Category: Pro/Am Brew Challenge

April Meeting & Other Updates

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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:

  • Make sure the device is charged beforehand
  • If needed, bring your phone/tablet/laptop with you (also charged!)
  • Label or mark your devices to avoid getting them mixed up with others

 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

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

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.

“Now Hiring” Pro/Am 2024 Coordinator

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Planning for the 2024 Pro/Am Brew Challenge is already under way, however the Winnipeg Brew Bombers require a volunteer to step up and fill the role of Competition Coordinator.

This person will:

  • Work alongside the Competition Director
  • Be responsible for procuring sponsors and prizes
  • Handle competition marketing – social media posts, advertising the competition
  • Solicit beer submissions from professional breweries
  • LGCA Permit application
  • Arranging judging venue, awards venue
  • Planning judge/steward meals

While someone with experience is preferred, don’t let it deter you from putting your name in the hat. This is a great opportunity to learn as you go, with the support of the Competition Director and the WBB club executives. If you’re working on your BJCP certification this is a good way to earn non-judging points as well.

If you’re interested, send an email to executive@winnipegbrewbombers.ca

December Meeting, and Pro/Am Awards

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Hi Brewers!

Yes there is a meeting tomorrow. 7pm at Oxus. There’s no presentation, speaker, or topic, but we’ll be sharing a lot of updates, so we hope to see you there. If you can’t make it, updates will be posted on the website after the meeting.

The Pro/Am Award Ceremony will be hosted by Fionn MacCool’s at Grant Park this year. It’ll take place this Wednesday December 6th at 7pm. We also plan to try live-streaming the awards… likely via the proambrewchallenge Instagram account, but if that proves to be a challenge, we may just provide a Google Meet link. Keep an eye on our social channels for that.

Cheers,

Dan,
Secretary

Pro/Am, Field Trip Bus, and Club Kit Styles

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Hello Winnipeg Brew Bombers!

The Pro/Am Brew Challenge needs judges and other volunteers.  If you’re willing and able to help out in any way from November 5 to 9 at Oxus, go to the competition page on the new Beer Award Platform, and click on “I want to volunteer”.  The form will walk you through all the options including roles and schedules.  Note, you will need to register an account on BAP in order to submit the form. 
You do not have to be certified in order to judge, but preference will be given to those who are.
Also a quick reminder, we are still looking for people to step up and fill in as the Competition Executive(s) to replace Mandy and Jeff. If you have experience co-0rdinating events and/or soliciting sponsorships, please let us know!

The field trip to Scythe Malting is set for October 28th, but we need to know if there’s enough interest to warrant getting a bus.  If you plan on participating in the field Trip, please fill in the Field Trip Bus survey on the members content page.  

The selection of the beer style for this year’s club kit will be done in multiple rounds through a process of elimination.  If you’re a fully paid member please fill in the Club Kit Beer survey on the members content page with your ranking of the style options proposed at the last club meeting.  The survey results will be shared at the November meeting.

Cheers!

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