It's that time again, ladies and gentlemen of SOBA. Notice is hereby given that the Annual General Meeting of the Society of Beer Advocates (SOBA) Incorporated shall be held at 9:30am on Saturday, September 6th, at:

The Malthouse

48 Courtenay Place

Wellington

Please forward any agenda items, apologies, or comments to: secretary@soba.org.nz

Submissions close 31 August, 2008.

Ladies and Gentlemen start your burners! Entries are now open for the 2008 SOBA National HomeBrew Championship. Entries now close on 19 September 2008. Judging will be done in the latter part of September and results announced in the first week of October.

Trentham Racecourse, home of the highly successful Wellington Cup will host the first “Brewfest” event there on Saturday 16^th February. Upper Hutt city promotion Manager Paul Lambert describes the event as a “boutique brewery version of a wine festival with associated live bands and food.”

The Wellington region is renowned for its busy events schedule and “Brewfest” organisers have been working hard to bring together a great day out for Wellingtonians.

There are a limited number of caps and shirts available from the SOBA NHC. You can see Rob modelling them in the pictures below. If you'd like one, email your preferred size (for a shirt) to robo@soba.org.nz. Shirts and caps cost $30 each including GST.

Bock Beats Best Beers in National Homebrew Championships

Press Release: Society of Beer Advocates (SOBA)

17/12/2007

Former All Black hooker Ron Urlich is selling his historic Auckland pub in a deal which some market experts say could fetch up to $5 million.

Agent John Halstead of Bayleys said Urlich would lease back the Victorian-style brick pub on a six-year term with rights of renewal.

Urlich plans to use money from the sale to expand his brewery business, Halstead said.

"With micro-breweries, it's all economies of scale: the more you produce, the cheaper it becomes," Halstead said.

Hi SOBA people,

I'm finding it a bit tricky to round up enough news each week to keep these posts as informative and interesting as they can be, so I'm going to move to just posting regular news items as they come to hand in the News section. Those of you who have subscribed to the RSS feed on the news section will never miss a post! Please keep news coming in, and I'll keep posting it.

Time again for the SOBA News.