1) Lots of folks, food, and beer. We did our annual holiday 750 swap.
2) CRABS won the table theme at the Guild holiday party. A big thanks and congratulations to all who participated. We will have a T-shirt designed with Brandon DeStefano’s logo, which has a crab with a hop cone for a body.
3) Our monthly competitions for 2020 have been decided. They are not posted on the CRABS website yet but the link is http://crabsbrew.org/competition_schedule (it still has the 2019 schedule as of 6:52 AM on 12/19). Also, tonight we decided to have a clone competition in August. The beer to clone: Monument Rye 51.
4) Our treasurer Don Zwach, who has held the position for many years, will be moving to Tennessee. Rob Kiernan volunteered to take the position. Since Rob is our Guild rep, he will step down and Rachel Szczesiul will take over. So, the officers for 2020 will be:
- President - Joe O’Keefe
- Vice president - Jeff Adelsberger
- Secretary - Ben Schwalb
- Treasurer - Rob Kiernan
- Guild rep - Rachel Szczesiul (with Tom Flavin as backup)
5) Ethan Weikel will take over as 1st Thursday happy hour person.
6) The winning recipe from the 2016 same grain / same hop competition (Red X Rye IPA) was used to brew a commercial beer at Old Bedford Brewing. It took a silver medal at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
7) Brewer of the Year awards were given out:
- 5th - Rob Farrell
- 4th - Brian England
- 3rd - Jason Heinen
- 2nd - Joe O’Keefe
- 1st - Trevor Rose
8) Next meeting: Wednesday January 15. Competition will be session beers.
9) Go to http://crabsbrew.org for CRABS-related information.
10) See http://crabsbrew.org/Other_Competitions for a list of upcoming local homebrew competitions.