I cannot express how happy I am with last night’s turnout! About 20 wonderful ladies made their way to Young Avenue Deli to kick off our chapter, and we enjoyed some delicious beer and discussed the goals for our chapter for the coming year. I had been promoting MemphisGPO a lot via Twitter and it was very nice to finally meet some of my Twitter friends! Even though these social media sites have been around since I was in college, I still find it amazing the connections that can be made through them. There are so many fantastic Memphis women who enjoy quality beer and want to expand their knowledge and palate and I’m just so so excited that they’re all as excited as I am about this endeavor!
It’s looking to be a busy year for MemphisGPO, as we discussed lots of great event ideas and I’m hoping to bring them all to fruition. Some of the events we discussed: beer pairing dinner at Bosco’s, tour of Ghost River Brewing, participating in 5ks as a team (gotta get our fitness on to counteract the beer drinkin’!), chapter yard sale, clothing swap, a road trip to Nashville to meet up with NashvilleGPO, and the list goes on! We also discussed tapping into our philanthropic side by helping with causes like Pints for Prostates and Beer for Boobs, and local NPOs, among other things. And with homebrewing being such a big part of my life now, I’m going to try to incorporate some educational homebrewing events into the mix — especially after meeting a fellow Bluff City Brewer girlfriend!
Ideally, I’d like to have at least one MemphisGPO-specific event each month, and depending on the beer happenings going on around town, we can always plan a chapter outing to some of those, too. And since we’re all working women, i also want to have various happy hour meetups throughout the month to just catch up with one another and forget the working woes of the day/week ;)
And in other beer news:
- The Beer Tax Reform Act of 2013 passed the House and Senate Finance Subcommittees on Monday! Next week: full House and Senate Finance Committees.
- The inaugural Memphis Beer Week schedule was announced this week and there is a beaucoup of great events that week, it’s going to be hard deciding which ones to go to! I know we’ll definitely plan on going to one of the sour tasting events and glass night at Flying Saucer — gotta keep adding to our glass collection!
Hoppy Ever After 