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. Visit Homebrew Feedback for all the details.
NEW Jockey Box Rental Option
The club owns and maintains two jockey boxes that we’ve used at various events and festivals over the years. They were previously only set up for Sanke kegs, but they’ve recently been re-fit with fresh beer lines and universal connections that allow easy changeover between Sanke, Ball-lock, or Pin-lock connections.
If you’re interested in renting a jockey box, you can find all the details on the Jockey Box Rentals page
Election Results
The President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Competition Coordinator positions were uncontested. Me, Tyler, Paul, and Steve will continue in our respective roles for the 2025-2026 season.
Luke Thiessen stepped up and ran for club Secretary, and won the election held at the meeting. Welcome to the team, Luke; we look forward to working with you. Thank you to Ryan Gren for doing an awesome job filling the Secretary role for last year.
Club Kit Style
There were some great options discussed and we landed on Pilsner being the style for next year’s club kit. But in a twist, it’s going to be a “Manitoba Pilsner”, with made-in-Manitoba malt and hops.
Creative Competition Theme
Continuing with the local theme, next year’s creative competition will be “local clones”. Is there a Manitoba brew you’ve always enjoyed or thought it would be fun to try to replicate? This will be your chance!
Detailed rules and guidelines will be sorted out later, the idea is that whatever you’re cloning must be produced by a Manitoba company. Also, this won’t be restricted to beer… ciders and meads will also be allowed!
Memberpress
After discussing the pros and cons of using memberpress on the website, the decision was made to stop using it for the 2025-2026 season. Instead we’ll be going back to the old-school way of collecting member dues with cash, credit/debit on the Square, or e-transfer to the Treasurer in September. We’ll manage the member list manually. Over the summer break we’ll work on disabling memberpress. Some of you who have later renewal dates which don’t align with the start of the season may be hearing from me.
Updated Club Mission
We have updated the “About” page of the website with a mission statement for the club that more clearly outlines who we are and what we strive to achieve.
NEW Membership Terms & Conditions
We’ve spent the past year defining Membership Terms & Conditions. This is partly an expansion of the existing Code of Conduct, but now covers things like member classes, joining/ending memberships, and includes a blanket participation waiver.
If you were at the AGM and have already reviewed and signed, then no further action is needed. If you weren’t at the meeting and plan on continuing as a member, be prepared to sign your name at one of the first meetings next season.
Hello Brew Bombers!
It seems like it was only yesterday that I took over as President and started planning the 24/25 season and here I am already sending the update for the final meeting and season windup.
June AGM
The June meeting will be at 7pm,Tuesday June 3rd at Trans Canada Brewing in their upstairs room. It’s going to be the club’s first official “Annual General Meeting”. It’s all about club business, so it’s only open to active registered club members. No snack potluck. This is an important meeting where we’ll discuss many topics and make decisions that impact the club and all members. If you want to have a say in any of this then you must attend in person. The current agenda topics are listed in your email.
Elections
Nobody has stepped up expressing any interest in running for any of the positions…
…copied and pasted from my last update:
It’s the time of year when we start asking members to consider putting their name in the hat for the club executive positions. It’s important that we regularly change up club leadership because as we grow and our member base changes, what our members care about also changes. By having members like you step up and play a greater role in club operations, we make sure that the people running the club are in touch with the membership and understand what matters to them.
If you are interested, please send me a message with the position you would like to run for.
Windup BBQ
The season windup will take place at Half Pint’s Brewing on Saturday June 21st. The exact start time is still TBD but plan for mid-afternoon.
As usual, bring your own chairs, coolers, beverages, etc. The club will purchase a keg of Half Pint’s beer for everyone to share. If you have some fun games, please bring those too for entertainment. If you have a pop-up sun shelter, folding table, or other useful stuff you’re willing to bring, let me know! If you have a spouse or partner, they are also welcome to join us.
Also, as we’ve done the past few years, there is a potluck signup so we don’t all just bring bags of chips, ha ha.
If you have any other thoughts or ideas for the BBQ feel free to share! or be ready to discuss at the AGM.
Cheers!
Hello Brew Bombers!
Our next meeting is at Devil May Care Brewing on Tuesday May 6th at 7pm. As usual, show up a bit early to have a pint or two and socialize before things get started.
The guys from Grain to Glass will be doing an “Introduction to Kegging” presentation/demonstration. If you’re bottle conditioning your brews and have been considering making the leap to kegs, then you won’t want to miss this meeting!
Big Brew 2025:
Adrian’s Coffee Porter “Grimmer Jitters” is available on tap at TCB. Head down there and grab a pint before it’s all gone!
2025-2026 Executive Election:
It’s the time of year when we start asking members to consider putting their name in the hat for the club executive positions. It’s important that we regularly change up club leadership because as we grow and our member base changes, what our members care about also changes. By having members like you step up and play a greater role in club operations, we make sure that the people running the club are in touch with the membership and understand what matters to them.
