In place of a monthly meeting in May, we went to Escarpment Labs in Guelph for a special educational event. This was our third time visiting the lab as a club, and it’s incredible to see how much they’ve grown with each year’s visit! This time around it was the 20hl propagators that caught everyone’s eye — aside from the many other upgrades that they implemented in the lab.
Since this was a special event, it was a bit different than our usual monthly meeting. First, we had a tour through the Escarpment Labs facility, moving in small groups through the lab space and the propagation tanks area. Special thanks to the Escapement Labs crew for not getting tired explaining everything three times and answering all of our questions. Next up was Jonah Greenbaum-Shinder and Chris Saunders’ talk on ‘Pressurized Brettanomyces Fermentations’, a presentation that they will also be giving at Homebrewcon in Rhode Island the next month! The talk was loaded with lots of information on what funk is exactly, deciphering all the different flavors we might expect from Brettanomyces, as well as the results of some recent experiments at Escarpment involving pressure, brettanomyces, sensory panels, and gas chromatography. For the results you will just have to go to homebrewcon, or likely visit the Escarpment Labs Blog later this summer.
The presentation was followed by a funk-focused homebrew share, including lots of tasty experimental beers from Jonah, Chris, and Richard. There was also carbonated water with lime… which we didn’t realize we needed at our meetings/events until now!
Grabbing sample glasses as the club starts to arrive at Escarpment 
Samples in hand, Chris Saunders leading first tour into “the lab” 
Chris Saunders explaining what’s going on in the next picture… 
Shakers for flasks, converted-keg flasks (which fit in their autoclave, cool!) 
Presentation under way – great meeting attendance 
After the presentation our attention is turned to our funk-focused homebrew share
We had only 2 brief announcements (no presentation to upload this month). There are two upcoming events that we will be hosting with Short Finger Brewing Co that you should know about:
Participating brewers in our Canadian Homebrew Day, have the opportunity to pitch yeast on site at SFBC, and serve their beer at a charity event in the SFBC taproom on July 7th. This event will be open to the public and is a great time to show off your skills, promote the club, and raise money for a good cause. Please be in touch () if you would like to participate!
We’re also going to be running an informal competition with SFBC later this Summer. Best beer-takes-all, with a small entry cap of 20. Mixing it up with this non-BJCP competition. Beers will be judged on greatness rather than to adherence to guidelines. Submission deadline will be on August 10th. We’ll have more info on that when our larger, upcoming Blazing Paddles competition wraps up.
Instead of a regular meeting next month, we will gather on June 1st to celebrate Canadian Homebrew Day at SFBC. We still have space for a few more participating breweries – sign up information and full details on the forum. Also, don’t forget our very own BJCP-sanctioned homebrew competition Blazing Paddles in June – entry registration opens May 18. We have some very special things lined up for medalists and volunteers – so don’t miss it!