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

[Dena Strong]

Yay, more brewing collaborations! :)

What's the most appealing time frame for folks? Close-term, medium-term, or
summer?

How much I personally could be involved would depend on the specific month
as much as the specific weekend. My own schedule is kind of crazy for the
next three months - I could help with something on April 16 (if it's mead
or cider), May 14-ish or 28-ish, or some time in July or August.

However, I suspect April 16 would be a pretty tight advertising and
scheduling turnaround and it'd have to be cider or mead because I don't
think we'd have time to prep a batch of TV-magic pre-brewed-and-racked
beer. May 14 may be too close to finals for most students. May 28 would
probably be good for in-town students but would be bad for some of the SCA
folks who are going to a big event that weekend, so we'd have to lean more
on Makerspace folks if that was the chosen weekend.

May 21 might also be a good option for folks who aren't me - it'd be after
the end of finals and there doesn't look to be a big SCA thing that
weekend, but I'll be in Chicago for two back to back conferences. So if
someone else wants to run one on the 21st I'll happily cheer you on
remotely!

June or July may have more openings in general too? For me June is out, but
for a lot of folks it's past finals and pre school work.

(For reference, the Women in Chemistry group's also interested in
collaborating on a brewing type of event over the summer - they didn't want
to try to fit anything else into the school year themselves, and they would
be interested in somewhere between late May and early August.)

Thoughts?


On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 8:01 PM, Andy Gibbs <andygibbs at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm also interested in helping with this.  I have two cappers that I can
> bring if we're bottling anything, among other miscellaneous brewing
> supplies.
>
> Andy
>
> On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 at 11:42 PM, Gergana Slavova <
> gergana.s.slavova at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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