Please use this thread for discussing the CHAOS booth that we will have in Grand Rapids for NHC Club Night.
Nancy and I meet recently to plan some of the elements that will be part of our booth. Below I've listed some notes from that meeting:
Theme: Wood/Natural shades/Rustic. - We decided that most of our elements such as the two serving stations are composed of Wood. We will continue this theme throughout the booth with design elements. The focus will also be on promoting the club with items (all to be determined after pricing) like stickers, coasters, and brochures. We think explaining who we are and serving great beers should be enough. We've abandoned any past kitchy ideas.
Beers: We are looking for at least 12 solid, good quality beers to be served on the taps. We can also handle bottles as well. If you would like to contribute beer, please sign up here: NHC Beer
Booth Layout: Below is really rough sketch of the booth layout we agreed upon. Nancy may have a more professional looking layout coming soon. I've also included some of the design elements (largely thanks to Jeremy).
Station 1 - Barrel Serving Station: This station will have 8 taps and will be self-serve (although there will be one CHAOS member to help guide people and also promote the club - a greeter of sorts). We will be putting our chaos logo on the top. We will also include arrows made out of chalk board paint that will point to each tap. The arrow will be labeled with what beer that tap is dispensing. Taps will be at easy serving height and the barrel will not be too high, so that you can read the top head and figure out what each beer is. Taps will go into the side of the barrel and go around 3/4 of the barrel. The last quarter will have not taps and will serve as a means to get a trunk of tap lines back to corny kegs on ice in buckets. We will hide the trunk of lines by building a small bench. It will serve double duty by providing an area for people to sit. The back end of the bench will be anchored by a wooden wagon wheel to separate the serving and non-serving area.
Stations 2 & 3 - Bottles and Shroud/Jockey Box: This station will be manned and will contain 4 taps along with an area for pouring bottles. Jeremy has kindly allowed us to use a beautiful rustic wooden table. to the right portion of the table we will serve bottles. The left portion will contain the 4 taps. It should only require 3 people total to work these stations. The front portion of the table, in front of the wooden jockey box shroud will be promotional items. The table also has lower cubby holes that we will be filling with a mixture of cobalt blue, amber, clear, and green bottles. This will be back-lit with either a rope light or holiday lights to give some illumination.
Storage: The back 10' section of the booth will house buckets for corny kegs. They will line the whole back area. In addition the larger blue tubs will be used to hold bottled beers.
Sinage: A back frame-only wall will be constructed. This will be modular and easy to assemble and disassemble. The frame will be 10' high. The center will hang our CHAOS sign. To the left and right will be 4 hanging chalkboard signs (also thanks to Jer), a total of 8 signs flanking the Chaos sign.
Some design elements of the booth:
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We are also doing a Build Day for all this on Monday the 12 of May at the brewhouse, starting about 6:30. I'll put an event up. If you can help, please let us know.
Attached is a rendering to simulate the booth space of what we were proposing.
CHAOS_AHA_Booth_050914.pdf
Looks great! Well done Dave & Nancy.
FYI...I was planning on bringing the Gose-rade jockey box that can go on the end on the table.
Chuck...I know you're loving the design on the top of the barrels. You've been asking for that for a while now...
Eveything looks great-i will chop up some wood to finish the remainder of chalk board signs. I will cut up the rusty chain as well. I will bring all except rustic table to brewhouse on Monday afternoon. Ill also bring some barn wood to make the jockey box blinds and a bench. I do have some timbers beams for the back drop but I cannot get them until memorial day as they are up at my place in michigan. I can bring them back after memorial day. Does anyone know how and when we can get the stuff into the conference?
NHC has offered us some tickets to club members only. These tickets are for those that do not have an NHC conference ticket, but would like to attend Club night on Friday, June 13th.
"The cost of the pass is $45 and gives club members the opportunity to attend and represent your club during Club Night (7:30 pm – 11:00 pm) and Beer City Social Club (10:30 pm – 12:00 am), on Friday, June 13, 2014."
You need to private message me before the 26th of May and I will send you the form and instructions.
http://www.ahaconference.org/events/club-night/guidelines/
Here are a lot of questions and answers about club night.
And Jer, looks like 8 feet is fine for the back frame.
Will proceed with 8' backdrop. Gonna trial beers tonight to see if good to go.
We need to nail down the gas side of our booth. Does anyone have tanks that they are willing to let us use for nhc? I will tag your gear and make sure it is returned.
Okay. I've updated the beer list for NHC Club Night. If you have a beer to add please add it to the bottom half of the document. We are starting to have a nice beer list going here, but can always use more sign ups.
Beer List for NHC
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtBwHSe6eSiddEtIcmJHTy1EWVR...
I brewed 4 beers for this. I have an ipa I think I am happy with. I brewed a standard honey wheat that I was going to pull out some beer for the ginos thing. I also split a 11 gallon batch of so very cherry white from the aha site. 1 I brewed per recipe and 2nd I infected with lacto and hit it with rhubarb and tart cherries. I will know next week if all are good to go. I can probaly bring a limited number of bottles.
I think with Jer's beers we will have hit our 100 gallon goal for beers.
I racked and dry hopped my Midnight maniac IPA's yesterday and they all came out great.
I also added my Armed & Hammered, English Strong Ale, aged on oak.
