Club Updates & January Meeting (Creative Comp)

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Hello Brew Bombers!

Thanks to those who made it out to our last meeting at DMC, and a huge shout out to those who brought something for show & tell.  I heard from a few people that it was fun and interesting to see what kinds of things other brewers use and why.

January Meeting – Creative Competition

It’ll be at Torque Brewing on MONDAY January 13th, at 6pm. We have a permit that allows us to sample homebrew from 7-10pm, but we want people to show up earlier so we can get the entries organized, take some time to have a few Torque pints (show appreciation for hosting us) and to get some general socializing in before the judging kicks off.  The competition is registered with BJCP, so if you’re certified this is a good chance to get more experience points.

Pro/Am 2025

Dave and Steph are still looking for replacements to fill the roles of Director and Co-ordinator of the Pro/Am Brew Challenge.  The competition doesn’t happen without anyone running it, so if you have the slightest interest in keeping it going, reach out to proambrewchallenge@gmail.com.  Remember, a perk to running the Pro/Am is a year of free club membership!

Club Kits

The test batch was brewed and turned out very nice, so the recipe has been finalized and the order has been placed.  The ingredients could arrive by Friday or early next week at the latest, at which point we need 4 or 5 volunteers to meet up at Grain to Glass to prepare the kits.  It only takes a couple of hours at most, so if you’re able to help out please let me know. 

BOTY 2024

This was the best year ever for the Winnipeg Brew Bombers!  We have a lot to be proud of, including:

Club Standings:
>Winnipeg Brew Bombers finished 6th out of 23 clubs across Canada!

Beer Standings:
>Steve Shaw – 31.5 points, and 8th place!
>Dan Molinski – 9 points, 35th place
>Neal Foy – 3 points
>James Ediger – 3 points
>Jonathan Schneider – 3 points
>Luke Thiesen – 3 points
>Chuck Mackenzie – 2 points

Cider Standings:
>Dan Molinski – 5 points, and 3rd place

Mead Standings:
>Thomas Cooper – 1 point

Club Updates & December Meeting

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Hello Brew Bombers!

The next club meeting is Tuesday December 3rd at Devil May Care and we’ll be doing Homebrew “Show & Tell”, so bring a piece of homebrew equipment you’d like to show off.  It can be almost anything… something you consider critical that you never brew without, or something unique and interesting, something homemade/DIY, or something expensive to make others jealous, ha ha.  We’ll also be doing a bit of beer trivia just for fun.

Homebrew Feedback

We have a new process for getting feedback on your homebrews.  In short, you bring your bottled beer samples and prepared feedback sheets to a club meeting, other members take them home to evaluate, and they give their feedback directly back to you.  There’s a new page on the website with all the details.  You can navigate there by looking under the “Members Area” menu > Homebrew Feedback

Pro/Am Brew Challenge

The Pro/Am is done!  Congratulations to the following winners from our club:

  • James Ediger got 1st with his Altbier
  • Jonathan Schneider, got 1st with his Blonde Ale
  • Steve Shaw got 1st with his Peanut Butter Porter, 3rd with his Fruit Beer, 3rd with his Mixed Style Beer
  • Thomas Cooper got 3rd with his SHV Mead

The points accumulated for the club should be pushing us up to 6th place in the BOTY circuit, which is the best position we’ve ever been in! 

Dave and Steph will not be continuing in their roles so they’re looking for next year’s organizers to take over!  If you’re interested, reach out to them!

  • Competition Director: Responsible for recruiting/managing judges, BJCP registration, LGCA Permit, Budget, Big picture stuff.
  • Competition Coordinator: Responsible for recruiting volunteers/stewards, marketing, sponsorships, prize donations, etc.

Tap Handles

Most of you have gotten your tap handles from me already.  Those who haven’t can pick them up from Steve Shaw.  Big shout out to club Secretary, Ryan Gren for the idea! It was a big success and the tap handles look pretty sweet. If there’s enough interest, maybe we can do another round with a new design next season.

Creative Competition

This will take place at Torque Brewing on Monday January 13th, so this is a reminder to members to get your brews going sooner rather than later.  This year’s creative competition is all Spice, Herb, Vegetable Beers.

Big Brew 2025

We have a host! This season’s Big Brew event will be taking place at Trans Canada Brewing sometime in March.  Specific details are still being worked out, but as usual, the winner of the creative comp gets to work with the brewery on the recipe for the big brew.

Cheers,
Dan Molinski

Club Updates & November Meeting

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Hello Brew Bombers!

A bunch of updates for you all.  As usual I’ll try to keep things to the point.

CMBTC Competition Winner

Congratulations to Chuck Mackenzie for winning the CMBTC competition. Sherwin and Aaron really loved his American Porter “The Night Porter”.  The main prize is a brew day on the CMBTC brewing system using his recipe, and the beer will be served at the CMBTC Christmas Open House. Thanks again to everyone who participated!

Pro/Am Brew Challenge Registration is OPEN!   

