View from the Top of the Tun

Most of what a president would say at the start of a new brewing season actually got said in the August issue. So if you want to read what I would normally say here go back a month.

It cannot be overstated that last year was one of the best the Guild had in many years. We managed to revitalize ourselves, membership has grown and we hosted our biggest competition ever. The reintroduction of our monthly tastings and participating in the AHA club only competitions certainly played a critical role in stirring interest amongst established members and holding on to new ones. A successful BJCP course resulted in several new judges, and judges from the Guild traveled to shows in Regina and Calgary helping to solidify our stature as the leading brew club in western Canada. We’ve gained the respect of other clubs in the region and I am confident that the Guild will continue to play a leading role in the development of homebrewing in the Prairie Provinces. If all goes to plan this year we will be hosting western Canada’s first regional conference to coincide with our ABC/MCAB competition. This event will help to inaugurate a new organization tentatively entitled the Western Confederation of Beer Clubs. Regina, Calgary and Winnipeg have all expressed interest in forming this union of Western Canadian brew clubs.

The executive this year was outstanding with everyone pulling together to make the Guild work. Long time guild member Neil Herbst, in addition to hosting the guild and exec meetings, always provided sage advise to the exec. Neil co-taught the BJCP course with me and without him the course would not have happened. Boyd Oberhoffner in his first term as secretary kept an outstanding record of all decisions and could be relied on to make sure we made consistent and legally correct decisions. At a time when our bookkeeping was far behind and our membership list out of date, long time brewer Ray Duperon stepped in to play the role of treasurer and added a great element of stability to the record keeping. Glen Hannah took over as competition chair for the long serving Kevin Zaychuk and did the impossible, by yet again increasing our number of entries into the ABC. Günther Trageser continued to serve as newsletter editor and maintained the standards that had established The Worthouse News as the best brew club newsletter being produced in Canada. And lastly but certainly not least, board appointed Website guru Jim Whittome maintained a dynamite site that brought in most of our new members. And lastly but certainly not least, new Guild member Bob Boufford stepped in to pinch hit for Gunther and finished off the year in fine form as acting editor of The Worthouse News. Make sure you drink a toast to all these guys for the great service they have done for the Guild over the past year.

I hope that the next executive will continue along the same vein that last years did. It is especially important that we keep up the monthly club tastings and that we try to send more brews to more competitions both in the region and internationally. I expect that the newsletter will shift itself to producing more original content, drawing on the great depth of knowledge that exists among members of the Edmonton Homebrewers Guild. If we are to maintain our standards as the best club in the west, and by default, the nation, then we have to be the ones to lead. And the best ways to lead are to: 1- host a great competition, 2- compete in other clubs competitions, and 3- publish a great newsletter that teaches everyone how to brew better beer, whether they be guild members or from other Canadian brew clubs. In that way the cloak of excellence that all Guild members have earned the right to wear will be shared with all brewers across the nation.

Elections

The September meeting is the Annual General Meeting with elections to the board. Now before that scares you into not showing up to avoid being railroaded into a position, let me say that this year we have unprecedented enthusiasm. In fact people have already let it be known that they intend to run for positions making the normally agonizing nomination procedure much easier this year and leaving more time to do the things we really want to do – like drink beer! Positions people have stepped forward for to date are: President (Roxy) and Treasurer (Ray), and the always difficult Newsletter Editor (Bob Boufford) and Competition Chair (Glen). Jim says that he will continue with the website. That leaves only Vice Pres. and Secretary completely open. That being said, if you would like to run for any positions they are all open. I encourage you to show up and participate in the elections. As a good friend of mine used to say “If you don’t vote - don’t bitch.” But honestly, the club deserves better than that and your input determines its strength and direction. The Guild is now on a roll, membership is increasing, and everyone’s input and participation is needed to keep the momentum going. It would be great to have a full house at the September meeting so we can get the new season rolling a month earlier than normal.

From the Bottom of the Mash

Welcome to the September issue of The Worthouse News. I hope everyone had an enjoyable summer and managed to keep on brewing.

As you read this issue, we look to continue publishing, as Roxy says, "the best brew club newsletter being produced in Canada". Thanks to Günther Trageser and his efforts over the past couple of years publishing the club newsletter.

So what's planned for upcoming newsletter issues? Not much of a major change right now. For the time being, we look to keeping the layout and format you are used to seeing every month. From my experiences publishing the Ohio Lawn Care Association OLCA News newsletter, we found members like some consistency. Think of the bad feeling you get when your favourite brew store rearranges all the stock?

One of our major goals for upcoming issues will be having more contributions from EHG members. Now, I know some of you right away are saying, "I can't write". But you will be surprised at what you can write when it comes to something you are passionate about, homebrewing. And we will not always want full page or multi-page articles for the newsletter. It might be your favourite recipe that you can share with the rest of the club membership or, tell us your experiences visiting a unique brewpub or microbrewery. Both of these topics will fit nicely into a half page of the newsletter. We are also interested in style articles to go with the monthly Theme nights and for general interest.

One of the major tasks of a newsletter editor is to work with article authors. Unlike the movies and television shows, it is not in our best interest to rip through an article or toss it in the trashcan. Our task is to guide you in your writing and help when needed. If you can write at least two handwritten pages for an article, there will be plenty to print in the newsletter. We only ask that you type your article into a Microsoft Word document or send it as an email message. For those who absolutely cannot type, my going rate for typing is a bottle per page. ☺ We will also be interested in any homebrewing articles printed in other homebrew club newsletters or brewing publications. The only requirement is that we have copyright permission to reprint the article. Most homebrew club newsletters give reprint permission to other club newsletters with proper credit to the author and the club. An electronic copy of the article will make it easier to reprint in the newsletter.

Important Upcoming Competitions

A couple of important competitions coming up that Guild members are ask to support with entries.

Dixie Cup Houston TX
October 16-18, 2003
MCAB qualifier

This is the 20th annual Dixie Cup and is the largest regional competition in North America. The Foam Rangers always support the ABC with lots of entries and to keep this friendship going it’s important that we reciprocate. Besides it’s an MCAB qualifier and so for those of us who missed out on a first place qualifier at the ABC, especially those who lost to Texas, here’s a chance to redeem ourselves. This is a full BJCP class competition that has similar split categories to what we did last year (in fact we stole the idea from them!).
Date: Entries 26 September – 10 October
Fees: $6.00 USD till October 3rd, $10.00 USD until
October 10th
Bottle requirements: three bottles
Further information: http://www.foamrangers.com or http://www.crunchyfrog.net/dixiecup/
Roxy will have a few copies of entry forms at the September meeting but we encourage you to download the entry form from their website as it runs several pages.
Editor's note: The new September 2003 issue of Brew Your Own magazine has a profile article on The Dixie Cup (pg 11).

Saskatoon
Nov 15-16, 2003

This is we believe Saskatoon’s first competition being held independently of Regina but as part of the ALEs network. It’s important that we show support for other western brew clubs, especially a brand new competition. I know Regina will be shipping a lot of beers and it’s a great way to start of the season with a bit of friendly regional rivalry. I am sure this will be an AHA sanctioned event so we should organize a car pool of judges to go and help out. Billeting will be available so travel costs will be low.
Date: Entries due Nov. 8

Competition: weekend of Nov. 15-16
Fees: unknown at this time
Classes: unknown at this time
Further information will be published in the October and November issues of The Worthouse News

Second Annual Cane Exchange

In a basic effort to keep our beer quality high the Guild will be running our second annual Cane Exchange. What’s the Cane Exchange you may ask? Bring in your old racking cane to either Harvest Brewing Co. or South Side Brew Crew, spend $10.00 on any product, give them your old cane and they will give you a new cane in exchange. What’s an old cane? Well I would say any cane pushing a year old is old – canes develop micro-cracks as they age and these cracks harbour bacteria and wild yeast that bleach just cannot reach. Eventually populations of these critters build up in a cane and ruin all beers being racked through them. Any light band-aid or sour character in your beer is a good sign that you’ve got a cracked cane. Take advantage of this deal between the Guild and these supporting stores and GET RID OF THAT OLD CANE!

Speciality hop order this month!

I have worked with Paddock Wood to bring in two specialty European Lager hops. On spec they have brought in both varieties in pellet form. As such I am willing to organize a hop order for these varieties. I want to send the order right after the September meeting. This is not part of our annual whole flower hop order, but an opportunity to obtain some new hops. The annual whole flower hop order will be announced in an upcoming issue of the newsletter.

Santiam

a new variety that is a tetraploid cross between Tettnanger and Hallertauer. Like many tetraploids this is a powerfully flavourful hop with full expression of the earthy Tettnanger complex and the spiciness of Hallertauer. Santiam is an excellent hop for all German lagers and Classic American Pils. It’s about 6.5% making it both a good bittering and flavour hop. I plan to make this hop a staple in my Euro pils.

Sterling

this variety has been out for a few years. It’s a Saaz substitute and it really works. At 7.0% its got twice the AA of Saaz but is not at all lacking in flavour. I’ve used this hop with great success in my German lagers and it would work very well in a Czech Pils. Sterling is an excellent complement to Steropramen/ Wyeast 2782 Staro Lager yeast.

I’ll have an order sheet at the September meeting. Cost is $7.00 per 4oz or $20.00 per pound including shipping. Bring payment to the September meeting, as I will only order with a prepayment.

Try these Lovely Lager Yeasts

Did you know that yeast is one of the biggest contributors to the flavour profile of beer? In addition to adding sulphur, ester, and diacetyl characters, yeast plays a significant role in determining whether hops or malts will dominate. Yet, while many of us delight in experimenting with various hop combinations and drool over the now readily available selection of malt varieties, when was the last time you tried a new yeast?

