Minutes 2020

Minutes 2020

CAMRA NI Committee Meeting Minutes – 25 January 2020 – Fairley’s Bar, Coleraine

HQ and SNIB Memos

  • 2021 will be CAMRA’s 50TH anniversary – expect special events.

Treasurer

  • There is £ in the branch account. All bills have been paid.

Pub Officers Report

  • Wrote to The Chester Bar on the Antrim Road asking for local products to be introduced.
  • The Peaky Blinders bar on Gresham Street has reverted to its original name The Hudson.
  • Boundary brewery have announced a gluten free beer, the Pubs Officer will try it.
  • Compiling Good Beer Guide (GBG) entries is ongoing. There is still time to get National Beer Scoring System (NBSS) scores in.

Membership

  • Membership is 334 down 3.
  • CAMRA overall increased by 1475 to 192,375. 8 to 9 hundred of these are believed to be from Wetherspoon due to the vouchers scheme.

SNIB Report

  • Only 5 nominations for Champion Beer Of Britain (CBOB) were received from the branch, this is 3 more than last year but we need more members to nominate beers to promote local brewers at national level.

Pubs and Loneliness

  • CAMRA is working on a report that highlights the important role that pubs play in combating social isolation and loneliness. They are looking for community pubs like The Sunflower.
  • Case studies are welcome. Send to Chair@camrani.org.

Cider

  • This year we want to promote local cider companies by talking to MLAs and being visible at cider events. We need to raise our profile as a source of support for the local cider industry.

Festival

  • Belfast City Council has approved our application for Botanic Gardens, though the budget will depend on how much they will charge for the use of the park.
  • We need to get a festival committee together with volunteers to take care of marketing, tourism, catering, sponsorship, and fork lift truck driving.
  • The date will be around the May Bank holiday: 1 – 10th May.

Social Calendar

  • 1st Feb – Hilden/Farmageddon taproom at Hilden brewery.
  • 21/22 February – Knockout taproom.
  • Next meeting will be at the Knockout taproom on Saturday 22nd at 1pm.

AOB

  • The National Executive Regional Directors (NERD) meeting will not happen in NI because the costs we submitted were too expensive. They want to support us and would like to come here in June if the accommodation was cheaper.
  • The Competition and Marketing Authority (CMA) is meeting in Belfast on Monday 27th February. They want to gather evidence of restrictive practices which prevent small concerns accessing the market.
  • Brewery Liaison Officers (BLO) – only a report for Farmageddon was submitted to HQ. There are a number of vacant posts, anyone who wants to be BLO contact the committee.
  • If anyone has ideas of events we should attend let the committee know.

Closing remarks

  • 2019 was a good year for CAMRA NI, despite not having a beer festival: events like the bar at the Northern Lights second anniversary, the beer tasting at Mike’s Fancy Cheese and our press releases raised our profile.
  • Charles Ballantyne of Ards Brewery is doing well. He restored two old handpumps for us.
  • There is no news so far of the event in conjunction with HMS Caroline.
  • A press release will be issued to highlight our commitment to the Pubs and Loneliness campaign.