If you have any homebrew ready, you’re highly encouraged to enter.  Even if you don’t think it’s a particularly good brew, enter it anyway!  You’ll still get valuable feedback from BJCP certified judges.  All details found at https://beerawardsplatform.com/2024-pro-am-brew-challenge.

Judging is November 2-5.  If you’d like to volunteer as a steward or a judge, even for just a day, please reach out! This is the 10th Pro/Am, so let’s make it a great one!

Tap Handles

You have one more week to pre-order your tap handles.  Click Here to place your order before October 15th.  We currently have 16 pre-orders, but we need to hit 25 to make sure we get our discount. It might be a while before we do this again so don’t miss your chance!

Creative Competition

We’re still working on finalizing the location for the creative competition, but you should start planning your brews now as judging will be happening during the January meeting.

This year’s creative competition is all Spice, Herb, Vegetable Beers.  Since the style is inherently creative we’ve decided not to have rules around dollar/spend limits and no restrictions on where you shop.  Just make sure you understand and follow the BJCP style guide – have a base style and provide a description of added SHV.  If you have debatable ingredients, be prepared to defend them (i.e.: you used a fruit, but there are more dominant spices).

Club Kit

The votes are in and this year’s club kit will be a German Weissbier!  If you have a recipe you’d like to share as a starting point, please let me know.  Steve will be hosting the rest of the exec to do a test brew at his place in a couple of weeks.

Once we have done a test batch and make final decisions on the recipe we’ll place our order. If all goes well we hope to have the kits ready for pickup shortly after the holidays.

November Meeting

Our next meeting is on Tuesday November 5th at Oxus.  Since we have the Pro/Am permit, If you have some homebrew you think is great and you want to share, or if you’re just looking to get feedback and advice from others, plan to bring some samples! The meeting will be all about “evaluating homebrew” so we’ll be going through the five main areas of assessment found on typical judge scoresheets: appearance, aroma, flavor, mouthfeel, and general impressions.

Cheers!

Dan Molinski

October Meeting, Tap Handles, Club kit & More

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Hello Brew Bombers!

It’s time for another monthly update chock full of awesome news.  I’ll try to keep everything brief but informative.

September Recap

Our season opening meeting went well with 22 people in attendance.  Steve did a great job presenting on “how to do beer competitions good”.  His presentation and template spreadsheet for tracking your competition entries are available HERE.  Our club is currently in 6th place nationally on the Brewer of the Year circuit, which is the best we’ve ever been (so far).  Let’s keep it up!  If you have any beers laying around, consider entering them into some of the remaining competitions this year.

October Meeting

Our next meeting will be 7pm, Tuesday October 1st at the Canadian Malting Barley Technical Centre (CMBTC), 303 Main St.  They’ll be announcing the winner of their competition at this meeting, and we’re looking at changing things up from the usual “talk and tour” they do, and instead doing some kind of “testing tour” where we focus on their lab equipment and the kinds of tests they do.

As a reminder, they’re in a secured government building so make sure to arrive at 7pm SHARP because they have to meet us at the door and escort us up to their space.

Pro/Am Brew Challenge

Dave Cole, Steph Barten, and team are busy preparing for this year’s Pro/Am and are always looking for people to volunteer.  In particular, they need judges, stewards, and auditors from November 2-5.  If you can help out, even for just a day, visit proam.beer to contact them. Oh, and definitely enter some beers into this competition!

Club Branded Tap Handles

We’re taking orders for club branded tap handles!  The folks at Tap Handles To Go are giving us a discount (provided we order at least 25 tap handles).  There are 4 designs to choose from, two full-color, and two back & white.  Each with or without a chalkboard space.  Since we don’t want to have a bunch of inventory sitting around this is how it will work:

  1. From now until October 15th, CLICK HERE to place your order
  2. Pay us for your order before Oct.15. If your payment is not received you won’t get your tap handles.
  3. We’ll place the bulk order with Tap Handles To Go on October 16th.
  4. Pick them up when they arrive!

Facebook Group

Last year we set up a new Facebook Group for club members as an alternate means of connecting and having discussions (because long email threads can get pretty annoying). We only allowed active members at first, but now we’re opening it up to everyone.  Post pictures, ask questions, engage with each other.  There’s also an associated group chat on Facebook Messenger you can join.

Club Kit Survey

If you’re a fully paid member, you’re entitled to vote for this season’s club kit.  The options are:

  • Irish Red Ale
  • Scottish Ale
  • German Weissbier
  • Tropical/Juicy Hazy IPA

Go HERE to submit your preferences.  We’ll announce the winner at the October meeting.

Creative Competition

This season’s club creative competition is all about Spice, Herb, and Vegetable Beers.  As with last year we plan to get a permit so that we can sample and evaluate your beers during our January 14th meeting.  Time flies, so start planning!

Cheers!

Dan Molinski

September Meeting & Other News

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Nonsuch Big Brew

The American Brown Ale we brewed at Nonsuch, officially name “Bush League” will be on tap at The Common as of September 1st.

The official release party will be on Saturday September 7th at 2pm on the patio at Nonsuch. 

