District Michigan
2009 Winter Conference
Meeting Minutes
for the date of 1/16/09

Meeting brought to order by President, Marty Rapnicki @ 4:55

Review of minutes from previous meeting (10/23/08) by Secretary, Eric Kuhnhenn

• Motion to accept made by Rex Halfpenny
• Vote to accept passed Paul Popa

Review of accounts by Treasurer Rex Halfpenny

• Year end total 19,984.63
• Savings $8160.00
• Checking $11824.63

Our finances essentially are where we were when we took the chapter over from Stroh’s. Total expenses to date in 2009 were approximately $200.00 to support Bob Hansens Gluten Free presentation at the Winter Technical Conference.

• Motion to accept by John Mallet
• Vote to accept by Ken Belau

Board of Governors Report given by John Mallet (filling in for Larry Bell)

• Larry Bell will be new Board Rep and states he is committed to the position
• Move to accept Zeke
• Vote to accept Alec Mull

March 19th is the next chapter meeting at Founders

Looking for ideas regarding technical topics; contact Ken Belau, technical Chair
Please submit ideas within the next few weeks

July 11th is the pig roast at Fitzgerald Park
Oct 22nd at Black Forest

Nominations for the Board were:

Secretary

• Keith Baumberg
• Dan Rogers
• Bill Wamby
• Wayne Burns
• John Haggerty

Board of Governors

• Jan Muuse
• Larry Bell

New Business

Welcome Mary Pelletieri, Goose Island

Thanks to Ken Belau for enlisting speakers for the winter conference

Konrad Connor reviewed the MBAA Brewing and Malting Science course he attended via the District Scholarship

• The program offers a thorough review of the entire brewing and malting process
• Review ends at filtration as that is where the packaging course begins
• Excellent availability of staff to the students inside and out of the classroom
• Recommends the program to anyone who has been considering an educational endeavor and that we continue the scholarship program

Pig roast

If you are willing to help out please think about volunteering. We will be assigning jobs at the next meeting. Some areas that need addressing are:

• Disc golf tournament
• Horseshoe tournament
• Organization of the beer and draft equipment
• Alec has volunteered to handle food again

Elections were held

We did the election by mail
Ballots were sent to the address that national has on record
If your address was not updated you didn’t receive a ballot or it is waiting for you at your old address
Numbers on the ballot were to insure that only one vote per person was taken – numbers were not assigned by name.
The chapter moved to the mail format so that members that could not attend meetings could vote
The voting has been run this way for number of years
Ken Belau suggests that we emboss the paper instead of numbering in order to eliminate the perception that individuals votes are being tracked (for later retribution no doubt!)

Meeting opened to other new business:

• Konrad Connor has a cd of the power point presentation from the MBAA Brewing and Malting Science class and will copy it for anyone who would like a copy.
• Eric Briggeman thanks everyone for attending and would like feedback on the format of the winter conference so that any improvements that might be warranted can be made. He would also like to thank the MBAA District Michigan chapter for the hard work and support put forth toward the Winter Conference.
• Eric Briggeman stated that the Michigan Brewers Guild would like to have a coordinated board meeting March 19th with District Michigan in order to start planning next year’s winter conference. Marty Rapnicki and Eric Briggeman agree to a joint board meeting at 10 am at Founders subject to the MBG Board approval.
• Rex Halfpenny would like to thank the Guild, Eric, Ken and the speakers for a great conference.

Formal announcement of the new board for 2009 - 2010:

Marty Rapnicki, president
Rex Halfpenny, VP
Eric Kuhnhenn, Treasurer
John Haggerty, Secretary
Larry Bell, Board of Governors Rep.

John Mallet brought up the discussion re: National MBAA’s decision to have the conference in Hawaii this past year. The decision hinged mostly around trying to involve more people from Asia, specifically Japan. National MBAA is trying to focus on smaller, less expensive cities going forward. The next year (2010) will be at Providence, RI. The national membership profile is changing and causing the National MBAA leadership to look more to the craft brewer’s needs. National MBAA will be running workshops on yeast in conjunction with the CBC this year in Boston. If you can come to the CBC a day earlier then you can take advantage of this program.

Rex Halfpenny endorses the resort of LaQuinta which is where the next (2009) MBAA national meeting is.

Scott Graham announced that there are left over cases of beer in the Great Lakes room – we can drink there for free until 10 pm.

Marty moves to close the meeting at 5:18 pm
Motion carries – meeting adjourned.