[Makerspace-keymembers] Possible future SCA-and-Makerspace brew days, and a quick breakdown of this one?

[Emily Knox]

Hi Dena,

Thank you so much for all your work last week! We can make a quick list for
anyone that's interested in helping out. (Keymembers, let me know and we'll
just make a group from the Makerspace email.)

What dates/times work for you?  It doesn't need to be anytime soon.

Emily

On Thu, Feb 4, 2016 at 8:50 PM, Dena Strong <dena.strong at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all! I'm not 100% sure whether having both a mailing list and
> individual folks on an email thread will keep the individual folks once
> replies happen, but I thought it would be worth a try? (If anyone SCA-side
> knows Terra's email address, she'd probably be a good person to talk with
> too.)
>
> Part 1:
> Emily and I had a really nice chat-slash-debriefing over tea tonight after
> work and she said that the Makerspace crew is also excited by how many
> folks are interested in brewing and that the Makerspace can contribute more
> hands and more equipment (ranging from brew-type to things like the Square
> card reader for credit card taking) to future joint endeavors. She
> suggested starting a joint email thread to discuss the possibility of more
> like this.
>
> Since it seems like there's definitely untapped interest out there, what
> do folks in both groups think about the possibility of some future brew
> workshops?
>
> If so, do any particular dates look appealing to folks?
>
> Part 2, the recap and review:
>
> What went well this time:
> Using the St John basement and kitchen for brewing or cooking workshops is
> *fantastic.* There was plenty of room to have the sanitizing and bottling
> and capping stations out in the main room and reserving the kitchen for
> things that need the six burners.
>
> Logistically (water, heat, and seating-wise), it was a ton easier to do a
> brew day in the church basement and kitchen than it had been when Ro and I
> did it in the Makerspace itself. And the reservation fee was only $50,
> which we could math in to the workshop fees.
>
> Bringing a portable projector and projecting the slides on the wall worked
> well too - since it's in the basement, dimming a bank of lights was enough
> to let the projector be visible on the wall.
>
> It was also really helpful having Stephanie teaching coffee and Rick
> teaching sake at the same time -- not everyone can be hands-on at the same
> time when you're bottling and capping, so having them both taking part of
> the group while other people were individually cycling through the
> sterilize-rinse-bottle-cap-label dance helped keep more of the crowd
> occupied.
>
> Pre-loading the stuff into the storage under the church stairwell on
> Friday was really key to being able to set up and get going on time.
> (Thanks again for the tour and the storage key, Liz!)
>
> Having people sign up in advance for the hands-on slots and pay online in
> advance gave me both a built-in way to cap the attendance and a guaranteed
> pool of cash to buy the ingredients from. We could control the hands-on
> numbers that way (though in hindsight I shouldn't have added the extra 5
> gallons to let more people in; I should've just said 'sorry, next time').
>
> What didn't go so well:
>
> Friday's hauling-in took me about 4 hours, so next time let's put out a
> call for more stuff-hauling crew during prep day.
>
> It takes a long time to bottle ten gallons of beer, even if there are a
> ton of people interested in doing it; next time, I'd say we should cap a
> hands-on beer segment at the number of people who can get 6-packs out of
> one five gallon batch (I think about 8?)
>
> Math fail: I wasn't aiming for anything resembling a profit, I was trying
> to make the workshop cost match the materials cost. But I'd miscalculated
> how expensive the honey would be in bulk from Amazon, so I didn't break
> even. I now know the cost of honey better; I'm chalking that up to learning
> curve.
>
> Also, Emily says it's OK to calculate a profit in for future workshop cost
> math, and we could split a profit between the groups.
>
> Emily's recommendation of one teacher per ten students sounds like a good
> ratio to me. We had about one per twelve to fifteen this time, I think?
>
> (I'm not entirely sure if everyone signed in on the sign-in sheets, which
> I'm still trying to find - if anyone sees a small black messenger bag at St
> John with a couple brewing books and a bunch of handouts in it, that would
> be it.)
>
> Planning ahead for extra and/or backup teachers in case someone gets
> called away on the day-of is sounding like a good idea too.
>
> I think that's the highlights?
>
> Thanks,
> Dena
>
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