HOPS Pagosa

I'm including a message from local homebrewer Bill Trimarco below. Bill is involved with the local United Way chapter based in Pagosa Springs and I chatted with him recently about their upcoming annual appreciation celebration in April. We'd like to get HOPS club members together to brew some beers that we can donate to the event and use to help support United Way.

We will send out more details soon and we should brew by early March to give the brews sufficient time to be ready by the event in early April. Post any suggestions or thoughts you have about this on this thread and we'll take everything into consideration. What better way to support charity than to make homebrew!

Cheers,

Jason

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometime in early April (the date is yet to be determined), United Way of Archuleta County is holding an appreciation celebration to thank all who have so generously contributed to their funded programs. Since United Way uses most of the donations to fund beneficial community organizations, they are looking for ways to hold this party without spending donated money. I was planning on giving them a couple of cases of homebrew. How about a HOPS brew day with the results being given to United Way for their get together? This would also get us invited to the party to help drink our products. Let me know if anyone is interested. If you need more info, contact Lisa Jensen, our local United Way coordinator at 731-0484 or lisaj@unitedway-swco.org.

Bill Trimarco

We had good feedback from several of you regarding our July Geek Night and we're going to move the date for the event. Why? Two main reasons:

• Salida hosts a fantastic beer festival this weekend and many of our members are attending and can't make a homebrew session in Pagosa on Saturday
• I'm probably going to attend the Salida festival so it would be difficult to host the event

I'll update everyone on the date but it will most likely be a week from today on Tuesday, July 12. Brewing an all-grain beer on a weeknight will require us to begin around 5 pm but it will be a good session and we should finish up around 9 or 10 pm.

We've been talking among club members for some time about hosting a monthly geek night where we really dive down into technical details about homebrewing. Our friends in Cortez with the Mesa Verde Mashers have been doing a geek night for some time with great success and we'd like to emulate their model here in Pagosa. Geek night content will include discussions on everything from varieties of malts and hops to understanding how to nurture and reuse your yeast from brew to brew to looking at different homebrewing gadgets. Serious nerds only, please! ;-)

I'm thinking about doing the inaugural Geek Night during the day on Saturday, July 9. How's that for ironic! Why am I thinking about doing it this way? Two reasons:

1. I'd like to introduce the concept and play with the format on a non-week night so we have a little more time and attendance.
2. I have 2 lbs of oats and 15 lbs of milled grain plus yeast and hops ready to go to brew an all-grain stout. What better way to introduce Geek Night/Day than with an all-grain brew of a tasty summer stout!

If you're interested in attending this Saturday event then comment on the post and let me know. I can be flexible here and I have no issue with moving Geek Night to another weeknight of the month. I will be brewing on that Saturday, though, and all are still welcome to join.

Cheers!

Jason