Agenda and minutes from the 2024 for 2025 AGM

Attendees: James Pettifor, Richard Swindells, Tony Tilbury, Steve Plampton, Colin Miller, Nick Davies, Alan Osbiston, Guy Gallington, Dave Caiels, Steve Bennett, Kevin Warnes, Graham Smith, Andy Whitaker.

Apologies: Nik Leng, Justin Dean.

Link to the AGM introductory minutes and review of 2024 (so far).

• Chairperson update:
  • James P is continuing for another year. Looking to finish next year. Thanks to James. 
  • Tony Tilbury motioned to limit chairman tenure to 2 years. This was widely agreed to avoid putting too much on one person. 
  • Nick Davies stated he wants to step in once James steps down next year.
  • Rich S re-motioned to remove the chairman role once we can’t find anyone and run it all via committee. This was mentioned to keep it live from last year, when James decided to step in to fill the empty position with wide popularity.
    • The fact the club is mainly run by committee was questioned by Nick D and James P, which was quickly explained by Rich S and no more was said. This motion continues and will be enacted once we run out of chairman nominations.
• Regional organisers & committees –
  • Thanks to all organisers and volunteers for their efforts over the last 12 months. Lets have more of the same for 2025! 
  • The subject of regional emails came up and was motioned and seconded. Tony T promised to look at the cost and practicality of setting up regional emails for new members to gain contacts and help to arrange events/comms.
  • We motioned to run regional committees as in previous years, with no need to change a model that works. 
• 2025 plans:
  • Colin Miller motioned to use club funds for:
    • T-shirts printed to distinguish brewers at club events, such as:
      • The Shed Brewers festival
      • Annual homebrew competition
    • Banner or marketing popup for the Shed Brewer Festival and annual homebrew competitions
    • Colin M also offered a marketing pop up bar to customise for events with logo and banner
      • Do we need more publicity? is rich at the Vic happy for greater ACB publicity (Tony/Rich to speak to him)
      • Suggest a club banner e.g. “ACB presents the Shed Brewers festival”
• Major events (Calendar events via website):
  • Collate a list of major calendar events on the website:
    • Shed Brewers Festival – May 17th
    • Homebrew competition (Nov 16 2024) – looking to hold competition same time next year and suggest going for a dark beer theme. 
    • Annual Brewery tour (CM to look at Harvey’s in East Sussex)
    • Mauldons brewery tour and clone beer challenge in March 2025 – clone brew challenge (Black Adder).  £10 charge for the tour.  20 places max.
    • Chelmsford brewery tour – tbc
    • Radio City brewery tour date (May 10)
    • Crisp Malt – malt tour and malt related beer challenge.
• Monthly meetings (Calendar events via website)
  • Collate a list of club events on the website – copy format of 2024. 
  • Saturday meetings will alternate between Essex and Suffolk. Starting with Suffolk in January. 
  • It was proposed that we need to cover more talks, presentations, and content with talks at monthly meetings to advance the club’s collective understanding and continual improvement. Suggested talks (non-exhaustive list):
    • Kegging (Rich/Tony).
    • Water mods and methods (Alan/Nick) – look to work in with water treatment challenge.
    • Competition entry – how to (James P).
    • Beer labelling (Guy G).
    • Recipe creation (Steve P).
    • Brewery mods/equipment (open).
    • Brewing methods and conditioning.
    • Open to other topics anyone wants to cover.
• Beer Challenges (tbc – add to website to show quarterly beer style):
  • It was suggested that we try to commit to an annual 3-way/long tail competition with the 3x regional clubs and look to included Cambridge. Also look to pass on brewer of the year cup. Current winner, Graham Smith.
  • Collate quarterly beer challenges on the website:
    • It was proposed to focus the quarterly beer challenge on the 4-pillars of beer (Water, Malt, Yeast, and Hops) to make brewing for it easier as we have a lot of clone challenges and other brewing tasks in 2025. This had mixed reception but seemed to be passed as take up has been low recently with so many other events to brew for.
      • Water treatment challenge – make a pale beer with Anglian tap water
      • Malt challenge – use at least 70% Weyermann Barke Munich malt – any style, any hop(s), any yeast
      • Single Hop Challenge – Colin agreed to speak to Charles Faram about their experimental hops to see whether one of these might suit our single hop challenge. Look to build a relationship with Faram’s offering to provide brewers feedback and tasting notes.
      • Yeast – Colin M offered to talk to yeast manufacturers to get at least 1x set yeast for the same recipe beer or set recipe and 2x different yeasts, provided to brewers at random.
      • Other suggestions:
        • Dark beer/winter beerchallenge to correspond with the 2025 ACB homebrew competition
        • Belgian beers

• Communications
  • Newsletters
    • Kev Warnes is happy to continue collating the newsletter.
    • The above relies on content from others to include:
      • Blogs.
      • Social posts.
      • Competition results.
  • Website
    • Tony is happy to continue to develop the website with more helpers with content and SEO.
    • Look to improve the site for mobile first.
    • Look to improve the events page and other plug ins.
    • Look to improve how we highlight new content.
  • Social Media (Facebook group/Twitter (X))
    • People posting on FB group. Good engagement, could get more people if we had an open page. 
    • Rich S to look at the existing closed group and create a new, open members page and link it to the existing page and website with a linked Instagram account. This will allow us to post more imagery and modern content to a younger audience in our regions.
    • Once the new group is set up, Guy G wanted to help with the Instagram page and other socials.
  • Slack
    • Still very noisy – we mentioned to cut down slack use and commit to archiving more channels. Suggested talk on using Slack and finding new channels. Suggested using Facebook/Instagram more for a modern audience.
• Thank organisers for the events of 2024.
  • Rich S thanked James P for his commitment to the role of chairman over the last year and drive and help to keep projects in brewers minds and progressing. 
  • Rich S thanked Colin M for organising the Hook Norton brewery tour. No small task.
  • Rich S thanked everyone that had helped and was helping with the annual homebrew competition, due to be held on November 16th.
  • Rich S thanks anyone that had helped with communications or had contributed to the content on the website. All the help we can get is all appreciated and very much needed. We look to use the content and improve it with SEO techniques looking to improve reach and appear in keyword searches to raise awareness of the club and keep it growing.
  • All the above was met with a round of applause in appreciation.
• Any Other Business:
  • Guy G presented ideas for a new logo with some slick design work.
    • Ideas were passed around the room and suggestions were made for more logo ideas to introduce other elements. Much appreciated work and something to look forward to seeing the second draft amendments.
    • The point of consistency and identity was also brought up. The idea of using the logo ideas for T-shirts and banners. It is noted that it is very important to maintain an identity with consistency across media. Using  different logo designs across media types isn’t good for overall brand identity. 
  • Guy G also presented a digital artwork for the Shed Festival next May. We asked if we can use the digital poster for the Shed Festival (no commitment to change the logo at the moment, as the current ACB logo is well recognised at this event).
  • Steve B asked to keep Norwich brewers in mind and included.
  • Request to make a regular bi-annual or quarterly meeting at a set location, so we have a set location and look at an ACB NAB get together with a clone challenge. Ampersand was suggested as a central location for the regions. To be looked at and arranged.