Most of us tend to be pretty conservative when it comes to choosing yeasts. Once we find a variety that we like we tend to stick with it — pretty much like the average beer drinker will blindly stick with their Bud or Blue. However, unlike Bud and Blue, there are huge differences in the flavour profiles amongst the yeast varieties that are available to us.

Many local lager brewers have discovered the very forgiving, reliable, clean, slightly malt accentuated Wyeast 2124 Bohemian. This is a very good yeast to start brewing lagers with. It keeps its lager character at low ale temperatures and works well across a wide range of styles. Its balance makes it the London Ale of lager brewing. Its use by Budweiser gives some credence to its mainstream temperament.

For those seeking to broaden their brewing horizons I have three other yeasts that I recommend exploring. The first two are commonly available locally; the third can only be ordered from Paddock Wood — they are the sole distributors.

Wyeast 2112 California lager – like 2124 this is a lager yeast that is forgiving of warm temperature ferments. Its flocculation is listed as high and it’s supposed to ferment brilliant. I’ve found that its flocculation is medium and it usually requires a clearing agent to make it brilliant. Wyeast suggests that it produces malty beers, but I have found that it can lean towards being a bit dry and actually does very well for bitter beers like Classic American Pils. Its extremely clean profile and forgiving nature make it a natural choice for American style lagers, and for California Common beer. A good choice for people wanting something with bit more of a North American micro twist in their lager’s profile than what the European 2124 delivers.

Wyeast 2278 Czech Pils – this yeast requires cold fermentation temperatures. It ferments down to 75% in about 20 days at 10° C. At 20 days the beer is basically clear – isinglass would make it brilliant. Wyeast says this yeast is malty but dry. I found that description a bit confusing. In fact it is distinctly soft and malty. The sulphur character of the primary ferment dissipates and the beer is left with just a hint of DMS – very pleasant and lending a bit of complexity to an otherwise clean profile. Its soft profile makes it an excellent choice for all malt-dominated beers including Bohemian Pils, Munich Helles, Oktoberfests, Boks and Munich Dunkels. Fermenting it at a warmer temperature in the primary followed by a cold secondary would probably make for a very distinctive and wonderfully complex California Common.

Wyeast 2782 Staro Lager – this yeast is only available from Paddock Wood (http://www.paddockwood.com). For those of you with adventuresome tastes, this is a truly wonderful complex, competition-style lager yeast. It creates unique beers for those brewers intent on making a statement. Not for the faint of heart, but if you love the sulphur character that compliments the spicy hops of a rich tasting North German Pils this yeast is for you. More sulphur character lingers on with this yeast than in 2278 and the balance is distinctly towards hops. That being said, the most flavourful Oktoberfest I ever made was using Staro yeast, perhaps because it pushed the brew to its limit. For North German Pils and Dortmunder Exports there could not be a better yeast. I took a silver medal in the MCAB finals last year with a German Pils made with Staro yeast. The yeast does require patience – long cold primary and secondary ferments are necessary to control the sulphur profile. The beer will clear wonderfully. The wait is worth it. Any brew that is intended to be big, bold and perhaps a bit nasty will benefit from the use of Steropramen.

Gabriel’s Touch – North German Pils

20 liters (5.25 gal US), 1.052 O.G., 45 IBU
4.5 kg (10 lbs) Budvar Undermodified
300 gm (11 oz) Carahelles – 12° L
300 gm (11 oz) Carapils
40 gm (1.4oz) Mt. Hood 5.0% 60 min
56 gm (2.0oz) Sterling 7.0% 20 min
21 gm (0.75oz) Mt. Hood Dry hop
21 gm (0.75oz) Sterling Dry hop
1600 ml Staro culture

2/3 of the total water bill should be reverse osmosis treated water

2 step decoction mash

Primary 24 hours at 15 C (60F) then 17 days at 5 C (40 F). Secondary 40 days at 5 C (40 F)

Notes:

• cleared with isinglass but was probably not needed
• if you use Westcan malt then either use all Carapils or 450 gm Carapils and 150 gm Carahelles
• Saaz can be substituted for Sterling at about 2 times the weight

Gose Down So Well

When my wife and I were traveling from town to town through what was formerly East Germany we happened to find a real treasure in the city of Leipzig, Gose beer. Gose (pronounced 'goezah') was originally brewed many centuries ago in the town of Goslar. This beer was easily the most popular beer in Leipzig for centuries. The reason for its popularity may have something to do with the fact that it was rumoured to increase sexual potency, but I think the rumour existed simply to give men an excuse to drink it. By the late 1800’s the demand for Gose was much greater than the supply, but for some reason the brewery didn’t expand to satisfy the public desire. Instead, Gose was rationed out to select pubs. Being an owner of a pub that served this luscious beer was a privilege that few enjoyed. Thus, Gose was a beer for the elite, too expensive for the working masses. It was bottled in special long necked bottles that at one time served to naturally seal when a thick cake of yeast rose up from the fermenting beer and hardened. After the Second World War, the infamous Gose became virtually unknown and by 1968, there was none being produced at all. In 1985, a brewer interviewed some old Gose drinkers and formulated a recipe that came as close as possible to the original. The rest is history. Gose can be obtained only in Leipzig at a few pubs that are lucky enough to serve it. Modern bottles of Gose are thankfully sealed with bottle caps or corks, rather than allowing the krausen to harden in the neck of the bottle. Unfortunately, only one brewery still uses the long necked flat bottles.

Like most beers in Europe, each has its own glass. Gose is always consumed in a long cylindrical glass, similar to its bottle. The beer itself is naturally cloudy due to the use of wheat and is well carbonated. When drinking Gose, don’t expect it to taste like any other beer that you’ve ever had. They add spices and (gasp) salt, but the salt flavour is barely evident. The combination of the malty sweetness, hop bitterness, the slight saltiness, and subtle sourness may possibly make this beer the most flavour-balanced style in the world. Now, university students proudly order Gose in select beer gardens near the University of Leipzig.

The most wonderful thing about this style is that it is no problem to reproduce at home. The base malt is 50 – 60% wheat malt, and 40 – 50% German pilsner malt. Some Munich malt is added for flavour (perhaps some of the more experienced brewers in the guild will be able to ballpark how much). I was told that the mash is 2 hours long, so I assume that a decoction mash is performed. The hops used are surprisingly Northern Brewer for bittering and Perle for flavour and aroma. Ground coriander and a small amount of salt are added. The yeast strain used is Wiehestephan along with a lactobacillus culture. Fermentation takes place at 20°C for 3 – 5 days and lagering is done for about 3 weeks.

The only way to get a commercial example of this rare beer is to go to Leipzig. As far as I know, only one bottle exists in Canada and it is sitting in my refrigerator right now. However, if you come to the September meeting on Monday, I will have that 500mL bottle there for the group to try. Being that this month's theme night is speciality, experimental and historical beers, I thought it would be good to introduce a totally unique style that is reminiscent of how beer was brewed in Germany prior to the Reinheitsgebot of 1516. I promise that it is a truly fantastic beer. See you there.

Roxy Profiled in Brew Your Own magazine

Thanks to Mike Tessier of CAMRA Calgary, Roxy Hastings is being profiled by Brew Your Own magazine. BYO contacted CAMRA Calgary looking to profile an avid homebrewer from Canada. Mike suggested that they get in touch with Roxy who he described as being “a real brewing machine”. The article has been written and edited and is expected in the October issue.

Meeting Nights will continue with Theme Nights!

As written in the August 2003 issue of The Worthouse News, for this upcoming season, the Guild is continuing with Theme Nights at monthly meetings. So check out what's scheduled and plan your brews accordingly. On the months marked with AHA, the beer deemed the best of the night, will go forward to an AHA event.

We currently have the following styles scheduled with other styles to be determined by the Guild Executives. The list will be updated in an upcoming issue of The Worthouse News.

September	Specialty, Experimental and Historical (BJCP Class 24) - AHA
October	Kolsch and Alt - AHA
November	Barley Wine and Strong Ales - AHA (Note: Only Barley Wines will qualify for AHA entry.)
December	To be determined
January	To be determined
February	To be determined
March	Mead - AHA
April	Extract - all classes and styles - AHA
May	BURRP! 2

For this month's Theme of Specialty, Experimental and Historical styles, any left over beers from the first BURRP! Contest qualifies as "experimental" giving you and the club an opportunity for more glory at a higher level of competition!

Guidelines for the Theme night "mini-competitions" can be found in the August 2003 issue of The Worthouse News or at the club website:
http://www.ehg.ca/EVENTS/guidelines.htm.

Grinding away again: Adjusting Plate Mills

After the article on malt mills in the August 2003 issue of The Worthouse News, some of the members took me to task about my comment on plate mills (Corona/Porkert) being more difficult to adjust. One rebuttal was to use a feeler gauge. Being distracted into trying more of Roxy's prize-winning ales, I didn't pursue it further at the time. While recently scanning the Homebrew Digest forums (http://www.hdb.org/forums), I came across this recommendation for adjusting plate mills by Richard Triplett:

"A trick to roughly set up the crush is to place a dime between the plate and mill. Tighten down end wing nuts first, and then tighten down the center wing nut. Back off the end wing nuts just enough to extract dime and run a bit of grain through. I have issues where the end nuts back out over time, but a quick turn sets things right again."

If anyone else in the Guild has a favourite method of adjusting plate mills to obtain a consistent grind, send it to the editor for publishing in a later issue of The Worthouse News.

Intermediate Brewing and Mead Making Courses

After an almost 10 year hiatus Roxy and Neil were once again approached by the Devonian Botanic Garden to run beer and mead making courses. The beer course is an introduction to extract brewing and takes place over 6 Wednesday evenings. The mead making is a one-day course. This is an opportunity to learn about brewing in a structured course. The class will brew two beers and talk about and taste various beers and brewing products. You will learn how to select hops, malts and yeasts for various beer styles, how to handle fermentations and packaging options. There is a very real possibility that Roxy and Neil will teach a one day introduction to all-grain brewing course at the Garden in the winter session.

