Finally made it out to the Palmetto State Brewers meeting last night. Details for those interested...
First, I was fairly impressed. There were about 20 of us in there, about 4-5 of those were officers. Basically, at first people sit around and shoot the bull, some people order food. [Sidebar: Zorba's actually brings in some good craft beer for the PSB meetings. The regular bar at Zorba's is all BMC I believe, but they bring in beers for the meetings and only charge 3.50 a pop, not bad at all, just settle up with the waitress when you leave.] After that, Kevin goes through any club news and then gets reports from each officer (Social, Comms, Education, Finance).
Speaking of finance, club dues are $20 a year. Your $20 gets you a 10% discount at DIY, a t-shirt (really like the shirts too)/or a hat, and a tasting glass. Also included, they do a fall party (oyster roast) and a spring party (frogmore) and have some comps in between. Currently they're doing in a couple weeks a brewing fantasy draft, for lack of a better term. Eleven people signed up, they draft ingredients, and then draw a random yeast out of a hat. Could be an awesome inter-club competition.
Education gave a quick 5-10 minute talk on different hopping methods and it's kind of an open floor for people to mention their experiences with different methods, etc. It was at this point that I realized the education chair, Chris Wood, has written some wild yeast articles that I've read countless times on BYO. So of course I nerded out talking yeast with him for a while. Knows his ish for sure.
After all that, the "meeting" is basically over but then people start passing beers they brought. I'd say maybe about 6-8 of us brought beers. Chris is a big IPA guy and brought some of his AmIPA that was super clean and very well balanced. Two brewing buddies from Irmo brought a rye pale and the same beer they put in a Bulleit rye barrel that was pretty impressive. And I'm not a big rye fan. I had a dry hopped cream ale that I was surprised with. Bottom line is I was impressed with the quality of some of the homebrews there.
Also, I thought it was interesting that the club, or at least those attending last night, it was almost a dead ass even split between the younger crowd (30-45) and the older crowd (45-65). I did hear a lot of people talking about secondary I'm like come on y'all! LOL. All things considered, I was glad I went, met some good people, met some people I could foresee myself brewing with in the future, and I will definitely be back.
Oh yeah, Morrey, Kevin and I talked about you, ironically. He was talking about Alt Bev up in Rock Hill/CLT and I mentioned a buddy from Darlington who buys bulk up there. He goes, "Oh, umm, Morrey, right?" I was like hell yeah man you know him! He said you've been to see him a few times. Thought that was funny.
