| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| EHG_WHN_2004_05.pdf | 621.46 KB |
Congratulations Edmonton, you folks are already winners and the judging has not even begun! Edmonton has proven itself to be the most spirited club in Canada by shipping some 160 entries to Regina for the first round of the AHA competition. The brewer at Bushwakker emailed me a few days ago and said that their cellar was already virtually full and that was from just the Edmonton entries. Fantastic guys – we sent more beers to Regina’s AHA qualifier than was received in TOTAL in Toronto’s in the previous year and for the two years before that! That’s just our club. Wow. And that came from 20 brewers – we have never in our history competed in an out-of-town show with so many different people. That demonstrates that Edmonton has developed a deep depth of competitive brewers over the past few years and has recovered from some pretty slow and low times.
That will totally help secure Regina’s hold on keeping this as the AHA site for we have truly demonstrated that they can draw a huge number of out of town entries. Regina’s executive were just blown away by the response and are now banging the drum furiously to get their own members to match ours both for their competition and for ours. Can they do it? Given Regina’s great competitive spirit I bet they’ll give it everything they’ve got – I think they’ll come darn close but I bet they don’t quite make it. We’ve certainly lit their pants on fire, I can tell you that much. So again, way to go guys for demonstrating great team spirit – it’s been years since I’ve seen EHG so fired up and boy does the heat feel nice!
Now we have our own challenge to match. Given that we’ve shipped 160 entries to Regina, can we beat that for our own competition? Here I am betting that we can. I know several of us, including Frank Kuzemski and myself, will have more entries ready for the ABC than we shipped to Regina. And I know that a few of you passed on Regina to compete only in Edmonton. It would be virtually unthinkable for us to have sent more to an out of town competition than to our own. So my goal is 175 entries for Edmonton. If Regina comes in where I think they will, at 75+ that would put us at 250, which means we would only need 50 more entries from other out of town clubs to meet Glen’s stated goal of 300. That is definitely do-able!
Ok and now that we are on a roll let’s show some more spirit and make sure we all show up for the conference and awards ceremony. This is shaping up to be just a fantastic gathering of brewers. The speakers are pumped and primed and there is just an awesome selection of keg beer being promised. Anyone who was at the packing to Regina event got a chance to sample the massive peated Scotch ale that Frank brewed for the party. Wow!! And it is going to be just one of several really big beers on tap. We also have an unbelievable door prize. Mr. Refrigerator himself, Bruce Sample, has refurbished a fridge and is donating it. But that’s not all, long time EHG supporter, BJCP exam grader, and conference speaker, Mark Nesdoly is donating one of his custom programmable thermostats. Mark hopes to have these items on the market shortly, this is your chance to own one of the most fantastic thermostats around. They will be raffled off as a unit but only to those who are attending the conference. Your chance to win this beautiful rig is worth the price of admission by itself! Kevin is still beating the bushes for some volunteers in terms of setting up the hall, helping lay out the food and with billeting. Please see him at the meeting for details.
Ok, one final thing. And that is don’t forget that this month is BURRP month. This is your chance to taste some of the zany entries created with breakfast cereal. Bring your own bowls and spoons.
It’s never to early to start planning for the club only competition and to prove that point the AHA has announced the first styles for next years club only brewing season. We will kick off September’s meeting with Smoked beers and October will feature India Pale ale.
The days are getting longer and after a long winter, I am looking forward to the nice long sunsets that make Edmonton worth surviving the winter. Fortunately, winter is a good brewing time here so we can enjoy watching the summer sunsets while we sip the nectars of our labours. And mid-spring also means we are approaching the big competitions of the season along with the first annual homebrewers conference in Western Canada. The ABC entry deadline is approaching fast. But don't drink all those left over beers yet! There is the upcoming Marquis De Suds Calgary Open in mid-June. And there is always some competitions going on down south where we can send our brews.