Brewing Better Beer: Oct 8 to Nov 12 6:30-9:30 $95.00
Making Marvelous Mead: Sun Nov 9 10:00-3:00 $36.00

To register for one or both courses, contact the Devonian Garden. Phone: 987-2064
Brewing and Mead Making Course descriptions (from Devonian Botanic Garden)

Brewing Better Beer

Immerse yourself in the wonderful world of wort! Learn how to process basic ingredients into excellent, extract- based home brewed beers. This is a hands-on course with lots of demonstrations and sensory evaluations. You will brew two extract beers under the guidance of instructors from the Edmonton Homebrewers Guild.
Topics will include: basic brewing principles, equipment, recipe formulation, hop tastings, malt additions, yeasts and packaging. Learn the most common faults of homebrew and how to avoid them. Best of all, you are going to learn how to brew better beer — without relying on commercial kits.
Instructors: Roxy Hastings and Neil Herbst

Making Marvelous Meads

Made from honey, this wonderful wine-like beverage is simple to make and a delight to sample. You will learn how to vint soft Riesling-like whites, sparkling ginger meads and deep, rich, and earthy berry concoctions. After demonstrating how various meads are made the instructor will discuss basic equipment and ingredients, including popular honey varieties, fruits, and spices. We will examine yeast strains and learn how to handle the fermentation cycle for desired sweetness, balance and carbonation.
Instructor: Roxy Hastings

BJCP Course

Because of their commitments to teaching the courses at the Devonian Botanic Gardens Roxy and Neil will not be offering their BJCP course this year. They are however willing to do the course next year. However, there are other qualified instructors in the Guild and these people may step forward to offer a course this year. One way or the other it is never too early to start studying for this exam. So Roxy will be creating a list of persons interested in either taking the exam for the first time or rewriting for advancement. She will have a sign up sheet at the September and October meetings. We will start to assign these people to judge in our monthly tastings sessions.

If you are aiming to rewrite the exam remember that you have the option of writing just the essay or tastings as well as doing the whole thing. Fees are lower and you will be under less time pressure. Contact the BJCP to get a breakdown of your essay and tastings scores. Roxy is willing to help you plan a strategy for your rewrite based on your breakdown.

In case you haven’t heard, last spring Roxy was promoted from a BJCP instructor to exam grader status by the BJCP. She is currently the only Canadian BJCP judge to hold this position. Her duties in that position entail marking and grading BJCP exams (not Edmonton’s of course) and creating the feedback sheets to the examinees. This position gives her an inside track on the workings of the BJCP and how the exam process works. It will be a benefit to all BJCP judges and wanabees in western Canada to have her as part of the BJCP system.

Annual General Meeting and Election of Executives

Guild members are reminded that the September meeting is the Annual General Meeting and that means elections to the board. Now before that scares you into not showing up to avoid being railroaded into a position, we can that this year we have unprecedented enthusiasm. In fact people have already let it be known that they intend to run for positions. This includes: President and Treasurer, and the always difficult Newsletter Editor and Competition Chair. That leaves only Vice Pres. and Secretary completely open. That being said, if you would like to run for any positions they are all open. We encourage you to show up and participate in the elections. As a good friend of Roxy's used to say “If you don’t vote - don’t bitch.” But honestly, the club is better than that and your input determines the strength and direction of the club. The Guild is on a roll now and everyone’s input and participation is needed to keep the momentum going.

ehg-Bay

Steropramen/ Wyeast 2782 Staro Lager For Sale
Roxy Hastings

In a recent order to Paddock Wood I wound up ordering 2 packages more of Steropramen yeast than what I immediately needed. These packages are the freshest Staro you can get and are in good condition. These packages will be for sale at the September meeting at $8.00 a piece – which was my cost without shipping.

Various cleaning chemicals
Bob Boufford

Have some chlorine-based cleaning materials I can no longer use including Sparkle-Brite and Brewer's Edge. Will swap for 3-6 bottles of homebrew at the September meeting.

Open to any current member of the Edmonton Homebrewers Guild.

Members can list anything related to homebrewing including equipment, chemicals, malts, yeasts and hops for sale, to buy, swap, barter or trade.

Deadline for listings is 10 days before the next scheduled monthly meeting.

Editor and Executives reserve right to trim, edit, remove or leave out listings.

View from the Top of the Tun

Well we had a good turnout at the annual general meeting, the best in years in fact, so I guess pre-selecting the candidates is the way to go. We have a great executive this year and I couldn’t help but notice at our first meeting that only two of us are committed full time all-grain brewers. That’s an interesting shift in demographics and it reflects on the diversity of the Guild. We are not just a bunch of all-grain beer snobs, we are simply a bunch of beer snobs, making the best brews possible by whatever means we choose.

Interestingly, this is also in line with the AHA. For the first time since AHA began its club only competitions, this year in May they will be having an extract brew competition that is open to any BJCP category as long as the entry includes malt extract. We hope our members will respond to this and bring your best extract brews for the April meeting. (Ed. note: Our own mini-competition is one month earlier because of due dates and shipping times.)

In recognition of the importance of extract and kit brewing to the homebrew culture we have decided to reach out to that end of the community with a number of activities devoted to that end of the market. We hope that by so doing we raise our membership but also make the point that the Guild serves all types of brewers. So this is what we doing: 1) Neil Herbst and I will be teaching an introduction to extract brewing course at the Devonian Gardens, 2) we are going to host a The Brew House kits only competition at the end of February, and 3) we are going to have an extract beer only club competition for the April meeting to coincide with the AHA event in May.

The Brew House kits are without a doubt the best beer kit to ever come on the market. Both Southside Brew Crew and Harvest Brewing sell something like 30-50 kits a month of these products. But how many of these people are Guild members? Very few. So there is clearly a great, untapped potential to increase our membership if we can attract these people. Both these shops are very excited about us hosting a competition for these kits as clearly it would increase interest in the product and help further their sales and enhance their customer relations. So to that end we will be hosting The Brew House kit competition on the last weekend in February and we will be announcing the winners at the March meeting.

We will invite all contestants along with the Brew Crew and Harvest Brewing staff to come to that Guild meeting for the event. We plan to invite all winners to bring samples of their products. We will judge 3-4 of the most popular kit styles as selected by the shops, (American Premium Lager, Pale Ale and 1 or 2 others yet to be determined), and will include the offshoots (Belgian Golden Ale or Old Ale from the Premium Lager kit) from these kits that are promoted by The Brew House company. Judging will be by BJCP judges and will use BJCP guidelines. More details will be published in next month's newsletter.

Feedback please. I’ve been writing articles for The Worthouse News for almost a decade now and in that time I’ve probably gotten no more comments than the number of fingers on my hands. There is no remuneration for doing this writing, so satisfaction has pretty much come only from what I learn by writing. This year we are trying to diversify the authorship of The Worthouse News. It would sure be great to encourage these people to continue with their efforts by providing them with a bit of feedback. We now live in an age where all but a few of us have ready access to email and so there is little excuse not to put down a few words and send it on to Bob (bouffordr@earthlink.net) for inclusion in a notes to the editor column. Tell us what you think about the articles, do you agree or disagree with an opinion, do you know of a neat gadget to solve a problem. Is the Guild providing you with the services you desire? Even just a “hey, that was a good article”. You don’t have to write a tome, just a few lines. It would really help all of us who work on the newsletter to keep producing what we hope is an interesting and informative piece of work.

I hope that the next executive will continue along the same vein that last years did. It is especially important that we keep up the monthly club tastings.

From the Bottom of the Mash

As mentioned last month, we started to implement some subtle changes to The Worthouse News. One you may not have noticed is the text is now a little larger and should be less strain on the eyes for those of us reading printed copies of the newsletter. It's always one of those trade-offs as the larger the text size, the more paper needed for printing the newsletter. While many of us now read the newsletter in electronic form, there are some members who still like to print out the newsletter on paper.

For the handheld geeks out there with Palm Pilots and Pocket PCs, your editor included, the PDF version of the newsletter has now been optimized to display inside the Acrobat Reader for Mobile Devices. While there are still some text flow glitches to work out, several members have been able to enjoy the newsletter on their Palm or Pocket PC. I can read the newsletter on both the Palm IIIc and the Palm Tungsten while Ken Nyback has had good success with his Pocket PC.

As Roxy mentioned, we are planning a competition for The Brew House kit brewers. I am not ashamed to say I'm one who buys the kits from both Harvest Brewing and Southside Brew Crew. The kits are great additions to the brewer's larder. For those of us who live in apartments with lousy electric stoves and an apartment manager leery of propane burners, the kits have been a great way to make a batch of beer on short notice. The kits are also open to modification with different yeasts, additional hopping and lower dilution factors. I was amazed at the difference in taste between my BH IPA made with the supplied dry yeast and another member's BH IPA made with liquid ale yeast. His beer was much better.

If you have been using The Brew House kits, I am interested in hearing about your experiences for an article I plan to write for an upcoming issue of The Worthouse News. It doesn't have to be a full article, just some comments and notes about your use of the kit and any modifications you make to the kit. I'll even keep your name anonymous if desired. You can send your comments on this or any other subject to BouffordR@earthlink.net. I look forward to hearing about your brewing experiences.

Annual Guild Hop Order!

The hops have been harvested and are at our wholesalers. So it's time to place our annual order. Whole American Hops will be coming from Fresh Hops and will be purchased through Harvest Brewing. European Pellets and Plugs will be purchased from Paddock Wood. You may place orders for whole hops and pellets by ½ lb increments and plugs as single units. We buy the plugs by the 100-plug bag and so we must have close to this number to place the order. First come first served on plugs.

We require prepayment for this order. Bring cash or cheque made out to the Guild. You must be a current Guild member to participate. Do not place your order through Harvest Brewing or Paddock Wood; it must go through the Guild to get this discount.

