True Grist held it’s first meeting of 2018 at Block 3 Brewing Company in St. Jacobs. We were hosted by Block 3’s head brewer, Kevin Freer. Kevin discussed Block 3’s sour program with the group, including use of the brewery’s recently acquired coolship. Block 3 has perhaps the largest sour program in the region, and throughout the evening we had the privilege of picking the primary mind behind that. Thanks Kevin!
January’s meeting also brought announcement and dissemination of our results from True Brewer. Top 5 scorers for beer appearance, aroma, flavour, and mouthfeel were revealed, as were the top 5 total scores – the highest of which was 2017’s True Brewer… paradoxically, it was your’s truly! The top 5 total scores are included below. We’ll save further details and result analysis for a future blog post. The data we’ve collected from this process is certainly interesting, and we should be able to learn a great deal about it in regards to our strengths and weaknesses as brewers and as beer analysts. Many of the recipes from this internal competition are being made available in our recipes database, and discussion of the beers, and the techniques behind them is ongoing on the forum.
| Brewer | Beer | Average Total Score | Ranking |
| Justin Angevaare | Schwarz out (5.0%) | 38.813 | 1st |
| Paul Byron | Belgian Dubbel (5.5%) | 38.324 | 2nd |
| Ryan Dunlop | Hot Lederhosen (8.0%) | 37.5 | 3rd |
| Andrew Ash | Deck The Hulls (5.5%) | 37.441 | 4th |
| Monte Fenske | House of Stout (4.5%) | 37.25 | 5th |
This meeting also saw a trial run of a Troubleshooting Corner (idea unapologetically borrowed from the Maltose Falcons). This meeting’s Troubleshooting Corner was ran by Chris – a professional sensory analyst and brewer, as well as Ryan Dunlop and myself – two homebrewers keen on improving our sensory evaluation chops. The idea behind this is that during a portion of our meeting, some of the more experienced brewers in the group will be available to identify flavours or issues in your beer that you are having difficulty with. You catch us when our palates are at the sharpest near the beginning of the meeting, following announcements. I think the response to this was positive, and we can hopefully give it another shot next month with some minor tweaks.
We received delivery of local 2017 hops from Hayhoe Hops at this meeting as well. Scott Hayhoe made the delivery personally at this meeting, as he did last year. Thanks again Scott!
A number of announcements were made in addition to this:
- We will be upgrading our server sometime this month. During this transition we will be locking the forum such that no content is lost in the transfer. Disruption should otherwise be minimal. This upgrade is response to the fantastic growth our club and website has seen in the last year. Thanks to Josh Van Opstal and Ryan Dunlop for managing the changeover!
- 2018 dues are available to be paid at the bottom of the membership page. The club is in good shape financially, but dues are essential to its operation, and pay for things like our special occassions permits for our club meetings, various web services, and much more…
- Speaking of much more. We could use your feedback on this – the use of club resources that is. We have released a 2018 membership survey that seeks input on this, as well as our 2017 True Brewer Competition, the format of our meetings, and numerous other areas for improvement.
- There’s vacancy on our executive! Email me at if you would like to get more involved in the club.
- There’s also an ongoing opportunity for members to contribute content to the club blog. Our most recent contributed post can be found here, as one example.
Thanks to everyone who came, that made our January 2018 our best attended meeting yet. Join us next month, as the club travels to Rhythm and Brews in Cambridge. Take note that our usual meeting day falls on Valentine’s Day next month, so we’ve decided to hold it one day later on Thursday, February the 15th. See you then!