Happy holidays, homebrewers!
On December 11th, we gathered at Short Finger Brewing for our end of the year party. Like last year, we organized this event as a way to raise money for a local charity and we set our goal higher this year. At the meeting we raised $1246 for The Working Centre thanks to the generous donations made by our community partners that went towards our raffle table, as well as some members of the Club itself:
- BSG Canada
- Beer. Diversity.
- Tavistock Hops
- SFBC
- Block 3
- Escarpment Labs
- Members Norm Ryder and Tyler Ferguson
If you were not able to attend and still wish to make a contribution to The Working Centre on as part of the club’s True Grist, we highly encourage it. We’ll total those donations up at the end of the year.
Of course, no party is complete without a homebrew share. So we bust out the jockey box and Short Finger contributed 2 more, and we had 6 beers going at one time. Pilsner, Flemish Red, Jeff B‘s multi-award winning Calista Flochard, and more!
We wrapped up the year with a short presentation (slides here).
The Club to date has tracked over 11 500 litres of beer and cider brewed for the year on our forum.
Overall Club representation at homebrew competitions, such as those on the Brewer of the Year circuit, was way up. Jamie Fowler placed 30th overall nationally among beer entrants while Stephen Snudden was 14th overall and won Mead Maker of the Year at multiple competitions. Congrats!
The Club also ran its first open BJCP certified competition, Blazing Paddles, with 108 entries judged. We had 24 judges, which allowed us to typically had 3 judges per beer. 25% of the Blazing Paddles judges were women, which is an encouraging statistic for us as a club that prioritizes inclusivity. Some recent homebrewer surveys indicate that only 2% of general homebrewing population are women.
Next year’s competition will be here before you know it, and we’re excited to have help from our growing pool of BJCP experienced club members.
The Club also invested in a fruit crusher and press for cider making, had several bulk buys and other special events.
We look forward to seeing everyone out at Block 3 in St. Jacob’s for our first meeting of 2020, on Jan. 8th.