The order form is included in this issue. We are looking to place this order the week following the October meeting. Last year we delayed by a month but received no significant additional orders so this year we will not put off the order as a number of guys are anxious to get this years fresh crop.

Upcoming Competitions

A couple of important competitions coming up that Guild members are ask to support with entries. It's not too late to send in an entry or two for the Dixie Cup competition in Houston, Texas.

Dixie Cup Houston TX

October 16-18, 2003
MCAB qualifier

This is the 20th annual Dixie Cup and is the largest regional competition in North America. The Foam Rangers always support the ABC with lots of entries and to keep this friendship going it's important that we reciprocate. Besides it's an MCAB qualifier and so for those of us who missed out on a first place qualifier at the ABC, especially those who lost to Texas, here's a chance to redeem ourselves. This is a full BJCP class competition that has similar split categories to what we did last year (in fact we stole the idea from them!).

Date: Entries 26 September - 10 October
Fees: $6.00 USD till October 3rd, $10.00 USD until October 10th
Bottle requirements: three bottles
Further information: http://www.foamrangers.com or http://www.crunchyfrog.net/dixiecup/
Editor's note: The September 2003 issue of Brew Your Own magazine has a profile article on The Dixie Cup (pg 11).

Saskatoon Headhunters Beer Club Homebrew Competition.

November 15, 2003

This is we believe Saskatoon's first competition being held independently of Regina but as part of the ALEs network. It's important that we show support for other western brew clubs, especially one of the younger competitions. we know Regina will be shipping a lot of beers and it's a great way to start of the season with a bit of friendly regional rivalry. We are sure this will be an AHA sanctioned event so we should organize a car pool of judges to go and help out. Billeting will be available so travel costs will be low.
Entry Deadline: November 8, 2003
Competition: weekend of Nov. 15, 2003
Fees: $5.00 per 2-bottle entry.
Classes: All styles welcome, some categories may be collapsed, according to entries

Further information can be found at The Saskatoon Headhunters Beer Club web site, http://www.paddockwood.com/headhunters/ or Paddock Wood Brewing Supplies web site, http://www.paddockwood.com

Other competitions on the horizon

Lethbridge @ early March

Montreal @ late March

Regina @ early May

EHG Aurora Brewing Competition @ early June

Calgary @ late June

Beyond Your Basic Base Malts

Let’s face it; about 75-85% of your fermentables in your “average” homebrew comes from base malt. Given that huge proportion, it is only reasonable to expect that your 2-row barley is going to make a significant contribution to your flavour and aroma profile. Yet when most homebrewers think of the malt contribution to flavour they seem to imagine that 2 row is some sort of neutral flavour, contributing only to the original gravity and that it is crystal, Munich and dark roasted malts that provide the malt character. Thus many brewers use the same base malt for all their beers. This is a mistake.

The fact is that there are many types of base malt and each one has a unique character. Indeed the flavour profile of your base malt will provide the backbone upon which all other components of your beer will hang. An English ESB made with Maris Otter or Golden Promise will taste significantly richer and mellower than an ESB made with Westcan 2-row. Similarly, Westcan 2-row will often bring out the hop character of an American Pale Ale or Brown Ale. In this article I am going to discuss the two-row malts that I have tried, hoping to encourage you to explore some of these delightful malts.

Let me start of by saying that I stumbled onto the importance of base malt by a brewing experiment. For quite a few years I had been struggling to obtain a rich softness in my British ESBs. I had always used Westcan malt for every brew I made. Reading the Paddock Wood website I found a Scottish malt called Golden Promise which “promised” to give a smooth mellowness. I bought the malt and brewed two ESBs back to back, one with Westcan and one with Golden Promise. Indeed, the Golden Promise ale had a richer malt character and gave a soft edge to the hops whereas the Westcan ale was crisper and accentuated the hop dryness. The former was also just a shade deeper hue that seemed to match its overall character. Both were very nice beers but I was amazed at what a difference the choice in base malt would make.

From that point on I was hooked on specialty base malts. I next tried the Budvar under-modified malt and that just served to slam-dunk me into being committed to pairing specific base malts with specific beer styles. When you think about it, it only makes sense. No one would question that American Pale ales are defined by citrusy hops indigenous to the Americas, or that Czech Pils is largely defined by Saaz hops, soft water, and a unique yeast strain. But why then do we overlook the role of unique varieties of base malts? In short - We shouldn’t. Specific beer styles have evolved along with unique malts that were crafted in the beer’s region of origin. It makes considerable sense that a classic British Pale Ale will use a well modified, slightly more deeply kilned 2-row whereas a Czech Pils will use a very pale, under-modified malt. Both of these base malts define the fundamental parameters of the beer styles that they are used to create.

Westcan 2-row

If you’re new to all grain brewing this is where you want to start. Westcan 2-row is a reliable workhorse malt that works well for any beer style ranging from European Pale Lagers to Russian Imperial Stouts and Belgian Ales. The fact that it is the base malt for all Alley Kat beers speaks for its versatility and excellence. It is very easy to work with requiring only a 1-step mash and has the highest extraction rate of any 2-row that I have ever used. In terms of color and malt richness it fits in between the deeper British 2-rows and the lighter and crisper European Lager malts. As I said, it works for everything but the versatility does cost it a degree of excellence that more specialized malts can provide. For example, it just cannot get that really pale straw color, incredible crispness and hint of DMS demanded of a classic German Pils or Munich Helles, nor can it get the true rich mellowness of a southern Brown Ale or British ESB.

Pros: easy to use, versatile, high extraction, inexpensive, readily available locally

Cons: lacks defined character, tending to be neutral

Best uses: every beginner all-grain brewer should start here and work their way out. All American ales including Pale, Brown and Porter, American Barley Wines, Classic American Pilsner and all Light Ales. Dry Stouts. IPA. Most hop accentuated ales.

Hugh Baird’s Munich

Yes indeed, a 12°L Munich malt has enough diastatic power to serve as a base malt! Obviously the deep color coupled with a rich toasty character sets this malt up for Viennas and Oktoberfests but it also works very well for American Amber Ales and Steam Beers. Some traditional Austrian breweries used 100% Munich malt for the grain bill of their Vienna Lagers! I’ve used up to 60% Munich in my Oktoberfests to wonderful affect. Given the low amount of fermentables in this malt you will want to use a decoction mash to draw as much out of this malt as possible when using it as a base malt. A 2-step mash will also work but with less efficiency.

Pros: relatively inexpensive, readily available locally, distinct big toast character

Cons: very low extraction, requires at least a 2-step mash and preferably a decoction mash to get as much fermentables as possible, limited to amber beers.

Best Uses: Vienna and Octoberfest Lagers, American Ambers and Steam Beers.

Beestons Golden Promise

Golden Promise comes from Scotland and so it should come as no surprise that it excels in producing rich, sweet, deep and delicious brews such as Scottish Export and Scotch Ales. This is the richest and darkest ‘well’ modified 2-row malt that I know of, closely followed by Pipkin, also from Scotland, and then the English Maris Otter. No amount of fiddling around with various combinations of crystal malts can impart the same smooth richness that comes from Golden Promise or Pipkin malts.

While these malts claim to be well modified they are certainly less so than Westcan. In order to get an extraction even approaching Westcan requires a 2-step mash and even then you will probably be about 5-10% lower. However, I will almost always choose flavour and character over high yield.

Golden Promise has become my standard base malt for all my British beers. I attribute my silver and gold medals for my Southern Brown and Mild Ales in the last two AHA competitions to having Golden Promise as the base malt.

Pros: the richest, most mellow, malt accentuating malt available

Cons: somewhat pricey $68.00/25 kg, has to be ordered in (Paddock Wood), requires a 2-step mash

Best Uses: Scottish Ales, Scotch Ales, British Bitters and Pale Ales, British Brown Ales, Old Ales, Imperial Stouts, British Barley Wine. Most pale amber to dark brown, malt accentuated British ales. Use for any ale you would regard as premium.

Pipkin

Very close to Golden Promise, this malt can be substituted in all respects. Sadly, it has become almost impossible to get. If you come across a sack – grab it!

Maris Otter

A very nice malt with a profile that is hard to pin down except as wonderful. Not quite as rich in dark melodin flavour as either of the Scottish malts it still provides a soft chewiness that makes for a perfect British Special Bitter. The best English Special Bitter/Irish Red Ale I ever made was created with Maris Otter. It makes a fantastic base for session beers giving a soft rich maltiness in these lightweights that does not overwhelm any hop character.

Pros: smooth, soft, chewy – like your favourite caramel candy bar.

Cons: somewhat pricey $68.00/25kg, requires a two step mash

Best Uses: British and American Bitters, Irish Red Ale, Old Ales, British Barley Wine, Brown Porter, malt accentuated Robust Porter.

European Franco-Belgian Pils Malt

This is considered to be one of the premium continental Pilsner malts and is a blend of 70/30 Scarlett and Optic. If you’re new to brewing Pilsners this is a great malt to start with, and if you don’t want to go through the trouble of a decoction mash this well-modified malt is just the ticket. It works exceedingly well with a 2-step mash and produces a rich, yet crisp brew with a hint of continental sulfur character. The fact that Unibroue uses this as their base malt is a testament to its quality and versatility.

This is an outstanding, easy to use lager malt that can be employed for all continental European brews. It’s a bit darker than the Moravian Budvar, but still paler than Westcan. With a 2-step mash it has an extraction yield approaching that of Westcan. It tends to lean slightly more to the malty side of the balance spectrum than does Budvar.

Pros: soft, smooth, distinct but light sulfur, easy (for pils) 2-step mash

Cons: somewhat pricey $68.00/25kg (from Paddock Wood only)

Best Uses: Dortmunder Export, Munich Helles, Munich Dunkel, Schwarzbier, Vienna, Oktoberfest, Boks, Koelsch, Altbier, all Belgian and French Ales.

