacificgravity.com if you are interested and able to volunteer some time to help.

Lastly, I just heard that our friends at Smog City Brewing Company are hosting a fundraiser THIS THURSDAY April 6th for Jesse Esphorst Jr. who was killed in a tragic car accident in early March. A percentage of the proceeds of food and beers sales (Barley Hops Grill will be there) go to Jesse’s family. Silent auction, live auction, sodas and juice, plus commemorative pint glasses to celebrate Jesse Jr. will be available at the taproom.  If you can make it, please do. I’m sure Porter & Laurie and Jesse’s family will appreciate it.  Don’t forget to tell them you’re from PG!  More info here: http://bit.ly/2ozDwKw

If you made it this far: Thanks for reading!  Hopefully we’ll get to chat some of this stuff up on Friday together, over a hoppy pint of beer from ESBC.  See you there.

Michael

7apr7:00 pmFirst Friday - El Segundo Brewing Company7:00 pm El Segundo Brewing Company

Thursday Meeting @ LA Ale Works

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Hey PG!

Saturday’s monster brew with Smog City was another seriously fun day. My batches are burping away here near my desk as I type this message, I hope yours are going well. 😀      Shout out to the Smog City team and our PG board for such a well executed event.

Coming up this Thursday the 16th we have our March Third Thursday club meeting at LA Ale Works in Hawthorne.  

One important update to our plan: LA Ale Works is absolutely fine with us bringing our corny kegs of homebrew so please disregard the previous messaging limiting us to growlers & bottles. We’ll be hanging out in the back of the brewery away from the taproom, just like we’ve done at Smog previously. As always, we want to have a good time without disrupting business for LAAW so your best behavior is requested. Also…

  • By all means, rinse out a growler to bring. Kip’s pricing on fills is mighty fair and there are more than a few beers on tap that I’d take home on a Thursday night.  😉
  • Thursday is a perfect time to drop off your entries for LABBC. The window for drop off ends Friday and they’re headed for LA Ale Works eventually either way. Bring them!
  •  We’re also still short on coolers for organizing entries too so if you can lend one out until April 1st or so – Please bring it!

Looking forward to seeing you Thursday!

Michael

16mar7:30 pmMarch Club Meeting7:30 pm LA Aleworks

Monster Brew, March Club Meeting, and LABBC 2017

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Hey PG!

I hope everyone is doing well and brewing like crazy. We have had some decent weather for it. Here, I’ve been over to the shop and put together a few batches recently that should make SCHF and PBC a lot of fun. 😀

March is an exciting month for us, so I think it’s best I send around an outline of things to come. I also have some great news to share so read on.

Our monster brew with LABBC Gold Level Sponsor Smog City Brewing Company, which is quickly becoming an honored PG tradition, is THIS weekend and I hope you’re ready. Culver City Home Brewing Supply reports a stash of fresh new fermenter buckets at the ready, if you need one or two. More info, including PayPal purchase link here: http://pacificgravity.com/2017/02/smog-city-monster-brew-march-11th/     I’m looking forward to seeing you all there and I’m hoping for another smooth brew day.

Next up, we have our monthly club meeting scheduled next Thursday March 16th at LA Ale Works. They’ve been really hospitable and club friendly so far, and it should be a memorable night.

A couple things to note before coming down to Hawthorne for this meeting:

  • March is dues collection month. Treasurer Tim will be setup to get renewals and new memberships going.
  • To keep our footprint smaller (and cleaner) this is a NO KEGS event. Bring your homebrew, including entries into the best beer of the month competition, in growlers or bottles. We’ll make a space for them, and make sure each one gets a label, and exposure for tasting, etc.
  • Best Beer of the Meeting style is: Irish and Stout beers, in honor of St Patrick’s Day.
  • Submissions for our Los Angeles Belgian Brew Challenge are due, so bring your entries to this meeting. We’re storing and judging the beer at LAAW, so it’s super helpful if you bring them down directly.
    • Also, we could use a few more coolers for the competition. If you have a cooler you can loan until March 26th, bring it too.
  • Barley Hops Grill food truck will be there so bring a few bucks for food. Out of respect for the food truck workers, we’re going to forgo providing outside food and encourage everyone to patronize them instead. Sorry 🙂 No corned beef and cabbage this year.
  • Remember, we’re guests at LAAW. Have an excellent time but keep it respectful and positive. It’s a privilege to be invited in the first place and I absolutely want to be invited back!

Finally, I’m extremely happy to share news that our party with Anchor to celebrate our winning the 2016 Anchor’s California Homebrew Club of the Year award has been scheduled!   The party will be during the day on Saturday May 20th, 2017 at the Anchor brewery in San Francisco. As we discussed earlier in the year, transportation to and from the event will be up to you each to figure out individually but we are going to work on securing a club rate at a hotel. I will post more on the hotel subject as soon as I have something worth sharing.  In the meantime rejoice! The party is scheduled! 😀 😀 😀

So we’ve got big plans together this month and beyond! Reach out if you have any questions, especially if you can volunteer to pitch in and help.

Thanks!

Michael