BURPP! 2
And don't forget the April meeting this Monday is our second annual BURRP! club-only mini- competition. The KGB keep saying they are going to win all the awards while that Cuckoo from the States (not one of those in Washington, DC) is going to the "extreme" to win. Of course, there are the new EHG brewing geeks who have been secretly hacking Brew House kits to the tune of "Snap, Crackle, Pop" and could be the winners while KGB and Cuckoo are left with soggy cereal.
The awards for Monday's BURRP! 2 competition will be:
To make things go smoother, the stewards (Roxy and Bob) ask that the BURPP! entrants provide bottle labels on their entries. A spare copy of the ABC entry labels will be fine. Be sure to bring at least four bottles as outlined in the rules (See the February issue of The Worthouse News.)
Also, even if you don’t have any BURPP! entries, bring some of your beers for sampling. As we found out with the April meeting, it was a great time for sharing and getting opinions from fellow brewers before sending entries into the upcoming competitions.
See you on Monday…
It’s hard to believe our humble little competition is only five weeks away. This is where my work as organizer really begins. The medals have been ordered and just about all the sponsors have been recruited. Thanks to Kevin and Richard for stepping up and getting these tasks done.
We can really use more volunteers for our event. As the old adage goes, “Without the enthusiasm and dedication of our volunteers there wouldn’t be an event”. This indeed holds true for the ABC. Areas in need are judges and stewards. Bear in mind if you plan on writing the BJCP exam sometime in the future or if you are already a member of the BJCP. your experience points earned from volunteering at competitions such as ours will be added to your membership profile. I will be at the meeting Monday, May 3rd canvassing for more volunteers. Whether you can volunteer for one day or two hours your help is greatly appreciated and will be utilized efficiently.
By now I hope you have your brewing done and have selected your entries for our competition. We are striving to surpass the 300 entry level this year. Regina is also out to achieve the same goal. I believe we can achieve this - in fact I know we can. We’ve had great support from our sponsors - so much that we have over $1000 in prizes to dish out. Please thank them by supporting their businesses. During the competition we will be raising funds for the club by selling raffle tickets for a beer fridge equipped with a programmable thermostat courtesy of club members Bruce Sample and Mark Nesdoly. The draw will be during the Hot Break Conference.
Thanks to webmaster extraordinaire Jim Whittome and organizer Neil Herbst the brochure and entry form are now posted on our website www.ehg.ca Any information pertaining to the Aurora Brewing Challenge can be found here or send me an email if you have any other concerns. Our Newsletter editor Bob Boufford did a fantastic job in streamlining the new entry forms for multiple entries. Brewers sending in multiple entries can now breathe a huge sigh of relief. Thanks Bob for freeing up some of our time to watch the playoffs!!
For you out-of-towners sending your entries via Parcel Post I took a look at Canada Post’s website www.canadapost.ca for regular parcel delivery periods. For someone living in Ontario this could take up to 8 business days to have a parcel received in Edmonton. For entries coming from our friends in the U.S. expect even longer. Friday May 28th is the last day for receiving entries so please allow sufficient time for Canada Post to “move the mail”.
I look forward to seeing you at the May club meeting.
Hot Break 2004 is the first annual conference of the newly formed Western Confederation of Brew Clubs. The Edmonton Homebrewers Guild is hosting this half day conference and dinner in conjunction with the Aurora Brewing Challenge (ABC2004), an MCAB7 qualifying event.
The conference is to held June 5th at:
Capilano Community Hall
10810 - 54th Street
Edmonton, Alberta
Registration
You may register for this conference in two ways:
If registering by mail, send in your Registration Form and cheque or money order (made out to Edmonton Homebrewers Guild) to:
Alley Kat Brewing Company
9929 - 60 Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
T6E OC7
Rates:
The Registration Form is available at the EHG WebSite http://www.ehg.ca
Agenda
June 5th, 2004:
12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Organizational meeting of the Western Confederation of Brew Clubs
2:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Conference Sessions. See below for listings and times.
