All in to win a 75L kettle

Thanks to everyone who came to our AGM/ Cheese pairing night — everyone thought it was a great night. We got through the business end efficiently, presented winter comp prizes and moved on to SABC treating everyone with wonderful Wheaty French cheese platters to pair with WBC Yeast Coast IPA, Shiploads Porter along with a beer brewed by Leon with the leftover grain from the club brewday.

Competition time – win a 75L 304 steel kettle

We’ve got a great prize to give away and SABC members need to do nothing to be in the running to win except make sure your membership is up to date. All members are in the draw to win when we pull names from the kettle at the August club meeting on Aug 21.

If your membership has lapsed, or you’re reading this and have been thinking about joining SABC or you’ve got a friend you’ve encouraged to join, as long as you’re paid up by 12pm August 21, then you’re in to win. Checking the status of your membership is easy on our website. Find out how here.

Prize value $300. Kettle offered as-is with no accessories or warranty. Cannot be exchanged for cash. SABC is not liable for any issues or damages caused by its use. Winner will be drawn at the SABC meeting, Aug 21. Prize must be collected in 14 days or it will be offered to second place.

Gawler Show homebrewing competition

Entries for the Gawler Show close on August 9. It’s a good hitout for SABSOSA to test your beers — or enter your winter competition beer. https://gawlershow.org.au/shop/home-brewed-beer/. Enquiries to Rachel Edwards who has taken over the competition this year.

The SABC committee for 2019/20

President: Gus Kingston, Vice President: Luke Moran, Treasurer: Edward Shorne Holden, Secretary: Clinton Fisher, Comms and Social Media: Samantha Wallwork, Competitions Director: Gary Waters, Website Manager: Julien Gibson, Events Co-ordinator: Lachlan Johnson, General committee members: Glen Phillis, Leon van der Linden, Mark ‘Pirates’.

AGM minutes available on request.

President’s report, 2019

Earlier in 2019 the SABC conducted a questionnaire to find out what the membership enjoyed, wanted to do more of, see less of and the direction we should go in. The feedback we got was very positive. With that comes the hard part — how do we keep going offering the same meetings, activities, projects, events and get-togethers that our membership enjoyed?

It’s difficult for a club with a paid subscription to attract new members and maintain existing members with the pressures of life. There are also many avenues on social media to ask questions and get answers on how to brew better beer or overcome any challenges brewers face.

Forums and social media can quickly generate answers to a wide range of questions any homebrewer needs. Likes on a photo of a brewer’s ‘perfect’ creation can rack up but you can’t taste photos, friends and fellow brewers can’t smell the aroma from a picture. They can’t help with recipe design and other flaws.

It’s hard to get adults to join a club but everyone who has joined us recently has been pleasantly surprised by what they discover and the friendship we offer. This year we grew by around 25 members (that’s also 25 per cent) and now sit precariously on the verge of 100 members.

Our main focus is on how our members can benefit from what we do. Our special events are subsidised, the prizes for our competitions are for members to win, now our Facebook group is by-and-large for paying members and the unique opportunities like brew days are open only to our members to take part.

The most important thing we ask whenever the committee plans events is how much benefit does it offer our members and can we offer it for no extra money.

This year’s calendar has been choc-a-block and I did some back of an envelope calculation and estimated that if anyone came to at least half of the year’s regular meetings, attended a few of our special events, took up any of the special offers and benefits that come our way and maybe won a raffle, they’d have value that easily exceeds the $60 membership fee.

This year our meetings some great special guests. Many of you told me they enjoyed Stephen Nelsen from TAFE but we also had Gabi from Gladfield and Dermott from BeerCo. We went to the German Club, Little Bang and Pirate Life’s new digs and a tour of Southern Vales breweries.

Other highlights were presentations by members on water, lagers and kegging.

BeerBQ was again a highlight for the year – not only for Keiren’s green glitter beer but everyone else’s beers, the food was again on point and it was free for members again.

