AHA Membership Rally at the Brooklyn Brewery: Some Observations and Suggestions
A few weeks ago, I went to an AHA, that’s American Homebrewers Association, membership rally at the Brooklyn Brewery. The event started at 7 pm and went until 10.
Almost everyone hung around until “closing” at 10 pm. We sat together at the long benches in the Brooklyn Brewery’s tasting hall introducing ourselves to each other, talking about brewing, and drinking Garrett Oliver’s beer (Garrett Oliver is the brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery and author of the book, The Brewmaster’s Table).
I was really pleased to see so many female brewers. The woman sitting next to me had been brewing beer in her Manhattan studio apartment for a little over a year. She had been brewing with malt extract and was wondering if she could do all-grain brewing in her apartment. Now that’s true enthusiasm. (Try boiling six gallons of beer wort on your stove sometime and you’ll see what I mean. I use a big outdoor cooker burner; you know, one of those jet engine looking things that the Cajuns use to boil crawfish down in Louisiana and it still takes a good hour to get the brewing liquor to a boil.)
By ten o’clock I had swapped a number of stories with fellow brewers and given out (and received) a number of brewing suggestions. Not all of us were veteran brewers though. More than a handful of the people attending the rally had never brewed beer at all before and they were there to see what brewing beer was all about. I mentioned to one of these brewers-to-be that the best way to get started was to brew with someone who knew what they were doing. I told him about how I had showed a number of my friends back in Florida how to brew beer. He wanted to know if I would help him get started. “Sure, no problem,” I said, but we got distracted and never exchanged contact information. (So, Bill, if you are reading this post, send me an email and we’ll hook up for a brew sometime.)
Which brings me to the only suggestion I have for the AHA concerning these membership rallies. The AHA should really take steps to help connect people. A lot of people showed up to the rally wanting information on how to brew. Connect the wannabes with the veterans. The local brewing clubs are excellent resources for information about brewing and organizing actual brewing demonstrations. So at future AHA membership rallies, I think there should be a live brewing demonstration and “business” cards for the attendees so that some serious beer networking can take place.
