Peter Blum Scholarship update:
Update on national’s willingness to help support Peter Blum memorial scholarship: national refused to help in 2009. We petitioned national going forward for help and they just responded. Here is their proposal going forward: National is going to grant 3 scholarships for each Brewing and Malting course and 3 to the Packaging course – 6 total. If we want to win one of the scholarships we have to submit our Districts intent by May 1st for consideration for the Brewing and Malting course. The submission date for the Packaging course deadline is Oct. 1st. This makes it equitable for all MBAA Chapters in regard to having an opportunity to win the scholarship. By submitting our intent we are committing to paying for the remainder of the tuition if our chapter is selected.
Marty will submit our District for the scholarship drawing for the Brewing and Malting course.
Technical Quarterly:
National believes the issue revolving around whether TQ should be electronic or in print is already put to bed and do not wish to reopen it. As a chapter we have expressed our interest in discussing it further as we seem to have a number of chapter members who prefer the printed version. We are asking John Haggerty to contact the other MBAA chapters in order to see what the general sentiment is in regard to the TQ in electronic format v. printed format. Depending on their responses we may be able to motivate national to reopen the discussion regarding the TQ.
Possible solutions to the TQ issue may be to have the individual chapters print the TQ themselves or to download it to a disc for distribution to our chapter members.
Other business:
Alec Mull suggests that the chapter start to look for ways to add value for the members (maybe pay for some of the board expenses, etc)
We paid the MI Brewers Guild 1500.00 for our responsibilities with the Winter Conference.
Karl Glarner, last years Peter Blum scholarship award winner, will offer a report on the Malting and Brewing Science course at the next meeting as he was unable to attend the winter conference.
Craft Brewers Conference (Chicago):
Marty reached out to Pete Crowley of the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild and is trying to start a dialogue about events at the CBC.
Rebecca Jennings of Rahr Malting is trying to organize an MBAA hospitality suite at the CBC. The suite is $1600.00 for an event (April 8 and April 9). They need monetary donations from the various chapters, items for a raffle, and beer donations.
District Mid South has agreed to donate $200.00 and beer.
District St. Louis will not help and is losing membership due to the AB-INBEV merger. Therefore, they are not in a position to help financially.
Rex Halfpenny has been authorized by District Michigan to offer $200.00 and beer.
MBAA National Conference:
Providence, RI, June 18 – 20, 2010
The national conference will be held jointly with the ASBC. There has been some push to unite these two organizations. Therefore, this conference will be formatted as a “shouldered” event. This means that the first few days will be dedicated solely to ASBC topics, the next few days will be dedicated to topics of joint ASBC/MBAA interest, finishing with a few days of dedicated MBAA topics.
The organizers of the conference are currently seeking presenters for either oral seminars or poster presentations. If you decide to participate as a presenter then you can receive up to 50% reduction in conference fees. The MBAA is open to any beer related topic you might wish to present. Please contact John Mallet if you are interested in presenting.
Meeting closed at 4:50 pm.