6:00-7:00 p.m.
Pre-dinner get-together enjoying homebrew from the Western Confederation clubs
7:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Enjoy a barbeque and banquet prepared by EHG members.
8:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Keynote address & Award presentation
Sessions
How to prepare for and write the BJCP exam
Time: TBA
Roxy Hastings, National BJCP judge and exam grader; Mark Nesdoly, Certified BJCP judge and exam grader
If you've ever contemplated becoming a beer judge, this session will tell you how to go about doing it. Roxy and Mark will lead a round table discussion of successful strategies to get through the BJCP exam.
Beer Faults commonly encountered in the BJCP exam
Time: TBA
Neil Herbst, Certified BJCP judge and owner Alley Kat Brewing Co.
The BJCP exam involves tasting four beers, at least two of which will have significant faults and probably none will be perfect. Neil will help you to identify the most common faults that you might expect to encounter in the exam.
Quality Brewing using Brew House Kits
Time: TBA
Bob Boufford, EHG newsletter editor; Kevin
Zaychuk, Vice President, EHG
When many of us started homebrewing, the quality of beer kits were less than desirable. That's why we quickly migrated to all-grain. Now there is an opportunity for beginner brewers to experience quality beer with Brew House kits. Come and learn from two master tweakers how to produce unique and awesome brews from a standard Brew House starter.
Dirty Beer (Sanitation for Homebrewers)
Time: TBA
Presenter: TBA
If you're competing at the national level, you probably think you know all there is to know about sanitation. But professional brewers have moved far beyond the basic chlorine bleach. What methods employed by teh pros can we adopt as home brewers? What new products are on the horizon? What's the difference between sanitation and sterilization and does it really affect the homebrewer? Come and find out how to clean up your brewing equipment.
Keynote Address - A Bar to Heaven and a Door to Hell
Time: 8:00 p.m.
Greg Evans, Historian and Curator
This presentation looks at the history of saloons on Vancouver Island from the 1850s to provincial prohibition in 1917; the people, the places, the characters, the role of saloons in society, forms of entertainment (including rat killing competitions); the law - kind of Victoria unbuttoned!
Accommodations
If you are coming from out of town and are looking for inexpensive (okay, free) accommodations, you may be interested being billeted. If you are interested, please contact conference organizers (contact info below).
Presenters
Bob Boufford, EHG newsletter editor
Greg Evans is the Executive Director of the Maritime Museum of British Columbia in Victoria. He has nearly thirty years of experience working in museums and heritage organizations in both Victoria and Vancouver.
He has a bachelors and a master's degree in history from the University of Victoria. In 1991, he completed his master's thesis, which is entitled "The Vancouver Island Brewing Industry: 1858 to 1991." Since then he has made numerous presentations on the history of brewing, saloons, hop growing and prohibition, throughout British Columbia and the American Pacific Northwest. He has written articles for industry related publications, developed and hosted beer dinners and tastings, consulted on documentaries and undertaken various consulting projects within the craft brewing industry. He was also on the team that developed the travelling exhibit "Brewer's Gold: The Hop Industry in British Columbia" which opened at the Royal British Columbia Museum in October 2003.
He is currently on the executive of the Campaign For Real Ale - Victoria, is a member of the Brewery History Society of Great Britain and has his own company, Brewers Gold Consulting.
Roxy Hastings, National BJCP judge and exam grader and President, EHG
Neil Herbst, Certified BJCP judge and owner Alley Kat Brewing Co.
Mark Nesdoly, Certified BJCP judge and exam grader
Kevin Zaychuk, Vice President, EHG
Contacts
This conference is being organized and hosted by the Edmonton Homebrewers Guild. For more information about the Guild, please visit the EHG website, http://www.ehg.ca.
