Author: brewpres

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

Creative Comp Results, Discount Card, and April Meeting

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Thanks to all members who attended last night’s meeting. It was a great turnout with 25 people judging and evaluating the beers. Overall there were 14 beers judged.

The winners are:

1st Place: Hazelnut Espresso Stout, brewed by Steve Couch

2nd Place: Smoothie Sour (with mango and tamarind), brewed by Steve Shaw

3rd Place: Ail Ale (cream ale with garlic), brewed by Dan Molinski

Congratulations to the winners, and great work from all the brewers who participated. If you entered a beer you’ll get your score sheets emailed to you soon. Winners will be contacted directly to determine their prize selections – which were generously provided by the guys at Grape & Grain, and Grain to Glass.

Accurate Fire & Safety Discount Cards:

The folks at Accurate Fire & Safety have partnered with the club and are providing all registered club members with a discount card that give you 20% off CO2 refills!

You need to actually show the physical card, which has your name on it, in order to get the discount. To make distribution of the cards easier, they’ll be available for pick up from Devil May Care. If your card isn’t there, or if you’re a newly registered member, please let one of the club exec’s know.

April Meeting

The next club meeting is April 2nd and will be at CMBTC, (the Canadian Malting Barley Technical Centre, at 303 Main St)

Cheers!

January/February Updates

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Hi Brewers!

We’d like to welcome Steph Barten as the new Pro/Am Coordinator! Thanks for stepping up, Steph! She’ll be working alongside Dave Cole. They’ve already got the 2024 competition site up on Beer Awards Platform!
An important note for everyone is that the Pro/Am is back to being operated at arms-length from the club, so going forward any inquiries regarding the competition should now be directed to proambrewchallenge@gmail.com rather than the WBB executives.

For the Supermarket Sweep creative competition, we’ve decided to shift it to March. A number of people have said that an extra month would help them get their beer ready. We have some cool prizes for the comp: Grain to Glass has graciously donated two gift cards ($125 and $75), and Grape and Grain has offered either a new corny keg or a bag of grain. First place gets first pick, second chooses second, etc. The 1st place winner will also get to work with the Exec and the brewery involved in the Big Brew to make a recipe for the Big Brew. So, hopefully this pushes more of you to get something in the works for March 5th. We’re still working on getting us a permit for judging the creative competition.

An update on the club kit! Big thank you Scott Parker for sharing his Dark Mild recipe. As a reminder to everyone if you want to receive a club kit, take a couple minutes to confirm your membership is paid and up to date.

Just so everyone is aware, these are the things currently up the planning pipeline.

  1. CMBTC Visit – hopefully March/April-ish.
  2. Big Brew – in talks with Nonsuch. There will likely be additional cost for members who want to participate.

Usual reminders:

Club Merch – the product listings have been updated, check it out!
Anonymous member feedback – share ideas / comments / concerns about the club.
New Facebook Group – interact with members there, because emails can be annoying.

A few things…

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Hey gang!

  • Our October meeting will be this coming Tuesday October 3rd at Oxus. We will discuss the styles for the Club Kit, and go over some basics about the malting process, which leads us to…
  • A tour at Scythe Malting is in the works. October 28th works for them. I will create a poll to see how many from the Club can attend, and then we can arrange transportation.
  • The ProAm registration is still open, entries are rolling in. Hoping to see a good representation from the Brew Bombers this year. Head to https://proam.beer to sign up.
  • The Ukrainian Hops project brew day went fairly smoothly. Thanks to everyone who was able to help out. The beer has been dry-hopped, and I’m planning to transfer it to kegs in a few days. Sean Ali has offered to bring his Cannular system in to help with the packaging.
  • Regarding homebrew sampling: we will have a Club sampling night at Oxus as part of the ProAm on Nov 7th (the dates line up with our November meeting.) There will be scoresheets available for judging. Please plan to bring one or two brews for judging. Beyond that, I have a plan for approaching some higher level authorities at the LGCA, and a letter is being drafted to request a meeting with them.
  • As far as the Cereal Bowl beer, I was planning the Oxus cereal beer and figured I’d try to be productive with my time and brew a couple batches at once. I brewed it on Wednesday last week, hoping it will be ready for Oct 6th. It was a very last minute idea. I used grain I had in my personal inventory, some yeast Sean gave me, and some hops for bittering from the Ukrainian Hops project.

