I agree with the comments that are being posted here, I think that there is great value in developing a knowledge base with a local flavour. I'll list a bunch of examples below, but by no means do I think the list is complete.

I think we could develop a table of famous water styles and how to treat local water with gypsum, espom, etc to bring our local profile in line with them, how to treat for chloramine, etc.

Maybe a table showing locally available substitutes for things that are harder to get, ie what's a good replacement for carapils? Special B? can I use 2-row where pilsner malt is called for?

Maybe we could start a trading board, I know a lot of people are growing their own hops or are participating in bulk purchases, and may want to swap for different varieties. I ranch my own yeast and am sure others do the same and might want to trade. Or get rid of equipment that has no use to them but may help start someone else to get into brewing.

Maybe even let people add some of their brewdates to the calendar so that, if invited, people can go lend a hand and see how other people brew, maybe pick up some techniques or offer advice while they're there.

Just to give my comments some context, let me explain that I'm a novice homebrewer and something of a fairweather member of the EHB (I attend meetings when I remember, and when I'm not busy with my family). I learned about this site by thumbing through a copy of the newsletter at South Side, and so far have used it mostly to remind myself of when meetings are. I prefer the paper copy of the newsletter. I have subscribed to the RSS feed however, so if there were forum activity I would be reading it regularily.

What I would like to see on the website is brewing information that I can't get from other forums. The web has more general homebrewing information than I can deal with as it is, and I don't need to come to this site to get it. That being said, having that text on the site will increase search hits and traffic, which is probably a good thing so far as club profile (and maybe site revenue) is concerned. It just won't help me personally all that much :-)

So what can kind of brewing information can I only get here? Information about brewing in Edmonton I suppose.

- how to treat Edmonton tap water (do you need to do... anything?)
- how to source supplies locally (special-B malt???)
- recipes adapted to ingredients that I can source locally. (maybe in a nice wiki presentation!)
- Edmonton brewing and beer events

I suppose I should just go ahead and pose questions like these in the forums, and I'll probably get exactly what I'm looking for. I should go ahead and do that.