It's been a busy start to 2020 for the Monash BrewLab, as well as a big shift in activities due to the COVID19 pandemic. The year started off with some new and interesting brews: a Michelada Gose revision, a plum Imperial Stout, a Brut IPA and a Bock, appropriately
labelled “Bock to School”. These four beers vary drastically in styles and were picked to challenge the brewers in their knowledge and skills. All four turned out gorgeously, with the final ABV’s being quite accurate to the values expected. As the skills of the team grow over
time, we look forward to sharing more of our beers with the public.

However, before we knew it, the pandemic changes caused the freezing of all on campus activity, and our brewing activity ceased in March. Due to these changes, the BrewLab shifted its learning online. The team focused more on social media outreach and supporting the brewing community during these trialling times. The technical team began to create brewing videos for the team members to follow along, as well as develop more online brewing modules. The internal team focused on recruitment and supporting students, whilst the external team jumped into social media, online events and redesigning our merchandise.
Thanks to our online recruitment, the BrewLab was lucky enough to recruit 13 new members from a variety of faculties to the team in May. These new members helped with the online workload and provided some new faces for the team to get to know. All hands meetings continued via zoom every three weeks and the team quickly became acclimated to the online learning. We were also very excited to launch our new website in early June.
This year saw the first ever Monash BrewLab Trivia Night. This online event hosted over 50 people, with 8 teams going head-to-head for a 6 pack of BrewLab beers. The event went swimmingly, and both the team hosting it and those taking part in it raved about it. Due to the event's success, another trivia night will be taking place during the mid-year break, at 8pm Thursday 16th July. This event is open to everyone and we would love to see you take part with a team. To find out more, check us out on Facebook @MonashBrewLab.

As the BrewLab team looks to the second half of 2020, we are excited to get back into the brewery and apply ourselves to the brewing process once again. With more online events planned for the community, as well as finalising analytical lab and packaging lab spaces, the team is extremely excited to dive in and increase our capacity, as well as the learning opportunities for our students. We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress for the remainder of 2020.
This year, we will also be saying goodbye to two of our long serving managers,
Carson Yuan (Deputy External Operations Manager) and Edward Attenborough (External Operations Manager). Both of these managers helped start the BrewLab and have been with us since 2018. Both students graduate with double degrees in July and we wish them all the best for the future.
As always, if you would like to get in touch with us about catering an event, brewing with us or partnering with us financially or through knowledge sharing, please do not hesitate to email us at brewlab@monash.edu.
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