Jim is offering up 24 bombers of his barrel aged beers, KBS and Elixer of Life. I say we take him up on his offer as these beers showcases our barrel programe.
Please update the spreadsheet, if you have beer ASAP. I will be ordering special NHC Grogg Tags, later today, to label each beer for storage in a cold room at NHC.
Tonight I created labels for all of our keg beers. The NHC required these for storage in the conference cellar. If you bottled beer, similar info must be placed on your beers - no tags were available from NHC for bottled beer. Its probably a good idea to label each bottle too.
Thanks Dave. I'll label my bottles with the same info.
Whats the plan for meeting up, loading beer, equipment and stuff on Wednseday?
We are working out logistics for getting everyone's beer to the conference, along with all of our gear. I've started to make a checklist to ensure that we have everything we will need for the conference and club night.
To start, we need to get kegs and bottles to the brewhouse. Please drop of your beer in the brewhouse Fermentation Room no later than Monday June 9th. You may place your NHC beer along the right wall of the ferm room. If you have special requirements/arrangements, please let me know. All kegged beer must be labeled with an official NHC grogg tag, for which I have created a label from the beer sign up sheet. On Monday we will evaluate all the beer heading to the conference. We have 12 open taps. But can also rotate beers in and out. If your beer has significant issues, we will notify you that your beer is at the BH.
At this point we are looking at taking up beer and gear in multiple vehicles. A portion of the equipment is already in Michigan in Jeremy's hands. We may make advance trips to ensure that the serving equipment is on site. If you have a vehicle, please let me know if you can fit a few bottles or kegs.
I am leaving on tuesday night or early wednesday morning. We are going to see jason isbell play at fredrick meijer gardens on wednesday. I will bring up table--4tap jockey box-backwall, hanging tap list, wagon wheel, and riser for bourbon barrel. I could probably get a few kegs but dont have a great way to keep them cool. Most likely I will put stuff in storage at my place until reinforcements arrive to the conference to help unload to booth.
I will be finishing up everything this weekend. Perhaps it would be best if I drop off my beer and I bring the barrel as it is so bulky.
What time are we meeting at the brew house for load up?
Are we convoying up?
FYI: There will be (2) of my kegged beers (labeled Nancy: NHC/AHA), in the keggerator (being force carbed) that will need to be loaded and (2) small/medium boxes that's on the bar (labeled: Glass NHC/AHA) that will need to be loaded up for the conference. The two boxes will have the bottle/decor for our booth.
Thanks! Nancy
I am looking up the route to Grand Rapids and google wants me to use the toll road, blech!
I suggest to avoid the toll road just take the Dan Ryan to the Bishop Ford.
Also if we are leaving early morn we will be in on the opposite commute awesomeness!
I am almost finished with everything I am bring up. I have been working out of town a bunch. I will have a short window tonight if I need to grab barrel to bring. I fly back out of town Sunday Night and return Wednesday morning early. I am headed straight to grand rapids from the airport. I will still bring up, back drop, bar, 4 tap jockey box, 2 beer name chalk boards. Again if I need to get anything else that is large from the brewhouse please let me know. I can probably on grab this afternoon 5-7 or something. My number is 312-848-7657.
There are a lot of people that are leaving at different times. On Monday, we can hash most of that out - we already have a good start with what is in the spreadsheet. The plan for Monday evening, 6:30pm, is to sample everyone's beer. This will help us avoid any issues with over/under carbs, as well as weed out any beers that are undrinkable. At the same time, we will throw official club night labels (courtesy of Grogg Tag) on to each keg. Bottles...will need to be labeled in a similar fashion on the box. Each bottle should have a sticker or tape identifying it as well. This will help while serving.
I am meeting with Jeremy to get most of the booth items tp Michigan early. If you see jer outside of club night - buy this guy a beer. He has been instrumental in the creation of our club booth. Since Jer will have almost the entire booth, that frees up space for kegs...lots of kegs and some bottles. If you have room in your vehicle, please let us know.
David.
I will have space in my car for 2 kegs and maybe one box or keg in the trunk. I'm taking Josh and Jeff in my Jetta.
Sidenote: I had a CHAOS Flanders Red this week and it is tasting fantastic!
So I'm going to be flying home Wed evening, sounds like several others are going out Thursday morning. I won't be able to make it Monday night to sample, but can someone post online travel plans or use the spreadsheet to coordinate?
Oh... my... god. Why haven't we done this? http://thechive.com/2013/09/17/guys-rig-up-buddies-plumbing-with-beer-wh...
I wont be able to make the Monday meet up due to work.
I have room in my Blazer to haul kegs, how many I have no clue...
I dropped off my keg last night. Labeled an in the ferm room
My beers will not make it to the brewhouse by tonight. Work has been a busy demanding beast.
I tasted them last night and they are good to go.
Okay. We tasted a lot of beer and will be bringing some good stuff to Grand Rapids. Ive updated the spreadsheet and designated some items to each vehicle. We should be able to get everything up to GR by sharing the load. The majority of our booth has already been sent up. Below are lists of beers/items that each person will be transporting:
David:
Chuck:
Mark:
Ken:
Dave, Somehow I ended up with the French Kiss keg label, I have it with me and can give to you tomorrow when you get into GR, text me when you're in town and I'll meet you to label it. Thanks, Nanc
Is anyone leaving tomorrow (Thursday) for Grand Rapids? I have a friend that could use a ride if someone has space.