Budvar

This is the classic Moravian malt that has been used to brew Czech lagers for centuries. It comes from a very restricted area in the former Czech republic. Pilsner Urquell and Budvar both use this malt and demand extremely high quality and have very exacting standards. Thus this is the highest quality Pilsner malt available. Because of the restrictive conditions this premium malt also comes with a premium price. But for those who demand the best and know how to handle its rather demanding mash regime this malt will produce lagers of unparalleled quality. This is definitely an undermodified malt requiring at least a 2-step mash and preferably a decoction mash to extract the full yield and flavour profile. It has a Lovibond rating of 1° making it by far the palest malt available producing a straw light colour. Despite the low colour rating its flavour is rich and crisp coupled with a distinct sulphur character. Make sure you keep the kettle lid at least partially off to drive off some of the DMS precursors because this malt will certainly produce them. The reward for all this effort is the most definitive and characteristic European lagers you will have ever produced. Especially if you are looking for pale lagers, with a hint of DMS, and a propensity towards hop character this malt delivers on all counts.

Pros: rich but crisp, distinct DMS, the definitive European lager malt.

Cons: expensive (up to $85.00/25 kg), requires decoction for best results, limited availability

Best Uses: Bohemian Pils, North German Pils, Munich Helles, Octoberfest, Vienna, Helles Bok, Koelsch

Second Annual Cane Exchange

In a basic effort to keep our beer quality high the Guild will be running our second annual Cane Exchange. What’s the Cane Exchange you may ask? Bring in your old racking cane to either Harvest Brewing Co. or South Side Brew Crew, spend $10.00 on any product, give them your old cane and they will give you a new cane in exchange. What’s an old cane? Well I would say any cane pushing a year old is old – canes develop micro-cracks as they age and these cracks harbour bacteria and wild yeast that bleach just cannot reach. Eventually populations of these critters build up in a cane and ruin all beers being racked through them. Any light band-aid or sour character in your beer is a good sign that you’ve got a cracked cane. Take advantage of this deal between the Guild and these supporting stores and GET RID OF THAT OLD CANE!

Updated Theme Nights Styles for the Brewing Season!

As written in the previous issues of The Worthouse News, for this season, the Guild is continuing with Theme Nights at monthly meetings. The Executive Board has updated the list with styles through the brewing season. So check out what's scheduled and plan your brews accordingly. On the months marked with AHA, the beer deemed the best of the night, will go forward to the AHA club-only competition, http://www.beertown.org/homebrewing/club.html.

September	Specialty, Experimental and Historical (BJCP Class 24) - AHA
October	Kolsch and Altbier - AHA
November	Barley Wine and Strong Ales - AHA (Note: Only Barley Wines will qualify for AHA entry.)
December	Strong Belgians
January	Porters and Stouts
February	European Lagers
March	Mead - AHA
April	Extract - all classes and styles - AHA
May	BURRP! 2

Roasty, Toasty Malt

Last spring's BURRP! contest introduced many of us to the experiences of roasting or toasting pale malt to obtain a darker malt. Along the way, a few of us had some "exciting" experiences that came close to introducing the Edmonton Fire Department to the fun of making roasty, toasty malt. While the weather is still warm, it might be an opportunity to make some roasty, toasty malt before putting the gas barbecue away o being able to keep the windows open while roasting and toasting in the oven.

Before getting into roasting or toasting your own malt, be aware there is some disagreement over terminology. Some experts will claim roasting involves heating green sprouted malt to stop the conversion process while toasting malt is heating roasted malt to a darker colour. It's like baking bagels from dough compared to toasting a baked bagel. Also, there is supposed to be differences in the compounds resulting from roasting versus toasting. Since most of us do not have the facilities to roast green malt, we will just say, "roasted" and go have some fun doing it!

One of the parameters of the BURRP! contest was to use only a pale 2-row malt. If you needed a darker malt to brew a porter or brown ale, the contest rules required you to roast your own. No running down to the local homebrew supplier, just fire up the oven and roast the malt.

There are various guides and tables for determining the temperature and roasting time to achieve desired darker malt. What you use for temperature and time will depend on how dark you want the malt, your oven, your home ventilation system and ability to withstand the shriek of your smoke detector. Of course this assumes your smoke detector is not wired into the building fire alarm.

Amber and Brown Malts

In the January-February 2003 issue of Brew Your Own magazine on "perfect Porter", there was a sidebar with instructions on making brown malt at home. Starting with a large baking sheet lined with foil, cover with 1 cm of 2-row pale malt. In a pre- heated 100° C oven, heat the malt for 40-45 minutes. Raise the heat to 150° C for 60-70 minutes to obtain an amber malt. Turn the malt occasionally to get an even roasting. Then raise the heat to 175° C for 30-40 minutes to get a brown malt. Remove from the oven and allow cooling before using or storing. After the malt has cooled, allow it to "outgas" for a couple of weeks in a paper bag before storing in a container or using in a mash.

If you want to make both an amber and brown malt, I would recommend splitting the pale malt onto two smaller baking sheets. After the amber malt roast, pull one sheet out of the oven, raise the heat and continue with the other sheet to roast the brown malt.

Chocolate and darker malts

To obtain a chocolate or darker malt requires raising the temperature to 200° C (400° F) to 230°C (450°F) and roasting for 50 to 70 minutes. Unfortunately, malt starts to smoke heavily at temperatures above 200°C (400°F) and requires constant stirring. Even with stirring, there is still enough smoke to set off every smoke detector in the house. If you decide to go for a chocolate malt, it's best to do it outside on a gas barbeque.

Crystal Malt

Crystal malt is basically "mashing in the husk". The first step is soaking a pale malt for 24 hours in clean water. The malt is then drained and packed into a casserole dish or loaf pan and covered with foil. With an oven meat thermometer in the malt, place in an 80°C oven until the mash reaches 70°C. From my experience, plan on up to 12 hours to reach temperature. Remove from the pan and spread on a foil covered baking sheet, cook at 80°C for 30 minutes and then raise the heat to 175°F. Roast until a desired color is reached, which may take 60 to 120 minutes. As the malt dries out, roasting starts to go quickly so check every 10 minutes and stir occasionally.

Smoked Malt

I haven't tried roasting a malt with smoke for a smoked beer but it's possible with a barbecue smoker or similar outdoor smoker. For those with a gas barbecue, several of the home improvement and tire stores sell a small metal box to hold wood chips for smoking.

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Additional resources

"Roast, Toast, Season and Spice". Zymurgy, January/February, 2001, pg 26.
"Making Brown Malt at home" (sidebar), Brew Your Own, January/February, 2003, pg 33

The Beerstein

On the weekend of September 5 and 6, the Royal Athletic Park in beautiful flower peppered Victoria was home to the annual Great Canadian Beer Festival. Over 140 different hand crafted beers from 40 microbreweries were available at one dollar per 4 oz serving for the pleasure of over six thousand beer enthusiasts for five hours on Friday and eight hours on Saturday. CAMRA, the “Campaign for Real Ale” ran this celebration of beer for the eleventh consecutive year this year. Breweries from Eastern and Western Canada, Washington, and Alaska graced us with their best creations. Live music played all day as crowds flowed from booth to booth. Brewers were present at most of the booths to discuss how their creations were made to those interested. Most booths had a special keg of cask-conditioned ale made specifically for the patrons of the festival. Alaskan Breweries was kind enough to bring a special five- year-old cask of their Alaskan Smoked Porter. Heaven hath no beauty like that of an aged, beautifully mellowed smoked Alaskan porter.

When the gates opened, each patron was given a 4 oz glass and a handbook explaining each beer style, describing each of the 40 breweries, and listing most of the beers available to try. Often, many of the breweries would bring out a small cask of a special seasonal creation that was not listed in the booklet for a few hours until the enthusiastic crowds hungrily drained it. Word would quickly get around that a secret keg was available and the line-ups would grow.

This festival was an opportunity for both beer aficionados and brewers alike. Patrons of the festival could experience beers that were normally not available for purchase and brewers could exercise their creative artistic craft in an extremely accepting environment. This crowd was not interested in mainstream beer – they wanted variety and originality – and the brewers delivered. A brewer from Vancouver’s Avalon Brewing was presenting his “Avalon Roggen”, a beer made with 60% rye fermented with a German hefeweizen yeast. As an all grain brewer, I could appreciate how difficult it must have been to brew with such a large percentage of rye. The brewer was there, of course to share his story of how the mash stuck during lauter and sparge over and over again, making the entire process a labor that could only be justified by love of the craft. The finished product was exceptional – well worth the effort in my opinion. Another Vancouver brewery, Storm Brewing, made an extremely bold move and brewed true cherry lambic. No yeast was cultured to produce this beer; it was simply allowed to spontaneously ferment as it was left exposed to the open air. This traditional Belgian technique of brewing is not practiced anywhere else in the world because the expertise required to successfully blend these beers is immense. Although Strom’s version of a lambic did not quite measure up to a Belgian version, it was quite surprising how well made it was. I respect how brave they were to attempt such a difficult beer.

Most of the beers available were well hopped ales, typical of North American microbreweries, and these were extremely tasteful. However, sometimes some special beers were found that did an extremely good job of imitating a foreign style of beer. Sorrento, B.C.’s Crannog Ales made an absolutely fantastic dry stout called “The Back Hand of God”; the best German hefeweizen that I sampled was Squamish B.C.’s Howe Sound Brewing Company’s and Vancouver’s Steamworks Brewpub made a Belgian witbier, Ipanema White, that rivaled Hoegarrden.

Some brewers relied on gimmicky beers to draw in the curious. Steamwork’s Brewpub served an extremely intense stout made with over 1000 shots of espresso per keg. Blonde babes in tight little shirts served a “Hugh HEFNERweizen” from Victoria’s “Hugo’s” Grill and Brewhouse.

