Pro/Am, Creative Competition, January Meeting, and other Updates

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Hey brewers!

We have some big updates, most of which were shared at the last meeting.  There’s a lot of information here, so please read everything!

Pro/Am Awards night was a great success.  Thanks to those who showed up to support the event, and the competition.  We live streamed the awards for the first time ever, so if you’re interested you can watch that here.  If you placed in any of the categories, we’re still waiting on a few items to be delivered before we can divvy up and ship out prizes. There will be a central pickup point for local winners – stand by for a separate update email on that.

Also regarding the Pro/Am, planning for 2024 is already under way with Dave Cole leading as Competition Director, and Steph Barten as Competition Coordinator.  If you’re interested in pitching in with planning or executing the competition in any way, or if you have any questions about the Pro/Am, please reach out to them directly.

The Club Kit style for this season has been chosen.  We’ll be making a Dark Mild.  We’re working on a recipe now and may be brewing a test batch, but if you’ve got a recipe you think is good, or if you have any ideas or suggestions, please share!

The final details of the Club Creative Competition, aka “Supermarket Sweep” have been decided and posted here.

We’ve decided to bring back the snack potluck to club meetings! Starting with the January meeting. The list of active club members has been sorted alphabetically by last name and split into three groups. Check your email to see if you’re in the first group. If you’re on the list and you’re coming to the meeting on January 9th, please do your part and bring a snack to share with everyone. It can be anything from cookies, crackers, and chips to vegetables, fruit, and meats.

January’s meeting, unlike other meetings, is the second Tuesday of the month. It will be an Off-Flavours seminar! This is historically one of our more popular meetings so we’re scoping out a meeting location that can suit more attendees. Keep an eye on the Club Calendar for info. We’ll also send a reminder leading up to the meeting.

Finally, we’ve set up a new Member Feedback page on the website accessible to active registered members, which allows you to submit confidential, anonymous messages to the club executives. We recognize that many members have thoughts and ideas about the club but don’t always feel comfortable sharing directly with the club executives, so we wanted to provide this as an alternate channel of communication. Your input is important to us and we want to hear what you have to say so that we can make sure the club is heading in the right direction.

“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

November Meeting & Reminders

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Hello Brewers!

We have the most excellent news for our next meeting on November 7th at Oxus.  Because we have a permit for the Pro/Am judging, and the permit dates overlap with the meeting, we’re going to leverage this opportunity to allow sampling each other’s homebrew at the meeting!

  • Everyone who plans to attend the meeting has to sign up in advance, and be sure to arrive early enough to start by 7pm sharp.
  • While everyone is welcome to attend for sampling, we’ve decided to limit only paid members being able to bring their beer for evaluation.
  • Due to limited time, we expect to be able to evaluate at most 16 brews.
  • To be fair, there’s a limit of one brew per person, sign up in advance
  • Try to bring up to 12 bottles or two growlers to ensure enough beer is available for everyone in case we have a full house
  • Everyone attending must review the code of conduct.

This is only possible because Marc had the foresight to align the Pro/Am with the regular club meeting schedule, so give him a high-five next time you see him!

REMINDER: the Pro/Am Drop-off and Mail-in window was extended to November 2nd, so get your entries in!!!

REMINDER: if you’re a paid “club kit” member and haven’t filled in the style survey yet, please do so before the next meeting.  https://winnipegbrewbombers.ca/club-kit-beer-first-round-selection/

Cheers,

Secretary, Dan Molinski

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

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