The election will take place in-person during the AGM meeting in June – there will be no online voting.
Below are the elected executive positions and their associated responsibilities. Also remember that club executives get their membership fee waived for the year they hold their position! If you are interested, email the President with the position you would like to run for and a brief write up about your ideas/goals for the upcoming year.
President:
Vice President:
Treasurer:
Secretary:
Competition Coordinator:
Competition Updates:
Monin Gourmet Flavorings Competition entries must be dropped off at Grain to Glass by closing time on Friday May 2nd. See the Monin Gourmet Flavorings Competition page for all the details.
After the Cowtown Yeast Wranglers competition, the first of the BOTY circuit, our club is only 2 points shy of being in the top 5. Let’s get there! Visit the Upcoming Homebrew Competitions page for the latest info.
Hello Brew Bombers!
April Meeting:
Our next meeting is at Low Life Barrel House on Tuesday April 1st at 7pm.
This meeting will be all about calibrating and using measuring devices. We’ll be preparing solutions with known, highly accurate values that you can use to calibrate your measuring devices. So if you have a PH meter, we’ll have containers of water at specific PH levels. If you have refractometers, tilts, pills, etc. you can calibrate them in containers at various gravity levels. If you have thermometers that can be calibrated, bring those too! We’ll also be talking about using scales on your brew day.
If you plan to bring devices to the meeting, there’s a few things to remember:
It should be an interesting meeting, so I hope to see a lot of you there.
Club Kit:
If you haven’t picked up your club kit yet, please do that soon. Remember, if you place an online order with Grain to Glass, you can request they deliver your kit with your order as long as you’re inside Winnipeg.
We also encourage everyone to try to finish brewing their club kits in time for the Annual General Meeting in June. The hope is that we can do a big bottle swap that day, then spend the rest of the week evaluating each other’s Weissbier’s, and share all the feedback at the Windup BBQ the following Saturday.
Big Brew 2025:
The Big Brew at TCB is done! Thanks to everyone who participated. It was a long day, so extra shout out to those who stayed the whole 12 hours. The beer will eventually be available in their tap room. Keep an eye on the club social media for details.
Pro/Am 2025:
We’re happy to share that we’ve found the new Pro/Am Director and Coordinator!
Marc Molet-King and Adrian Zetner have both agreed to take over planning and preparations for the 2025 Pro/Am Brew Challenge. Who will have which title is still TBD… I heard talk of a beer drinking contest to find out.
While this will be something new for Adrian, Marc has the experience of two competitions under his belt, and they’ll be joined by Kyle Dyck and Neal Foy, both of whom helped out with last year’s competition planning and are staying on the team again this year.
If you’re interested in helping out with this year’s competition as a steward, judge, volunteer or otherwise, reach out to proambrewchallenge@gmail.com
Creative Competition Winners
1st – Adrian Zetner – “Grimmer Jitters” – Porter with Coffee
2nd – Steve Couch – Oatmeal Stout with Chili Peppers, Cacao, and Vanilla Bean
3rd – Neal Foy – “Dark Ginger” – American Brown Ale with dark ginger
Thanks to everyone for participating, and to Scythe Malting and Grain to Glass for contributing prizes!
February Meeting – Off-Flavours Training & Monin Flavorings
Our next meeting is at Trans Canada Brewing on Tuesday February 4th at 7pm.
We’ll be doing sensory training for common off-flavors in beer. Because of the costs involved, the meeting will be restricted to paid members only. If you’re interested, but aren’t a current member, or you’re a no-cost member, you can still become an active paid member by updating your membership here.
After the off-flavours training, we’ll be getting a short presentation from a Monin rep who will be bringing some flavour syrups for us to try! Steve has been working with them since last fall to coordinate another creative competition. More details will be provided at the meeting, but those who want to participate in the competition will get a free sample syrup for use during fermentation, back-sweetening, or for priming.
Sookram’s Brew Day
The club has been invited to participate in a brew day at Sookrams on Saturday February 8th, at 9am when they’ll be brewing their New Zealand Pilsner!
This is intended to be a similar experience as our annual Big Brew, except it’s their own recipe, and we don’t take anything home. There’s no cost to attending, but given space restrictions we want to cap this at no more than 20 people
Sign Up Here if you plan on attending.
We can bring food or order delivery. They’re still open to the public so it’s likely better to get stuff that doesn’t require a microwave. They’ll go over the usual stuff on the day, like no touching stuff unless instructed, always listen to the brewer, etc.
Big Brew 2025
This is planned to take place in March, though the exact date hasn’t been set yet. As the winner of the creative competition, Adrian is now in touch with the brewers at TCB and they’re starting the discussion on this year’s recipe.
Pro/Am Director & Coordinator
These positions still need to be filled! Please reach out if you’re interested.
Cheers,
Dan Molinski
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
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:
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!
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
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