For a beer lover, this festival was truly an over- stimulation of beer. We had the greatest time sitting among fine company in a lush setting, sampling the best that the greatest North American breweries had to offer. I highly recommend a road trip there for next year. If you are interested in being a volunteer next time, simply apply on line at http://www.gcbf.com/. Either way, this is not an event to miss.

Cheers

ehg-Bay

EHG Glasses
Glen Hannah

EHG gold embossed beer glasses (16 oz sleeves) for sale. Single glasses are $5.00 each or five glasses for $20.00. Anyone interested can contact Glen. Glasses will be available at the October meeting.

Erlenmeyer Flasks
Roxy Hastings

One dozen 1-litre Erlenmeyer flasks, $10.00 each. The flasks are excellent containers for yeast starters and other yeast culturing projects. Flask will be available at the October meeting.

Various cleaning chemicals
Bob Boufford

Have some chlorine-based cleaning materials I can no longer use including Sparkle-Brite and Brewer's Edge. Will swap for 3 bottles of homebrew at the October meeting.

Placing a listing in ehg-Bay

Open to any current member of the Edmonton Homebrewers Guild.

Members can list anything related to homebrewing including equipment, chemicals, malts, yeasts and hops for sale, to buy, swap, barter or trade.

Deadline for listings is 10 days before the next scheduled monthly meeting.

Editor and Executives reserve right to trim, edit, remove or leave out listings.

View from the Top of the Tun

Executive Brew on October 5, 2003

EHG executive members Roxanne Hastings, Boyd Oberhoffner, Jim Whittome, Bob Boufford and I gathered at long time EHG member and past president Frank Kuzemski’s garage on a beautiful Sunday morning to brew this year’s December holiday treat. The brew is a Belgian Spiced Dubbel – a two-step mash recipe spiced with orange, coriander and candy sugar conjured by Roxy and Frank that that will be served at the December meeting and holiday pot luck dinner.

Frank’s home brewery is impressive to say the least – a three-tier RIMS system fuelled by propane and with modifications can be converted over to natural gas. A simple system actually - no pumps - with all transfers conducted by gravity even though a pump can be quickly brought online. The tanks are recycled ten-gallon kegs that sit on a sturdy 2” square metal tube frame.

Frank uses an immersion wort chiller made from 3/8” copper tube. Roxy showed us a quick way to speed up the chilling of the wort by lightly shaking the chiller causing agitation of the wort. The 5 gallons of wort chilled down to 70°F in less than 20 minutes.

Frank transferred the wort from the boiling tank to the primary fermenter and then conducted the ceremonial “pitch”ing of the Belgian Ale yeast starter cultured by Roxy.

The day was both educational and eye opening as I gained more knowledge and appreciation for all- grain brewers and Frank’s homemade burgers.

If you want to treat yourself to a fine example of a spiced Belgian Ale I highly suggest you come out to the December meeting / pot luck. This brew started with an OG of 1.100! Consume with caution! See you at the November meeting.

From the Bottom of the Mash

As I write this, the snow is flying and it's time to enjoy those nice heavy gravity beers to warm the innards. As you have seen, the Executives were busy this past month, brewing up a nice strong Belgian ale for the upcoming December meeting and holiday potluck gathering. "Strong English Ales and Barley Wines" is the theme and mini-competition for the November meeting. It should be a very nice warming event.

As announced in a previous issue, The Edmonton Homebrewers Guild First Annual Brew House Brew-Off is off and running. We hear The Brew House kit brewers are excited and already lining up to participate in the competition. Details on the competition can be read later in the newsletter with entry forms available from two of the local homebrew shops and shortly on our website. If you have friends and relatives who are Brew House kit brewers, encourage them to enter the competition. This is a great opportunity to show as Roxy puts it "We are not just a bunch of all-grain beer snobs, we are simply a bunch of beer snobs, making the best brews possible by whatever means we choose."

Besides leading the current Executives in an all-grain brewing session, I want to also say congratulations to EHG member and past president, Frank Kuzemski in taking second place for his Kölsch in the recent Dixie Cup in Texas. It was definitely a tough competition with over 1000 entries. Great going, Frank!

The December theme will be on Strong Belgians followed by Porters and Stouts for January. If any of these are your favourite styles to brew, we would like to hear of your experiences. Feel free to send me anything. If you don't feel you are skilled in writing a short article, send me comments or notes and I will compile them in to "notes on a beer label" for the other members. Also, send any tips and tricks about brewing that may help other members such as using wallpaper paste trays to soak racking canes. You can you’re your comments, notes and articles to BouffordR@earthlink.net. I look forward to hearing about your brewing experiences.

Upcoming Competitions

Edmonton Homebrewers Guild First Annual Brew House Brew-Off
February 21-22, 2004

The Edmonton Homebrewer’s Guild in co-operation with Southside Brew Crew and Harvest Brewing Co. are having the first annual contest for the Best Brew House Brewer!

Competition Deadlines

Entries are due on Friday 13 February 2004.

Entries can be taken to:
Alley Kat Brewing Co
9929-60th Ave, Edmonton

Southside Brew Crew
5718-111 Street, Edmonton

Judging will take place on the weekend of February 21-22.

Awards will be presented at the monthly meeting of the Edmonton Homebrewers Guild at Alley Kat Brewing Co. on Monday 1 March starting at 7:30 P.M.
All competitors are encouraged to turn out to the awards night and to bring some of their beers for other competitors to try out.

Entry Forms will be available at:
Southside Brew Crew
5718-111 Street

Harvest Brewing Co
9872-63 Ave

Edmonton Homebrewers Guild webpage:
http://www.ehg.ca

For the competition, only brews made using the following four Brew House Kits as a base are eligible: American Premium Lager, Cream Ale, India Pale Ale and Munich Dark Lager. For each kit, participants can enter the style of the base kit or any of the other styles associated with that kit Prizes will be awarded for the best three beers made using each of the four kits. In addition to other prizes, winners will receive memberships in the Edmonton Homebrewers Guild from March 2004 until August 2005. All non-EHG entrants receive guest memberships in the Guild from March 2004 until August 2004.

The Brew House Kits and Associated Styles
1) American Premium Lager
a) American Premium Lager
b) Olde Stock
c) Belgian Golden Ale
2) Cream Ale
a) Cream Ale
b) American Brown Ale
c) Scotch Ale
3) India Pale Ale
a) India Pale Ale
4) Munich Dark Lager
a) Munich Dark Lager
b) Bock
c) Dobbelbock

Saskatoon Headhunters Beer Club Homebrew Competition.
November 15, 2003

This is we believe Saskatoon's first competition being held independently of Regina but as part of the ALEs network. It's important that we show support for other western brew clubs, especially one of the younger competitions. We know Regina will be shipping a lot of beers and it's a great way to start of the season with a bit of friendly regional rivalry. We are sure this will be an AHA sanctioned event so we should organize a car pool of judges to go and help out. Billeting will be available so travel costs will be low.

Entry Deadline: November 8, 2003
Competition: weekend of Nov. 15, 2003
Fees: $5.00 per 2-bottle entry.
Classes: All styles welcome, some categories may be collapsed, according to entries

Further information can be found at The Saskatoon Headhunters Beer Club web site, http://www.paddockwood.com/headhunters/ or Paddock Wood Brewing Supplies web site, http://www.paddockwood.com

Other competitions on the horizon

Lethbridge @ early March

Montreal @ late March

Regina @ early May

EHG Aurora Brewing Competition @ early June

Calgary @ late June

Keeping Good Beer Records

Part of the strategy of any successful homebrewer, from novices just learning the art, to seasoned competitors, is careful record keeping. About 12 years ago I started carefully recording all my data on my brews. Coming from a science background I eventually decided to develop a systematic approach to my record keeping. The result was a 3-page table based summary that describes my objectives, ingredients, methodology, results and description, and how I can improve on the brew. Anybody who has taken a basic science course will recognize this structure. What makes the data sheet work is the simple elegance of its table format.

I print out the first 3 pages and then print page 4, Beer Evaluation, on the back of each page. I use this last page to record the detailed description of the beer including my own comments and feedback from competitions. It was originally produced in WordPerfect for Windows but this version was imported and then modified in MS-Word. Yes, because most of the literature is American based, I still use a lot of English system measurements, that’s one thing you will probably want to change.

A few explanations:

Mash Runoff Properties
-runoff stage = how many gallons (litres) have been run off. (I have found that the gravity of the runoff at 3 U.S. gallons will be very close to the O.G. of a 5 U.S. gallon beer and the same is true at 2 gallons for a 3 U.S. gallon beer)
-Deg. Extract@ temp = hydrometer reading and temperature
-Real Extract = specific gravity (previous column corrected for temp)

Good Things/Bad Things

-things that worked according to plan and things that did not. This really helps when you are trying to figure out what went wrong in a brew. Be completely honest in this section.

Changes and Improvements Done

-things you changed from the last time you brewed this recipe

Improvements to Make

-things you plan to do the next time you brew this beer.

These last two items really help improve the quality of the beer. Making notes on how you plan to improve the beer, while you still have some on hand, makes it far easier to remember what to do when you get around to brewing it again months or years later. This is sort of the abstract of your own strategy for improving the beer, taking into account what judges tell you and your own perception of what’s needed.

The file will be put on the EHG web site shortly so that you can download and modify it for your own purposes. For those interested in obtaining a copy sooner, can send an email to The Worthouse News Editor.

Brewing Tip

Many EHG members believe one of the main points of infection is the racking cane during transfer between fermenters. A common suggestion is to always keep racking canes soaking in sanitizer such as idophor or Star-San. Unfortunately most buckets are too short to completely submerge the canes. The solution - the tray used for wetting pre-pasted wallpaper.

A 30" tray is usually available for under $3.00 at most home improvement stores. There is plenty of room to hold several racking canes submerged in sanitizer.

