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Our silver bottle openers are here and they are awesome.  We are selling them for $5.00 each and they will be available at our meetings.  Please help support the Winnipeg Brew Bombers. A special thanks goes out to Nathan Koop for doing all the leg work to get us these openers from LogoTags.

Tapsmagazine.com was gracious enough to donate a whole bunch of their December magazines to the Winnipeg Brew Bombers. In their January edition, they featured Winnipeg as a Premiere beer destination. We appreciate your efforts.

Mark

Jared has reviewed two winter beers:  Click Okanagan Spring Mild Winter Ale  and Rickard’s Oakhouse Winter Lager for the reviews.

Send me your photos of your Black Lager in progress.

This is just in case you have spam filters on your email and you are not getting my messages:

We gave everyone 45 grams of Perle hops for the bittering addition.  If you add those in at the 60 minute mark, you will get an IBU in the mid 40s which is too high for a Schwarzbier.  This is up to you how you want to handle this:  you can just add in 34 grams at 60 minutes and have 11 grams left over or you can play with the timing of the additions to get the desired IBU’s without adding hop flavour.

Jared had a few things he wanted to add:

1.       Mash schedule: traditional German multistep mash vs. single step  (we talked about this at the meeting)

2.       90 minute boil, hop additions to 25-30 IBUs

3.       Wort aeration: achieve 10-12ppm using agitation or pure O2

4.       Pitching rates: chill to 44 degrees F then pitch 1.5 million cells per ml of wort per degree Plato. Yeast temperature at pitching should be within 10 degrees F of wort temperature. Two packs of W-34/70 rehydrated as per manufacturer product sheet or large/step-up starter chilled and decanted. We don’t want people attempting to dump a 5L starter into a 23L batch.

5.       Fermentation: ferment to 6-8 points above expected FG (1.020 is a good rule of thumb) then warm to above 60 degrees F for diacetyl rest. Leave beer on yeast until SG is consistent for three consecutive days. A week at room temperature after fermentation has slowed will ensure completion.

6.       Rack beer to secondary for lagering; 7 weeks at 32 degrees F.

7.       Force carbonate to around 2.1-2.4 atmospheres or bottle condition. Use ½ pack neutral ale yeast rehydrated at bottling and carbonate at 65-70 degrees for three weeks. Alternatively, beer may be cleared after primary fermentation, then bottled, then lagered.

Sean has reviewed 3 Fonteinen – Oude Geuze beer.  Check it out here.

Winnipeg Brew Bombers Member Spotlight:  Nathan and Jeremy Koop

As our year comes to a close, I just want to take a second to thank our club’s major sponsors. The club would not be what it is, or do what it does without Half Pints Brewing Company and The Grape and Grain. This year, Scotty and the Grape and Grain crew, had their hands full making up extra “club brew kits” well into the new year! Scotty makes space for the club in his busy store (sometimes unexpectedly!!) and is always available to answer questions, give opinions and sample beers.

This year, Brew Master Dave let the club into his prized, Half Pints Brewery . He guided us through a typical brew day. We milled grain, mashed a “maximum capacity batch”, boiled in his beautiful kettle and took home some fantastic wort! Dave also opens his doors to the club every other month to host our meets and hosted the clubs “year end wrap up” party. He’s always got great advice for taking your brewing to the next level.

Thanks to Dave, Scotty, The Grape and Grain and Halfpints for all your support this year. We appreciate the extra effort you put in to make our meetings and events happen. We could not have had as much fun without you!

Our next meeting will be September 11, 2012 at 7:30pm(location to be announced). I hope everyone has a fun and safe summer.

Cheers
-David

This was my first year as a member of the Winnipeg Brew Bombers and I had an excellent time and learned a lot about the art and the craft of home brewing.  I had been brewing for a little while before I joined and I was told that I made good beer, but after being in the club, my brew became measurably better.  I even won 2 gold and 2 silver medals at homebrew competitions across Canada.  The seasoned brewers at the WBB were always willing to give valuable advice and valid criticisms to our beer. Sean, our vice president and resident genius gave some very informative lessons on malt even though some of the info went slightly over my head (whoosh).

The club dues were $25 dollars and we each received ingredients to make a club brew (which is well over $25) and it also helped pay for the club wind-up which was held in early June.

Also, a special thanks goes out to Nathan Koop who helmed the club for the last few years and did a very admirable job.   I appreciate your efforts.  It was a great year and I hope I can fill your presidential shoes.

Mark