Where: Van Doren's Landing Park in Kent, WA, 21861 Russell Rd South Shelter (Covered area near the bathrooms, south end of the Park)

What: Picnic setting to enjoy our wines and beers with food and good company

Who: BEWBC & BEEWBC members, families, and guests (children welcome)

What to Bring:   Your wines and beers to enjoy and share

                                  Your favorite picnic food to enjoy and share

The club will provide hot dogs and hamburgers to barbecue, basic munchies, paper/plastic ware and wine and beer glasses.

Directions:

From the Kent Rec Center:       Follow 83^rd AVE S in front of the Rec Center to S 228^th ST (83^rd AVE S becomes S 228^th ST).  Proceed on 228^th ST, which becomes RUSSELL RD.  Follow RUSSELL RD to the park.  Distance from the Rec Center is 2.8 miles.

Access to the park from 212^th St to Russell Rd is an alternate route, but you must be going east on 212^th to turn south onto Russell Rd. There is no left turn going west on 212^th.

Click on the map for more details. http://tinyurl.com/n6pp5n

Congratulations on making it through a crazy spring.  BJCP exams, huge competition after huge competition, and events all over.  Thanks to everyone who helped with all of the events.  Time to get ready for the summer starting with... 

GEBL Hop Madness IPA Challenge

Coming up on May 22nd the Greater Everett Brewers League in Everett, WA will be hosting the Hop Madness IPA Challenge.   Beers will be placed in one of 4 brackets (American IPA 14a, European IPA 14b Imperial IPA 14c and Experimental IPA 23a.) and will be evaluated in a head-to-head fashion. 

The winner of each bracket will advance to a final Best of Show round, and the best beer will be crowned the winner.   This is a BJCP certified competition as well as Washington Homebrewer of the Year qualifier.  Participants will be allowed to enter as many different IPA beers as they wish.   Please don’t enter the same beer twice.

Entries will be accepted May 7th-May 18th.

For more information go to: www.gebl.org

Judges on the 22nd are also a necessity. If you are available to judge that day please contact: Will Fredin

Brewer’s Classic Golf Tournament – July 10th

The Washington Homebrewers Association is proud to announce a new event on July 10th - The Brewer's Classic Golf Tournament.  We'll have a couple rounds of golf, some great BBQ provided by Mop, Sauce, and Two Smoking Barrels, and there will be homebrew on every hole. 

It's $25 per person and all proceeds go to helping share our hobby with others. Plus, it's a great excuse to get out and have some fun with a bunch of fellow brewers. We're going to have this at the same location as the Lakewood Rotary Homebrew Festival which is Ski Park Lake, near Orting, WA.  The event will run 10am - 5pm.

Friends and family are welcome but every foursome needs at least one pro or homebrewer. We're also asking that each team brings some homebrew to share, preferably in kegs so we can avoid having glass on the golf course. 

Go to www.brewersclassic.com for more information or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you have any questions or to RSVP.  We're planning on limiting the number of golfers to 50 since we don't really know how to run a golf tournament.  But it'll be a great time regardless.

And don't worry - we're all pretty bad at golf. Range balls will be provided!

Beerstock 5060-2 – July 24^th

After last year’s resounding success of Beerstock 5060, Beerstock 5060-2 is coming up soon!  Last year’s festival featured about 100 people in attendance serving close to 70 beers.  This year’s festival will be held up in Arlington on July 24^th and is limited to homebrew club members.  Each club is invited to host a table/tent and serve their club members’ beers.  Each club is responsible for their own jockey boxes and/or dispensing set-ups, signs, table and sun shield.  Set-up begins at 1:00pm and the main event starts at 2. 

Beerstock will feature:

• Sample other brew club member’s beer in a Beerstock taster glass & talk with brewers.
• Bring a bottle of your home brew or pour off your tap to sit down with a BJCP beer judge and discuss its merits and brewing techniques.
• Beer games, raffles and a beer quiz available with prizes awarded.
• Play horseshoes, listen to live music, play croquet or walk thru the maze
• Smell and compare various hops and grains.
• Brewing demonstration
• A pot luck dinner will be held around the bon-fire.  (Extra bonus points for bringing a dish made with beer.)
• Brewing equipment garage sale

Each attendee must be a club member or club member’s spouse or partner and be at least 21 years of age.  All attendees will need to bring a pot-luck dish (main course provided) and any non-alcoholic beverages they would like to consume.  Sorry, no dogs allowed this year.  Chairs and camping gear are welcomed.  Please carpool!

