I was honored, yet surprised, to find out a week ago that I was nominated for one of the board positions for the Upstate Brewtopians, our regional homebrewers club. I’m not sure who nominated me, but I definitely owe them a beer. The polls open today and run through March 9, so I have a couple weeks to do my best Obama impression and come out of nowhere to take the Upstate homebrewing world by storm.

As part of my campaign, I figured I should have a platform. So, should I win one of the board positions, these are the top five initiatives that I would push for with the Brewtopians:

#1: Free beer!

Oh wait, we already get free beer at all our meetings…

#2: More free beer!

This might entail a 2000% increase in annual dues, but we’ll all get more free beer at each meeting.

(that was a joke…)

#3: Adopt a brewer program

New brewers that are looking for a mentor to help them get started or improve can get paired up with a patient and merciful brewmaster. The vet can either show them how to use that Mr. Beer kit they got three Christmases ago, or they could have the newbie over and show them how it’s really done on their 10 bbl system that was engineered from old Harley parts.

#4: Beer dinners

Since this is a campaign, I don’t have to be concerned with legal issues or reality in any way, so I think we should partner with a local restaurant to do a fund-raiser dinner. We could commission a few of our big-time brewers to prepare three or four large batches of homebrew to be specifically paired with a four-course meal. It would be delicious and we could donate all proceeds to charity or just keep it all for ourselves.

#5: Instructional seminars or official club brew days

Homebrewing can be very intimidating. To take some of the anxiety out of getting started, we could offer instructional workshops to cover things like:

1. Brewing for beginners: extract brewing
2. All-grain brewing
3. Kegging beer
4. Experimenting with styles and ingredients

Even to those who are experienced, a club brew day might be a good way to get many of us together to see each other in action and pick up some new tricks of the trade. I know we can talk about all that at our meetings, but it’s one thing to talk about cars, it’s another to be standing over the hood. The more knowledge we share, the better we’ll all become. And we all want to drink better beer!

It’s about sharing the love and building a tighter community. Isn’t that what beer is all about? So I hope that all club members will get out and vote. I’ve provided a couple links to the polls, or you can just go to the Brewtopians’ website.

As they say in Chicago, vote early and vote often!