The Hogtown Brewers Newsletter
August 1999

Quality Acts in CyBeerSpace - Homebrew Club Web Pages
Mark Tumarkin

This is truly an electronic age we live in. The Web is not necessarily replacing print media, but it is giving us additional ways to get information. This is certainly the case with homebrew clubs. A good club newsletter is one of the more crucial ingredients in the recipe for a good club. It is probably the best way to get out information to the members. However, mailing costs are expensive.

This has always been one of the larger, ongoing expenses faced by most clubs. At least that was true until recently. Now many clubs have web pages, and the newsletter is one of the most important components of these web sites. This saves a lot of money on postage, and there are always places to better spend those dollars. You can tell a lot about the nature of a club by looking at its newsletter, or now its web site. As I said, many clubs have web sites but many of these sites leave a lot to be desired. We are really lucky to have a talented and hard-working Web geek like Bradley, our Minister of Propaganda (damn, I actually said that; do you actually believe it?). He has been working to make our site one of the best club pages on the Web. Like most good Web pages, this is a work in progress; and the dust never settles. Keep watching, it will continue to get better.

We are also fortunate to have our page hosted by the Home Brew Digest. The Janitors of the HBD host club pages as another aspect of the HBD site. This is a purely volunteer effort, paid for solely by donations, and I think that the Hogtown Brewers should vote to make a donation to support this great effort. The HBD club pages include some really great club sites as well. Here are some of the sites that I think represent some of the best examples of Homebrew on the web. Not all of them are on the HBD, and I'm sure I've left out some terrific pages. This certainly isn't an all inclusive list (far from it, and I don't mean to slight clubs I have left out), but take a look at some of these sites, they are certainly Quality Acts in CyBeer Space.