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

[Gergana Slavova]

I can definitely help out with this.  Dena, pick a day (or a couple of
dates) that are convenient for you and we'll narrow it down to just 1
that's good for everyone.

~Gergana

On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 3:11 PM, Emily Knox <emilyknox at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Makerspace-keymembers mailing list
>> Makerspace-keymembers at lists.chambana.net
>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/makerspace-keymembers
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Makerspace-keymembers mailing list
> Makerspace-keymembers at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/makerspace-keymembers
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/makerspace-keymembers/attachments/20160327/dee229cd/attachment.html>