See ya on Tuesday!

Cheers,

Marc

September Meeting Recap

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Hey gang,

Some notes from the meeting:

1) First, the bad news: I have not been able to secure permission from the LGCA for us to host homebrew sampling at Club meetings. A couple ideas were put forward and I will be investigating those avenues. Again, for now, we are still unable to do samplings during meetings.

2) There are a few locations I would like the Club to visit for field trips in the near future: Dacotah Malting and Scythe Malting. Both are located to the west of the city. It will probably be easiest if we go on a Saturday, considering the time needed for tours plus the commute.
It would also be cool to check out Prairie Gem Hops and Prairie Mountain Hops. Again, they are in high season, so I hope to hear back from them soon.
The other place I proposed a trip to is the Canadian Malted Barley Testing Centre. CMBTC is located at Portage and Main, and would not require much of a commute, so we could meet there. They have hosted us before, and it’s a very interesting facility. 

3) The Club Kit recipe will need to be discussed soon. Next month we will take suggestions, and it will be put to a vote online so that all paid members can have their say. You can find the past recipes on our website.

4) Our first Club Creative Competition will be a Supermarket Sweep. Rough plan is to do a very simple base of pale 2-row, with each member being allowed yeast at a local homebrew store, and flavouring adjuncts at a local grocery store. We will break into groups to judge each entry (this will hopefully be figured out soon, along with sampling in general). Feedback will be given for all entries. No dates have been decided for this yet, but start thinking about your recipe plans.

5) The Pro/Am Brew Challenge is quickly approaching. It will run November 5-9, 2023. This will be the 10th year that the competition has run, which is quite exciting. It is the only BJCP-sanctioned competition in Canada where amateurs and commercial/professional brewers compete against each other, in a battle royale style event. It is a great opportunity to see how your brews (beer, cider, and mead) stand up against everyone else’s in Canada.
The Pro/Am is a great chance for local judges to get points which go towards their BJCP rank. If you are interested in judging, check out https://www.bjcp.org

6) I’d like to start working on the planning for the Big Brew soon. For our new members, the Big Brew is where we team up with a local brewery to make a big batch of a recipe from the Club. We go to the brewery and help with the brew day, and at the end, each paid member can bring home a 20L fermenter of wort from the batch. (Yeast must be pitched at home!) You are able to then tweak the recipe as you wish, or ferment it without adjustments. In the past, the recipe chosen was the winner of a Club Creative competition. I think this is a good idea to continue with. This past year, Barn Hammer hosted us and released cans of the beer we made. It is a Smoked Wee Heavy called Slow Build and is still available if you haven’t tried it. It’s a great fall beer. Go get some!

7) On Saturday Sept 16th, we will be doing the Ukrainian Hops Experiment Brew day with Olekksi. A handful of you reached out and I will be emailing you details for that day.

8) Finally, something I forgot to mention last night is that I was recently contacted by Accurate Fire + Safety. They are looking to expand into doing more CO2 for keg systems, and have offered the Club a 20% discount on tank fills. We are trying to come up with a way to keep this exclusive to the Club and prevent it from being shared with the community/city as a whole. I am looking into getting some Club ID “coupon” cards made to give to paid members. I hope to have this arranged very soon.

9) I have changed the membership details on our site so that memberships can be renewed earlier than the calender date of when you last registered. This will help the Club get its dues in earlier in the year so we can plan for Club Kits, events, field trips, and such with a better idea idea of our finances.

10) Finally, I forgot to thank Dan for stepping up as Secretary this year. He has held the position in the past, and will be a great re-addition to the Club Executive.

Reaching the Executive is pretty easy:

Marc – president@winnipegbrewbombers.ca
Tyler – vicepresident@winnipegbrewbombers.ca
Dan – secretary@winnipegbrewbombers.ca
Paul – treasurer@winnipegbrewbombers.ca
Executive@winnipegbrewbombers.ca will reach us all.
For Club correspondence, use members@apps.winnipegbrewbombers.ca

I am also looking into changing how our Facebook group works to allow for members posts so we can have a discussion board that is less clunky than big email threads. If anybody has a better idea than FB, let me know.

I hope that wasn’t too much of a tome for you to read. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Cheers,

Marc