Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

A buddy of mine attended the Michigan Homebrew Festival last weekend. From his description, it was basically a one-day version of the National Homebrewer's Conference, but without the seminars and with more camping.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/1st-Annua ... 3665700771

http://beeradvocate.com/events/info/36157

Does anyone know if something like this has ever been attempted in Iowa? It seems like a pretty good idea to me. As was evident at the NHC this year, there are a ton of really good homebrewers in our state, most of whom don't know each other.

Lee

I haven't ever heard of one being done in Iowa. It might be a something we could try to get started with the other clubs. It would almost have to be done on private land somewhere. I don't think the state or county parks would care for idea.

Wow, what a cool event! Even if we couldn't do something so big it would still be nice to connect with other clubs more.

That would be cool. Tom is probably right, we need to start by finding a private place. The Michigan event was at a county park but Michigan is a little more fun friendly than Iowa. Also takes a dedicated group with lots of time to pull off an event like that. I can't meet the lots of time requirement so I am out.

A good private place might be a local hotel. You could ask for a meeting
room to brew in and other rooms to have lectures and discussions. Get a
special room rate for attendees. Have contests and show beer movies.
Welcome to the great indoors.

Matt F wrote:

That would be cool. Tom is probably right, we need to start by finding
a private place. The Michigan event was at a county park but Michigan
is a little more fun friendly than Iowa. Also takes a dedicated group
with lots of time to pull off an event like that. I can't meet the
lots of time requirement so I am out.


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Matt Franklin
Slappy Brewing North




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I think the first step would be to ping the other brew clubs in Iowa to see if they're interested. Some of these location & legal issues would be better solved collectively than expecting our club to handle them. Does anyone here even have a list of the other clubs in our state?

Michigan's laws are interesting. On the one hand, they must be favorable to beer festivals, since they have quite a few per year. On the other hand, it's unheard of (at least in my experience) that homebrewers could pour their beers at a craft beer festival (like the one in Amana). I know some guys who organize a few of the Michigan events and they always bitch about the local laws being too strict. For example, the Liquor Commission has been known to stop into festivals and fine the organizers for the servers pouring too much or forgetting to take tokens for each pour. I'll dig into it a bit and see if I can figure out how the Michigan Homebrew Festival organizers pulled it off and whether or not they have similar laws to us.

I am not certain that pouring our homebrew at beer festivals is OK in Iowa either. I think we have just been flying under the radar. I don't know of any verification of the true legallity of homebrew at beer festivals. In fact, it would be nice to know how the law truely addresses the issue in our state.

Well, these are the clubs I'm aware of...

Cedar Rapids Beer Nuts
http://crbeernuts.org

Cedar Falls CRAZE
http://www.crazebrewers.org/

Des Moines IBU
http://www.iowabrewersunion.org/

Iowa City THIRSTY
http://www.thirstyhomebrew.org/

Quad Cities MUGZ
http://www.mugzhomebrew.org/

Ames Brewers League
http://www.crazebrewers.org/

should be http://www.iowabrewersunion.net/ even though the top of their page says .org

Some other ones that are listed

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/directories/find-a-club





Well, these are the clubs I'm aware of...

Cedar Rapids Beer Nuts
http://crbeernuts.org

Cedar Falls CRAZE
http://www.crazebrewers.org/

Des Moines IBU
http://www.iowabrewersunion.org/

Iowa City THIRSTY
http://www.thirstyhomebrew.org/

Quad Cities MUGZ
http://www.mugzhomebrew.org/

Ames Brewers League
http://www.crazebrewers.org/

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Pella brewers and I think one more somewhere east of us.

From: Derek <brew-events@crbeernuts.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2010 2:01 PM
To: brew-events@crbeernuts.org
Subject: Re: Iowa Homebrew Festival

Well, these are the clubs I'm aware of...

Cedar Rapids Beer Nuts
http://crbeernuts.org

Cedar Falls CRAZE
http://www.crazebrewers.org/

Des Moines IBU
http://www.iowabrewersunion.org/

Iowa City THIRSTY
http://www.thirstyhomebrew.org/

Quad Cities MUGZ
http://www.mugzhomebrew.org/

Ames Brewers League
http://www.crazebrewers.org/

Post generated using Mail2Forum (http://www.mail2forum.com)

It seems like a few years ago homebrewers were shut down at a festival in Des Moines. I think we may be flying under the radar at the events we do.

It seems like a few years ago homebrewers were shut down at a festival in Des Moines. I think we may be flying under the radar at the events we do.

tompb wrote:It seems like a few years ago homebrewers were shut down at a festival in Des Moines. I think we may be flying under the radar at the events we do.

I'm pretty sure that is a Des Moines city ordinance.

From what I've heard about trying to hold events like this, insurance can be the biggest cost. Stupid people being sue happy and screwing the rest of us that want to have fun.

We would also have to look into alcohol laws for an event like this or could just say screw it all and do it all underground like Woodstock in some dude's field sticking it to the man!