TV Dinner Brewing

About the time I had my first sip of beer in the mid 50's (It really was just a sip as my dad wasn't about to give me a full bottle at the early age of 5), TV dinners were becoming a very "hot" item. Mom was able to get a Swanson's TV Dinner out of the frozen section of the grocery store, bring it home, pop it in the oven and 30 minutes later, a hot meal! The big advantage was the convenience of no cooking, no messy pots and minimal cleanup. Of course, the taste wasn't exactly like a home cook meal and often required generous amounts of ketchup and other condiments.

In homebrewing, we are now seeing a brewing version of the old TV dinner with pre-packed wort kits such as The Brew House (http://www.thebrewhoue.com), Festa Brew (http://www.magnotta.com) and ReadyBrew (http://www.paddockwood.com). These kits just require pouring the wort into a sanitized fermenter, maybe adding some additional water and pitching the yeast. After that, it's the usual racking to a secondary if desired and then bottling or kegging. No grinding, mashing, sparging, boiling or toiling to get the wort into the fermenter. From start to finish a brew can be in the fermenter in the same time it took to cook a TV dinner in the oven.

While pre-packaged wort kits make an acceptable brew, there have been comments that they tend to be at the low end of a good tasting brew. So like the old TV dinners, they may require some "enhancements" to improve the taste. But no ketchup please! Instead, a change in yeast, water concentration or hopping can turn a typical beer into a good beer. While the full strength worts (Festa Brew and ReadyBrew) are limited in what can be added, the concentrated worts such as The Brew House kits offer a wider range of flexibility.

I like to think of the Brew House kits as a "very watery can of no-boil hopped extract". You can make the beer following the directions or like those "cake doctor" cookbooks, use the kit as a starting point for another style of beer. As found in canned extract brewing, just changing from the supplied dry yeast (usually Coopers) to a good liquid yeast will often enhance the flavour of the beer.

Depending on the labelled style of the kit, the gravity of the Brew House kits is somewhere in the range 1.070-1.080 for 15 litres (4 gal US), so it's a good starting point for several related styles. With some of the kits, reducing the amount of water will change the style to a related higher gravity style. For example, the Pale Ale kit, which normally requires 8 litres of water, without water will give an American Barley Wine styled beer and with 4 litres of water, an Old Ale styled beer.

Brew House Kit	Liquid yeast suggestion
Pilsner	Wyeast 2278 Czech Pils
Pale Ale	Wyeast 1056 American Ale
Cream Ale	Wyeast 2565 Kolsch
Premium Amer Lager	Wyeast 2112 California Lager
Munich Dark Lager	Wyeast 2308 Munich Lager
Wheat	Wyeast 3068 Weizen
Stout	Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale
Mexican Cerveza	Wyeast 2112 California Lager

Changing the yeast and reducing the water is just the beginning. At The Brew House web site are recipes for modifying the kits by adding different yeast, less water, more hops, additional extract (DME, LME) or a partial steep/mash. I have a Porter in the fermenter right now made from the Pale Ale kit, steeped dark grains and a British Ale yeast. We will see how it turns out at the Porter/Stout mini-competition during the January meeting.

A kit makes it easy to split into multiple batches to brew two different styles, try out different yeasts or experiment with ingredients as it provides a uniform base style. Since the kit normally makes 23 litres (6 gal US), there are a variety of ways of dividing the batch. I have found it helps to have a sanitized bottling bucket if the kit is to be split into multiple batches. The Brew House kit is packaged with a very low pH to retard spoilage and requires the addition of an acid neutralizer before pitching the yeast. A bottling bucket makes it easy to empty the wort out of the box and mix in "Pack #1". The wort can then be dumped into the different fermenters with additional water, extract, hop tea and yeast.

I've been using The Brew House kits since I moved to Canada a year ago. They are a great addition to the brewer's larder for such situations where you want to do a batch of brew and just don't have the few hours it takes to do an extract or all grain brew. Also, for those of us who live in apartments (or homes) with lousy stoves, they are very nice to have when it's too cold (-40C) in winter to fire up an outdoor burner and there is an "itch to brew".

So, when you want some brew but just don’t feel like "cooking", open the box, pitch the yeast, "relax and have a homebrew!"

The All Season Warmer - Barley Wine

Ahh, barley wine. As the weather gets a little colder, brewer’s thoughts turn to those high gravity winter warmers like barley wine. Personally I like barley wine at any time. One of my favourite summer past times is sitting around the campfire with a barley wine in one hand and a cigar in the other. You can’t beat that. We’re very fortunate to have many excellent brewers in the club and I’ve had the great pleasure to sample some of Roxy’s wonderful old ales as well as barley wines from the king of the big beers, Bryan Halliday. I’ve been inspired by those beers to try to make some of my own.

The recipe below is from a barley wine that I brewed on February 18, 2001. I still have 2 or 3 bottles from that batch and they’re wonderful. The biggest mistake I always make when brewing a beer like this is to drink too much of it too young. These high gravity beers just improve with age and develop a wonderful complexity. You’ll notice from the recipe that I used a lot of dry malt extract (DME). I just use a 2-bucket lautering system and it won’t handle all the grain I would need for a 5 gallon batch of high gravity beer. I could brew a smaller quantity but I’m relatively pleased with the results I’ve gotten. It took a first in its class in the 2002 ABC and more importantly, I like it. I apologize for the mixture of metric and imperial measurement but most of my reading on brewing is American and I just don’t bother converting everything to metric.

Grain
10.5 pounds 2 row pale malt
1 pound Crystal malt
0.5 pounds Carapils malt
0.5 pounds Wheat malt
1 ounce Chocolate malt
6 pounds DME

My water was 50/50 tap and RO water from Safeway and I mashed at 150 F. I had calculated about 26 degrees of extraction per pound from my grain and about 40 degrees per pound from the DME. That would have given me an original gravity of 1.104 but I actually got a little less and ended with an OG of 1.098. Not bad. The DME was added in the boil right at the beginning.

Hops
60 minutes
26 g Columbus at 15.1% (~ 45 IBU)

30 minutes
24 g Centennial at 10.3 % (~ 15 IBU)
40 g Cascade at 6% (~ 15 IBU)
20 g NZ Hallertauer at 8% (~ 10 IBU)

5 minutes
26 g Cascade at 6% (~ 3 IBU)
13 g NZ Hallertauer at 8% (~ 2 IBU)

Dry Hop
14 g each of Centennial, Cascade and NZ Hallertauer.

I was aiming for about 90 IBU and a significant hop presence but found that although the bitterness was good for balance I would have liked more hop flavour and aroma.

Yeast and Fermentation

The yeast I used was good old 1028 London Ale. I like this yeast and was encouraged by an issue of Zymurgy that I have noting that the 1997 AHA commemorative brew was a barley wine brewed with London Ale. However, I don’t like a barley wine that just sort of sits there and droops with little carbonation. I want something with life so I added fresh yeast at every step as well as 4 tsp. of yeast nutrient. The beer was brewed on February 18 and I pitched 1600 ml of London Ale yeast at that time. I kept an eye on fermentation temperatures to make sure they didn’t get too high. I didn’t want to end up with a 5 gallon batch of simply stupefying higher alcohols as opposed to a tasty batch of barley wine so I kept it at around 65 F. By March 17 the specific gravity had dropped from 1.098 to 1.040. On March 26, I transferred the beer and added another 600 ml of London Ale. On July 22, I bottled the beer and added my usual 1/2 cup corn sugar boiled in 2 cups water for carbonation but also another 600 ml of London Ale. So far my record keeping is pretty good but my notes don’t record what the final gravity was. I must have been sampling already!! In any case, my intent was to make a hoppy American style barley wine and it turned out to be less hoppy that I had hoped for. It competed as a British barley wine and tastes just fine with a cigar.

In Designing Great Beers, Ray Daniels has some good advice about trying to brew a barley wine, which I took to heart but two specific points stand out for me. Firstly, make sure the wort is extremely well aerated. The yeast will tend to get a little sluggish as the alcohol level climbs and you want to give it a running start. Secondly, pitch twice as much yeast as you’re used to and be prepared to rouse the yeast in the secondary or add yeast at each step as I did. Daniels notes that some brewers have used wine or champagne yeast to help with attenuation but you may run the risk of producing odd or off flavours. Since this is a beer I like the idea of sticking with a hardy ale yeast like London although I’ve seen lots of recipes that use 1056 American Ale as well. In his chapter on barley wine, Daniels concludes by saying, “ . . .it is clear that there are a number of different barley wine formulations to try based on your choices of key variable as U.S. or English hops, use or omission of flavour hop additions, and high or low attenuation levels. The breadth of opportunity offered by this style makes it one that could truly be explored for many years.” The winter 1997 edition of Zymurgy is called Warm Up With Barley Wine and has lots of great commentary and barley wine recipes. It’s got a picture of a couple sitting in front of a blazing fire and toasting each other with glasses of barley wine. Perfect.

Pumpkin Pie in a Glass

‘Tis the season for raking leaves, carving pumpkins, dressing up in Halloween costumes, and of course making pumpkin beer. For years I’ve been promising myself that I will make a pumpkin beer for Halloween. Visions of having friends over sipping on this delicious beer as kids cry outside for candy come to mind. So this year I finally timed everything right so that this long desired endeavour would be ready on time for October 31.

I like to experiment with many different recipes and styles. So, before I attempt a new beer style, I always research articles and books to see what other experienced brewers have to say about the process. For this beer, I read several articles regarding the use of pumpkins in brewing, and I’m very thankful that I did. After several horror stories of stuck mashes or beer that lost all pumpkin character, I decided that I would heed the advice of those who had made this beer successfully. I am not, therefore, an experienced pumpkin beer maker – I’ve only made one batch – but it was better than I had anticipated. Those who have tasted it call it “pumpkin pie in a glass”. There are a few things you need to know before combining this Halloween vegetable with wort.

