Attendees: Ed Aiello, Dan Berger, Andy Denton, Tristan Fanning, Ben Fenton, Ryan Freeman, Jim Hall, Zak Herner, Kevin Kamins, Scott Kamins, Dan ‘Karl Malone,’ Matt King, Ken Littel, Clint McDonald, Sam McDonald, Frank Molinaro, Mark Procter, Craig Ranshaw, Adam Rootberg, Dave Thome, Leah Vaid
Agenda:
- There will be no general meeting in January; instead, we will have our annual Holiday Party on Saturday Jan. 27 from 1 PM to 5 PM at Tonality Brewing in Mundelein. The club will buy appetizers for the club, and is working on a small raffle, but you will need to open your own bar tab, and no homebrew will be permitted on the premises. Please RSVP on the NUBS website so we have a head count.
- The 5th Annual Wort Rally is Sunday Jan. 28 at Buffalo Creek Brewing in Long Grove. Buy-in is $55 for 5 gallons of blonde ale wort, with proceeds benefiting the Northern Illinois Food Bank. Pick-up will start at noon. You can pay Andy at the shop or through his website.
- The no-cost competition this year will be structured with four brackets: Belgian, German, English, and Wild West, with each bracket having a best-of-bracket award and the entire competition having a single best-of show award.
- An awards ceremony and party will happen mid-March, with the exact date TBD. Judges are needed; if you’re interested, let Andy know.
- The 2024 Beer of the Quarter Categories have been announced:
- Q1: Category 15, Irish Beer
- Q2: Category 10, German Wheat Beer
- Q3: Category 34C, Experimental Beer
- Q4: Category 14. Scottish Ale
- In 2024 BOTQ will be held the third month of each quarter instead of the second month
- The board is putting together a few plans for early 2024:
- Black Lung wants to have NUBS out for a visit and a tour
- The Highwood Pub Crawl that was postponed from October is hopefully going to happen soon. 28 Mile Distillery in particular wants to host NUBS.
- The Lake County Craft Beer Festival is Feb 24 at the Lake County Fairgrounds in Grayslake. NUBS may be able to host a booth there if we can assemble both the people to pour beer and sufficient donated beer.
- The FerMentors program has its first mentee lined up!
- Dan has proposed a small pub crawl centered on Monk’s Pub in Chicago, with good intertest from the club. He will announce it on Facebook two to three weeks in advance so people have enough advance notice.
- There are new print-on-demand hoodies with the NUBS logo in charcoal, navy, and black available on the NUBS website.
- The weekend before the Superbowl, Club Wort charters a bus for a destination pub crawl, and they expect to have some seats open for folks outside of their club. Craig will broadcast more information as details are ironed out; expect an all-day adventure with the bus picking people up in Palatine.