Each club needs to arrange their attendance and member participating through the organizers.  Start brewing now for a great festival! 

The Lakewood Rotary Homebrew Festival - Saturday August 14th, 2010

We're excited to be back for our second year.  We had over 40 beers on tap last year and are hoping to double that this year, if not hit 100!  We're lowering the volume requirement from five gallons to two gallons so bring out all your half-full kegs.  The majority of the competition will take place Friday night.  We'll wrap up the rest Saturday morning and play a little golf before the festival gets going on Saturday.  Everyone is free to camp one or both nights.  There will be $1000 in cash prizes and tons of donated prizes as well.  If you have any questions or want to let us know you're coming, email Brandon Horn.  Hope to see you out there!  Details will be posted at http://www.lakewoodrotaryhomebrewfestival.com

Thanks for everyone who participated in the 2010 March Madness.  The results are posted here:

http://www.bewbc.org/images/wine_related/2010%20march%20madness%202010%20v5.pdf 

After the BJCP judging and People's Choice Voting at the Winter Social, we have our 2009 Variant Brewing Competition winner.

- BJCP Judging Winner - Brandon Horn

- People's Choice Winner - Mark Emiley

- OVERALL SUPREME VARIANT HOMEBREWER - Brandon Horn

Congratulations to Brandon for his great brew!  The BJCP score sheets will be sent out to the participating brewers.  Thanks again for being a part of the Variant Competition.

On Monday, August 31st, the Presidents of the Boeing Recreation clubs were summoned for a Webex where it was announced that due to the current economic condition, Boeing has decided to terminate all subsidies to its clubs.  For our club, this comes in the form of use of space in the 7-226 building as well as use of our storage shelter in the Kent Space Center Parking lot.  To put it simply, no devoted space for a club on Boeing property.  In addition to this news, the leaders were informed that due to the potential for flooding due to the Howard Hansen Dam, all equipment must be moved by October 19^th with activities at the Kent Recreation Center ending by September 30^th.  We were recently provided permission to release the attached letter.

As you all know, this is a significant blow to the way that our club has been doing business, in particular to the Grape Procurement side of the house.  While this is highly unfortunate, we must start looking for immediate and long term solutions for maintaining our club's operations. 

Upon notification of this information, the BEWBC board has taken the following actions:

• We have contacted Recreation informing them of the obligations and requirements of the upcoming harvest and a request for deviation or additional support
• We contacted all vineyard focals to consider alternate approaches to managing the harvest
• We have held an emergency board meeting to discuss options and plans of action
• We have approached the Masonic Lodge about storage of meeting materials and received word that they are providing us with a cabinet
• We are already investigating alternate storage and logistics options and considering club demographics and requirements

Despite the frustrations and challenges that lie ahead, we need your support in the upcoming weeks.  There are many options out there for alternate ways to support components of club operations.  Between our 100+ members, we have numerous capabilities, contacts, and ideas.  While the core board and grape procurement team are considering options, if you have some constructive ideas for possible solutions, please pass them on to either Mick Pegg, Kathryn Chalfan, Kevin Neal, Joe Sikora, or myself.  If you have a special relationship with a storage facility or maybe you know about a large space which would be understanding of our organization's operations, let us know.  While many ideas may not work out, we'd rather have multiple options than none.  We are looking for actionable ideas and leads.

At this point, we will need some extra understanding and support from members as we work through the initial barriers.  Our focals will need you to be a bit flexible on the crush operations this year.  But if we make it through this harvest as a team, we can work on getting a more resilient framework in place for next year.  Please be ready to give as much help as needed during this emergency for our club.

We hate to be the bearer of bad news and while we all may have a lot to say about support to the Recreation program, our efforts are best focused on solving our problem at hand.  We are going to work with Recreation and the other clubs to try to find the best solution so burning ties with their support will not help our efforts. 

Look for more information to come in the upcoming week, but until you hear from us again, please think about ways that we could keep the club running in an effective and efficient manner.  With a little effort from everyone, we will make it through this intact and more self-sufficient than ever.