They’ve asked for a rough headcount so they can prepare for the influx of beer and food orders, so if you plan to attend, please RSVP here.  Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend. Bring all your friends and family!

September Meeting

We kick off the new season at 7pm, Tuesday September 10th at Sookram’s.

Steve Shaw will be presenting about homebrew competitions: What you should know

The vote for this season’s club kit style will kick off (on the website).

CMBTC Competition

If you haven’t registered yet and want to take part, there’s still time to brew something before the Sept. 14th drop off deadline. Register here!

2024-2025 Season Calendar

We’ve tentatively nailed down all the monthly meeting topics for the upcoming season. The Calendar of Events page has been updated.  Note that these are subject to change as we iron out the details of each meeting and event.  Also, this calendar is not an exhaustive list.  We can still plan some ancillary events or field trips, depending on opportunity and level of interest. Some ideas: visit Prairie Gem Hops, field trip to Scythe or Dakotah, group brewing experiment, taproom crawl, etc. If you have any ideas or are willing to spearhead a “side quest” of some sort, please let the club executive know! 

Memberships

A reminder that membership terms are 1-year long.  If you haven’t set your membership to an auto-renewing subscription, then please remember to take some time to review your membership and take care of any pending renewals before they expire. You can manage your membership / subscription on the Account page under the Member Area of the website.

See you all in September!

Cheers!

Dan Molinski

Summer Updates: Big Brew, CMBTC Competition & More

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Good morning Brew Bombers! We have some updates for you regarding the Big Brew, CMBTC Competition, and more!

This is just a summary, see your email for full details. If you haven’t been getting club emails, see #4 below.

1. Executives

Marc has transitioned everything to me and I’ve effectively taken over the President role. Thanks to all who voted for me. I look forward to making the upcoming season a great one for all of you.

Marc is still involved until the Big Brew and CMBTC competitions.

The Secretary role has been filled by Ryan Gren. Congratulations Ryan!

2. Big Brew at Nonsuch

Please sign up Before Friday as we need to give a final number to Nonsuch so they can order the ingredients. If you don’t remember if you signed up already or not, just sign up again and we’ll remove duplicates. This is an event for active, paid members.

https://forms.gle/mmDRyTFK889jPjW9A

3. CMBTC Competition

Registration is open!

https://beerawardsplatform.com/2024-cmbtc-brew-bombers-competition

As with the Big Brew, this is a special event for active, paid members.

4. Emails

I’ve been hearing that some folks aren’t getting the all-member emails. If you know of anyone affected, please report to the president email directly.

5. Social Media

I encourage you all to tag the club on your posts. If you’re not on social media, but want to help the club, send me some pictures of your beer, brewing, and related stuff and we can highlight it on the club accounts! This isn’t a club without it’s members so we should try to highlight you a lot more.

That’s all for now!

Cheers!

Dan Molinski

Election Results, Big Brew, CMBTC competition

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Thank you to those who took the time to vote in the recent election. 47% voter turn out is not great, but it’s what we got.

Daniel Molinski won the presidency. Over the summer, I will be helping with the transition and wrapping up some projects I started, and he will take over officially in Sept (possibly sooner).
Tyler Shipman won the VP position, and Paul Mailhot held on to the uncontested role of Treasurer.

The position of Secretary is still open. If you are interested, please send an email the club executive and we will have a run off vote to fill the spot.

Big Brew

The Big Brew at Nonsuch will happen on Sunday July 28th.
It will be an early day (7am-1:30pm). There will be someone working the taproom, able to serve beer,  but the kitchen will be closed, so we could do a potluck style lunch, and people are free to order delivery as well. There will be more communication on that soon.

The Big Brew beer will be available at The Common in September, as well as at Nonsuch for a release party.
Now that we have a date set, we need to know how many people will be committing to coming, and we need to collect fees for the event. The following link will be a sign-up for people committing to attending.

Big Brew Sign Up < Please sign up again even if you’ve filled in previous forms for the big brew.
Note that this is a paid-members-only event. Free-tier members are not eligible to participate

CMBTC Brew Competition

I’m excited to announce that CMBTC has offered to run a competition for the Club. They will be donating some malt to be used in brews done over the summer, with a submission deadline of September 14th. They will be judging and announcing the winners at the October meeting (which, if all goes as planned, will be at CMBTC).

The CMBTC malt will be available at Grain To Glass. When each person who commits to brewing for the competition gets ingredients for their brew, they will be given some base malt, but there will be no other rules beyond using the malt as a main component (>50%) of the recipe. Style is up to you – smaller batches may be necessary for higher gravity beers. Specialty malt, hops, and yeast will be up to you.

We will need you to sign up for this so that the amount of malt provided to each individual can be determined. If only a handful commit, each get a lot, but if there are many entrants, the amount of malt will be less.

Prizes will include a chance to brew a big batch at CMBTC and have your beer served at their December Open House. Also possibly free malt for a year.

We will need each person submitting a beer to include the style and any relevant notes regarding ingredients and adjuncts for the judges.

Oxus will be the drop off point, with a deadline of September 14th. We will keep the beer in the cooler to maintain freshness.

Cheers,
Marc