For more information about Hot Break 2004, please contact:
Neil Herbst, neil@alleykatbeer.com or
Kevin Zaychuk, zaychuk@edmc.net
Are you the type of homebrewer that ferments your brew in the primary for seven days, then in the secondary for 14 more days and the proceed to bottle it? That’s the way I brewed up until about 2 years ago. I noticed that my beer was fairly decent, at least some of it was, but it just didn’t quite cut it in competition.
By coincidence, during visits to a couple of local microbreweries and on a guided tour, in each instance the tour included a visit to a “cold room” in the brewery where almost all their finished beer was stored for at least two weeks before it was dispensed to the public. Some of the beer remained in the cold room much longer than two weeks.
This practice is called many things including cold conditioning, cellaring and lagering. The main objective seems to be one of conditioning, which clarifies the beer, enhances its maturity and generally improves the overall characteristics of the beer. Temperatures in the “cold room” may vary from one brewery to the next, but is usually 30°F (-1°C) to 32°F (0°C).
So I now also chill my beers at this temperature. I bought a used pop cooler, set it at 32ºF (0°C) and it does the job. I generally store the beer in a stainless steel keg for conditioning, but glass or plastic carboys will work as well.
During the summer, a regular household refrigerator won't work very well as it struggles to get below 40ºF (4°C). If you set the thermostat below 40ºF (4°C), it just keeps cycling, and will soon "burn out" or cause serious mechanical failure. For summertime cold conditioning, we need to go to a freezer. But any refrigerator works wonders in the winter time, even a so-called "dead fridge".
My refrigerator is in my unheated garage. In the wintertime, I disconnect the refrigerator and install a small cheap space heater. I plug the heater in and set the knob to the lowest setting. I have an indoor/outdoor thermometer on the outside that shows the outside temperature with a probe that gives the inside temperature (about $15.00). Since I'm in the garage almost every day to get my car, I glance at the thermometer to make sure the temperature stays constant at or near 32ºF (0°C).
It's amazing how stable the temperature will remain inside with no adjustments to the heater. This past winter, I had two kegs in the refrigerator and the heater. On the days when it dropped to a chilly -4ºF (-20ºC) outside, it stayed fairly close to 32ºF (0ºC) on the inside of the refrigerator. While the outside temperatures fluctuated 20 degrees either way, the temperature inside the refrigerator remained fairly constant. But let me repeat, I do check the temperature at least every second day.
I am now looking to purchase a more accurate thermostat for the heater. They come as cheap as $25-30. The heater was also about $30 but the power consumption was negligible. The labor was also negligible, but it sure makes a difference in the quality of the beer, it's much improved!
I didn't have to adjust the heater in the refrigerator at all this past winter while temperatures dropped to -30ºF (-34ºC). I suppose how effective the refrigerator will depend a lot on how it is insulated and the snugness of the door seals. But it sure works for me.
Personally, I love the convenience of kegging beer. I put 12 bottles aside for competition, bottle them, and then keg the rest. So much time is saved on washing and sanitizing, not to mention capping, labeling, sorting, and WAITING for the beer to carbonate. Ugh…
However, I’ve always found that the bottle-conditioned beer tastes better than the kegged. Perhaps I get a bit of oxidation in the keg, I’m not sure, but bottled samples always seem more flavorful to me. Therefore, when I’ve crafted a real beauty of a beer, I sometimes feel that it’s necessary to take the extra time and bottle it all.
Other than time, the only problem with bottle conditioning is when you patiently wait the two or three weeks, then open the bottle and discover that you’ve missed out on the level of carbonation. Nothing seems to ruin the moment of opening the first bottle then having no mist form in the neck of the bottle after removing the cap, or that pitiful little wisp of CO2 release associated with an under-carbonated beer. In a keg, this is no problem, simply add more gas (or if over-carbonated, take some out) and in seconds you’re ready to go. With bottles, you have only one shot at carbonation, so it’s worth it to take a reasonable amount of care.