A brew club should brew beer and this year we were grateful that Brad at Left Barrel helped a group of members brew a pro-size batch of beer for them to all takeaway and make their own fermentation decisions. The rest of us got to try the results.

Brewing at Glen’s house was another great day of making beer and friendship and great pizza.

We’ll be doing both of these again soon.

We also kicked big competition goals. John Van de Zalm won SABSOSA’s Best of Show. Keiren Vercoe and Greg Weider shared silver at the Aust. National Homebrew Competition and SA best overall state.

The ‘Nats’ were held alongside the Nat. Homebrew Conference in Melbourne and a sizeable number of SABC-ers attended. Our beers were head and shoulders above other bigger clubs at the social club night and our theme bar took the equal top spot with a beer pouring Dalek. Gary’s saison also took silver in that unofficial competition.

I can’t write about our own competitions without by noting the work and passion of our competitions director Gary Waters and IT whizkid Julien Gibson. Gary’s passion was also rewarded. He was accepted into the associate judge program for the Independent Brewer’s Awards for the next year.

Our Summer Competition was saison, NEIPA and milk stouts and with 50+ entries, we had to look to the King’s Head as a venue to judge and then we came to the winter comp. At 75 entries for ‘All things American’ from club members, it was our biggest yet and judging day at the Irish Club was a suitable test run for SABSOSA.

That’s a wrap for the year but I can’t sign-off with acknowledging the hard work of the committee. It’s their ideas and support that really make things happen for the benefit of you the members.

Angus Kingston, President, SABC 2018-19

Looking for a Christmas gift idea? SABC memberships are the gift that keep giving all year

Join SABC
Give the gift of a club membership for Xmas (even if it’s to yourself)

South Australian Brewing Club memberships are a great Christmas gift idea. You can buy online, and even grab a gift card as a gift for someone else. 

If your membership has lapsed or you’re looking for a gift for a friend, memberships are for 12 months and include some great extras, such as monthly meetings with technical topics and beer tastings, access to member-only bulk-buys, bottle swaps and collaborative brewing events and free catered social events – jam packed full of excellent extras for less than the price of a slab of crafty beers.

https://sabrew.com/join-sabc/

We want to hear from you about your club – Christmas event tickets now open

Christmas event tickets now open

Our Christmas event is on Saturday, December 8 at the Flinders Tavern from 1pm – 5pm. Members are free and guests are welcome to join us. The ticket for non-members is $25 which gets them a Burger Theory meal (inc. pint) and homebrew tastings.

Even though you’re a member, please grab a ticket here so we can generate a list of everyone attending and work out catering. You can buy one for a friend

The event is here on Facebook and below.

We want to hear from you. 

The committee takes a lot of time and consideration to plan the events and direction of the club. We want to know from you how you want us to give you the most value from being a member and what you want from the club — from the simple to big events. Please take five minutes to fill out this survey. It’s mostly tick-a-box style responses with a few places to write a broader answer. It’s also anonymous. The survey is now closed.

 

More on Christmas.. This years summer event will be held at the Flinders Tavern by Burger Theory at Flinders University. Saturday, December 8 at the Flinders Tavern from 1pm – 5pm.. Burger Theory is proudly South Australian small business and showcases a range of local and interstate craft beers in the tav including Big Shed, Mismatch, Hawkers and Green Beacon. As always the event is free for members and non-members can purchase a ticket. Snacks, a burger meal and pint will be provided.

Members raffle
We have a couple of prizes up for grabs for members only, you just need to be in attendance to go in the draw

1 x ticket on next years McLaren Vale brewery tour
1 x Inkbird temperature controller

Kegging and pressure filling demo
Thinking about moving away from the cleaning all those bottles and getting into kegging? We’re going to provide a kegging 101 demo and will show you how to:
-connect a basic keg & co2 setup
-transfer beer from keg to keg under pressure
-fill PET bottles from keg under pressure
A limited number of PET bottles will be filled with beer from the Left Barrel brew day and available for takeaway!

