Happy 2019 True Grist!
Our first meeting of the year was at Block 3. We were last here January 2018. Always a pleasure to visit this beautiful St. Jacob’s brewery.
We had expedited announcements to allow for time for our 2018 True Brewer award presentation, and a presentation from Kevin Freer.
Our announcements included mention of the first Canadian homebrew competition which we expect to be part of the 2019 Brewer of the Year circuit – Cowtown Yeast Wrangler’s Homebrew Roundup. This Calgary based competition has an entry cap of 430, and is accepting submissions in all 2015 BJCP categories. We’re encouraging members with an interest in competitive homebrewing to register (note: at time of writing this, the competition is sold out already!). We’ll be arranging for group shipping for this competition. While we have done this many times in the past for Ontario competitions, this is the first out of province competition we are organizing group shipping for. Our friends at Short Finger Brewing Company have once again agreed to serve as a drop off location for club entries, which we are planning on shipping on February 8th. The drop off window will be from January 24th until February 7th. We are asking $5 per entry paid to the club to cover our combined shipping cost (e transfer to with your name and ‘CYWHB’ in the notes).
Our club also announced a new type of event for 2019: Beer Wars. This will be a recurring team based competition, where each round will involve brewing one specific style. Teams will be assembled by random draw.
Our first Beer War is the Battle of Belgian Pale Ale (2015 BJCP category 24B). Battle of Belgian Pale Ale has two sponsors: Block 3 who will judge the entries and invite the winning team to brew a pilot batch, and Escarpment Labs who is providing pitches of their new Belgian Yeast strain: Ringfish. This is a non-diastatic, POF+, yeast and should help us make some exceptional BPAs. Escarpment Labs would like to try what everyone comes up with, so please set aside two bottles for them, and keep good notes on the details of your fermentation if you can. If you’d like to sign up as a participant, please use this form.
We announced our honey bulk buy as well! Ordering runs until Feb 1. We are also doing a bulk buy for Ontario hops with Hayhoe Hops, details here.
Here are our announcement slides.
Kevin spoke to us about fruiting techniques in beer. From acquiring and processing fruit for beer, to getting beer off of fruit and fruit out of your fermentor, and everything in between. Kevin shared with us this spreadsheet that covers fruiting rates used by some highly regarded breweries across the world. This spreadsheet is maintained by the craft beer community.
Next month we’ll be at Barncat Artisan Ales in Cambridge! Scott Hayhoe will be joining us for a presentation on hops and hop growing (as well as delivering hops from our bulk buy).