The other thing to consider is that the wrong CO2 level in beer is the one thing that all people recognize as a fault whether they’ve taken their BJCP exam or not. Carbonation and a well-formed head is the first thing you see and first impressions are important.
There are essentially three variables that affect carbonation levels in your finished product:
Yeast – amount, health, strain, etc.
Temperature – the colder the beer, the more carbon dioxide is dissolved prior to priming.
Mass of priming sugar used to bottle condition the beer.
When it comes to yeast, it is really important to be absolutely sure that the beer contains enough healthy yeast after secondary fermentation to do the job of carbonating your beer. Think back to the brew day… Did you use a starter? Was there a long lag time? Was the fermentation sluggish?
Was there a healthy head of kreusen during primary fermentation? Did you condition or lager for an extended period of time? If you doubt the vitality of the yeast for any reason, then add a small active starter in place of priming sugar (this method of carbonation is called kreusening) prior to bottling. This is a common method for carbonating German beer because the Reinheitsgebot forbids the addition of sugar. However, purity laws aside, kreusening is a perfect method for bottle conditioning extremely high alcohol beers like dopplebocks or beers lagered for an extended period of time such as Oktoberfests.
How much priming sugar you should add depends on the temperature of the beer at bottling time as well as the style of beer you are brewing. If you are brewing ale, chances are that you have let it ferment and condition at room temperature. If this is the case, then the beer starts off with very little CO2 disolved in it compared to a beer that was lagered, or conditioned in the cold. Therefore you need to add more priming sugar to warm beer than to cold, lagered beer. Also, some styles require much less carbonation than others. For example, English ales are typically less carbonated, almost to the point of being flat, and German hefeweizens require a fair bit of carbonation, reminiscent of champagne. When calculating the amount of priming sugar to add, I use two tables and a graph from the July/August 1996 issue of Brewing Techniques.
| Carbonation Levels of Common Beer Styles | |
| Beer Style | Volumes of CO2 |
| British Style Ales | 1.5 – 2.0 |
| Porter, Stout | 1.7 – 2.3 |
| Belgian Ales | 1.9 – 2.4 |
| European Lagers | 2.2 – 2.7 |
| American Ales and Lagers | 2.2 – 2.7 |
| Lambic | 2.4 – 2.8 |
| Fruit Lambic | 3.0 – 4.5 |
| German Wheat Beer | 3.3 – 4.5 |
Simply measure the temperature of the beer prior to priming with a thermometer in order to determine the amount of CO2 dissolved, then use the graph below to determine how much priming sugar is required per gallon of beer.
| Carbon Dioxide Levels at Various Temperatures Prior to Priming | ||
| Temperature | Carbonation (Volumes CO2) |
|
| °F | °C | |
| 32 | 0 | 1.7 |
| 36 | 2 | 1.6 |
| 39 | 4 | 1.5 |
| 43 | 6 | 1.4 |
| 46 | 8 | 1.3 |
| 50 | 10 | 1.2 |
| 54 | 12 | 1.12 |
| 57 | 14 | 1.05 |
| 61 | 16 | 0.99 |
| 64 | 18 | 0.93 |
| 68 | 20 | 0.88 |
| 72 | 22 | 0.83 |
One of the biggest sources of error in determining the amount of priming sugar is that many brewers measure volume rather than mass. The density of priming sugar varies depending on the humidity, whether it is tightly packed or loose, etc. Therefore mass is the most dependable measurement to use when priming.
If you prefer to measure in grams, simply multiply the number of ounces by 28.35.
If you plan to only bottle enough for competition and keg the rest, then simply transfer some of your beer to a1 U.S. gallon growler, and weigh out the amount of priming sugar required. I always draw off some of the beer into a small pot, add the priming sugar, bring to a boil, cool, then add back to the beer prior to bottling. This way, the beer isn’t diluted. Always allow your beer to bottle condition at room temperature so that the yeast will be active.
Happy carbonation always.