As is the tradition we’ll be announcing club brewer of the year and awarding the coveted trophy. There will be a couple of brew samples available from the Left Barrel brew day. The cricket will be on the TV, and the sun shining on the balcony.

Directions
Head to the main University entrance on Registry road. Enter the Student Hub and head upstairs.
Transport
Car
– car park 6 off Registry road. Free parking on weekends.
Uber
– enter ‘Registry road, Bedford Park’ as the destination for best results.
Bus
– catch the G10 direct from the CBD to the Flinders University interchange
– catch a bus to the Flinders Medical Centre interchange and walk 10 mins or catch another bus
Ride
A bike path follows the Sturt river from Anzac Highway to Maccas on South Road – then take the backstreets.

Membership – join SABC or renew now

The new membership renewal page has been a success and member renewals have been coming in flawlessly. Thanks to Julien for his hard work setting it all up. Watch the shop page for more changes soon as we add club t-shirts and merch to it as well as special offers and all the other things we occasionally need to offer tickets to.

You can renew your annual membership anytime now and self-manage it. You do need to create an account but that is not only limited to SABC membership purposes. Soon it will enable you to access a whole lot of member-only content and information.

If you’re not a member and reading this, you can join as well without an invite or renewal.

More information on the process is here in a previous post.

Renew your membership online now

It’s time to renew your annual membership via the SABC portal before the AGM on July 18.

To renew or become a new member you need to purchase a membership from the SABC shop. If you have previously purchased from the shop (bulk buy etc.), you will already have an account, so use those credentials to log in.

If you can’t remember them, use the lost password function. If this is your first purchase, then create a new account when checking out. In either case, your shop account will also be your account for the main SABC website.

Go to our website and follow the Join SABC menu or go directly to the page in the shop here.

From here, buy your new or renewing membership (and one for a friend), add to cart and then go to checkout to pay.

Most users, including longtime members, won’t have an account to attach membership to. Fill out your name and details and create a password.

Choose how to pay. Either bank account transfer or Paypal / credit card. Placing the order will take you to the next page that has our bank account details on it. If you’re using direct bank payment please use your Order ID as the payment reference.

We’ll watch for your payment and marry it up with your membership.

Choose PayPal to use PayPal your account funds or for credit card payments. If you want to use a credit card, you don’t need to log-in to PayPal. Choose, Pay by another card.

When you finalise the transaction you’ll be redirected back to our shop page.

Membership

Membership Portal Now Open

Annual menberships can now be renewed via our SABC shop portal HERE

Current members who renew on or around the start of the financial year, please renew your membership now to continue to enjoy all the benefits of your annual membership. If you have joined the Club in the past few months and/or have purchased a half year or full year membership in the past 6 months, we will endevour to remind you to renew when the time arises in the coming months.

Going forward, the Club will only offer annual memberships with no joining fee for new members. At the anniversary of your joining or renewal via the SABC Shop portal, you will recieve a reminder each year to renew.

Membership Renewal Update

SABC will soon be making some changes to the way membership renewals and new sign-ups take place.

Very shortly we’ll be offering members an opportunity to renew via a new membership portal on our website. These can be done by existing members around the beginning of the financial year (on or after 1st July).

To avoidance of confusion for new members, they will be able to enrol at any time during the year, and a year later, receive a renewal reminder. We are abolishing the administrative joining fee for new memberships too. Half-year memberships will no longer be available.

We ask at this time that you not renew your annual membership until the announcement of the new portal is made before the end of June. Any new members who have have recently joined the club with half-year memberships, please contact the Club at info@sabrew.com so we may manually register you for the year ahead.

Membership fees reminder

A quick reminder that membership renewals and fees are now due.  If you intend to renew (and we sincerely hope that you do!), please head over to the sign up page and fill out the online form.  You can pay by bank transfer or in person at the next meeting, which will be the AGM.  Please note that to be eligible to vote at the AGM you must be a financial member.