When do you add the pumpkin?

For best results, pumpkin should be added to the mash. If you add it during the boil, most of the pumpkin flavour will be lost by the time you taste the final product. If any of the brewers out there have managed to successfully brew a flavourful extract version of this beer please tell me how you did it.

Be sure to bake the pumpkin in the oven at 350F until slightly browned and soft. You want to caramelize some of the sugars, but you don’t want mush. Be vigilant. Leave the light on in the oven and watch it every 5 minutes or so. When its done, the skin will be a little brown and peel off easily. It’s kind of like making a perfectly toasted marshmallow, except that it’s much bigger and orange.

How much pumpkin do you add?

Apparently, you don’t want to add too much pumpkin. Doing so will result in beer with an extremely vegetal character. I used only 340g of baked pumpkin in a 20L batch. By using this amount I found that my final product had a slight pumpkin character, but it certainly didn’t dominate the flavour. I think that raising the amount to 400g or 500g would be an interesting experiment, but be careful. More pumpkin isn’t necessarily better.

How do you prevent a stuck mash?

Many brewers warned about the dreaded stuck mash due to the gelatinous nature of the pumpkin. I have a great aversion to stuck mashes, so I did a long protein rest (30 min at 50°C) during the mash. My guess was that the peptidases would break down the gelatinous proteins enough to prevent gooping up the grain bed. Did it work? I had no problems with the mash sticking at all. However, it was interesting that I only lautered for about 5 minutes before the wort came crystal clear. Perhaps the pumpkin goop helped with filtration instead of sticking the mash.

What should the base beer be?

The background beer should be malty and have just enough hop bitterness to balance and a subtle hop flavour that compliments pumpkin pie. Since I have plenty of Munich malt, I went crazy with it. However, any amber or pale ale would make a fine base with pumpkin. I strongly recommend spicing the beer with cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg. The spices really add to the experience. Feel free to experiment. Anytime you add spices to beer, add them in the last 20 minutes of the boil so that the flavour comes through in the final product.

Here is the recipe I used:
3 pounds Westcan 2 row malt (for diastatic power)
6 pounds Munich malt
1 pound Crystal malt (40°L)
340g baked then blended pumpkin

Mash 30 min at 50°C, 15 min at 62°C, 30 min at 69°C, and 5 min at 80°C. Sparge at 80°C

Boil 90min. Add 18.5g Mt Hood (5.1%) at 60 min and 25g at 20 min.

Add 10g of each spice at 15 min – cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and clove

Ferment at 15°C with Wyeast 1028 (London ale) OG1.047 FG1.015

Cheers

View from the Top of the Tun

Glen and Kelly both have goals. In fact Glen and Kelly have pretty much the same goal. They both want their respective homebrew competitions to hit 300 entries this year. Now as you well know Glen Hanna is our competition chair, and Kelly Dies? Well Kelly is one of the organizers for the Regina Ales competition. Both men have invested long hours to helping their clubs grow to be the top two clubs in the nation. And now the parallel path both have taken leads us to the point where both clubs have the potential to hit the 300 entries mark.

Over the last few years these two powerful western-based clubs have been helping each other along. How? In large part by competing against each other, by sending a lot of beers to each other’s competitions and by sending beers to the Canadian Amateur Brewers Association first round competition in Toronto. We’ve also sent brews and judges to other regional events all in the hopes of fostering brewing in western Canada. And we’ve been pretty darn successful. Both clubs are at the peak of their game and other regional clubs from Saskatoon, Calgary and Lethbridge are picking up steam.

Last year CABA pretty much crashed and burned with the way they ran their AHA qualifier. In fact it was the last straw in a long series of years of poor judging from central Canada. The AHA had finally had enough and this month they pulled the site. But instead of taking it away from Canada, a group from Regina along with myself, Tim Oborn from Calgary and Steve from Paddock Wood in Saskatoon convinced the AHA to award the site to Regina.

So this spring, for the first time in Canadian brewing history, the two most prestigious events in amateur brewing are both going to be held in Western Canada. Edmonton of course will continue its fine tradition of being Canada’s qualifying site for the Masters Challenge of Amateur Brewing and Regina will now take over as the first round site for the American Homebrewers Association National competition.

Of course we can talk all we want about how prestigious a competition is, but there are two measures of great competitions: lots of beers and outstanding judging. From having judged at homebrew shows across much of western Canada the past year, and comparing what I’ve seen with my results from competitions I’ve entered across the continent, I am absolutely confident that we have the latter. That is to say, the overall quality of judging in western Canada is second to none anywhere on the continent.

So now we come to the lots of beers parts. Well I can’t really complain here because both Regina and Edmonton have hit the low 200s, making them the biggest in the nation. That’s pretty good but it’s not great. All the US first round shows in both events are about 300 entries, a big show is 400- 500 hundred, The Foam Rangers’ Dixie Cup in Houston this year got 1000. So why shouldn’t Canada be able to hit 300? Why shouldn’t we be able to match the Yanks? In fact, given that the Edmonton and Regina shows are so close, why can’t we both hit 300? Well people, that’s our challenge this year. Let’s prove to the rest of Canada, the Americans, but most of all ourselves, that not only can Western Canada put on a big show, but by God, both clubs are gonna continue to work together and we’re going to push each other over the top!

What’s happening at the December meeting?

Annual Holiday Potluck

In addition to a fine sampling of Belgian Strong Ales, the December meeting of the Guild will feature our annual potluck dinner. This meeting is open to all your family and friends and is usually one of the most popular meetings of the year. This year’s executive revived a tradition of producing an off-the-wall executive brew for the evening. As many of you already know we produced a strong (1.100 OG) spiced Belgian Dark Ale. One of the reasons to consider bringing a spouse or a friend is so that someone from your group will be able to safely drive home.

So while the executive and the guild are providing the beer and the cutlery, it is up to the membership to provide the food. You are encouraged to bring a casserole, salad or some dessert item. In the true tradition of potluck, we never organize who is bringing what, so if we all bring chicken wings, we all eat chicken wings. But we’ve never failed to have a great turnout out of wonderful food so this will continue to be a smashing event.

Belgian Strong Ale Tastings

The theme style for the December meeting is Belgian strong ales. That would be doubles, triples, strong goldens, strong darks and Belgian strong specialties. So we will be running our standard mini-competition with a group of judges leading the membership through the structured tastings. Then Roxy and Neil will lead a special tasting of a flight of Belgian Strong Dark Ales that were brewed by Roxy as an experiment in Belgian yeast. A report on the results of the experiments can be read found on page 7 of this issue. There will be a tasting of these brews with a group discussion about the qualities or lack there of each strain.

Hop Order

The European pellet and plug hops have arrived and will be available at the December meeting. Ray Duperon will be in charge of distributing these hops. We ordered an extra ½ lb of some varieties to top up the order to even pound increments. These extra hops will be available to the first persons that get to Ray with the cash at $10.00/half pound.

From the Bottom of the Mash

With the writing frenzy of Roxy and Greg, I’m going to take a break this month and just focus on editing the wealth of articles from those two. But just as we like lots of different beers, we would also like to hear from other members. So while you are sipping that winter warmer, jot down a few notes and let us know what you are up to. I’ll even take handwritten articles and type them up at no charge.

Because of holiday travels to the south by the editor, the January issue of The Worthouse News will be out by Dec 24th. So, if you would like to do an article for the upcoming issue, please send any articles for the newsletter by Dec 20th.

BYO Brewer Profile: Roxanne Hastings

Congratulations to Roxy, EHG President, on her Brewer Profile in the December 2003 issue of Brew Your Own magazine.

AHA awards first round site to Regina

Congratulations to Regina Ales for securing the first round site of the AHA for Canada. After a series of poor performances from first round competitions run by the Canadian Amateur Brewers Association in Toronto, the AHA had decided to pull the site out of Canada. A committee struck by Regina, and including representatives from other western brew clubs, lobbied the AHA to give the site to Regina rather than Canada losing the site completely. CABA gave up the site, and then the AHA awarded it to Regina. We can now look forward to having a big AHA first round site in Canada and improved judging quality. Of course the success of this competition depends on the membership of the western clubs entering lots of beers into this event and out of town judges going to Regina to help with the judging. We’ll be going all out to organize club shipping and will be setting up transportation for EHG judges to travel to Regina for the event.

Upcoming Competitions

Edmonton Homebrewers Guild First Annual Brew House Brew-Off

February 21-22, 2004

The Edmonton Homebrewer’s Guild in co-operation with Southside Brew Crew and Harvest Brewing Co. are having the first annual contest for the Best Brew House Brewer!

Competition Deadlines

Entries are due on Friday 13 February 2004.

The competition brochure and entry form can be printed and downloaded from the EHG website, http://www.ehg.ca. Encourage any homebrewing friends and neighbours to enter the competition.

Lethbridge – competition is set for 6 March 2004. No details yet, probably a two bottle entry this year as they were encouraged to do so by both Regina and Edmonton. Veryl Todd tells me he is looking for more out-of-town judges this year. I know Regina plans to send a few - we should not let ourselves be outdone.

Regina – the AHA has awarded the Regina Ales the first round site for Canada in their national competition. Date has yet to be set but probably in mid-April. We will want to flood this competition with entries to help get them to the 300 mark and prove that the west deserved the site. With that many entries Regina is going to need a lot more judges than they have on hand and we are the best source to provide them with that commodity. Ken Nyback has committed himself to going and he has a van that can get about 5 of us down. That’s a good start.

Edmonton – 3-5 June 2004. Our competition has been growing steadily and we see no reason for it not to hit 300. Regina has been sending us a lot of entries and promise to continue to do so. Additionally, because our show is an MCAB qualifier it is available to Americans and interest from them has been steadily increasing. Of course we don’t want to be over run by out-of-towners so we encourage all Edmonton members to send in every darn beer you’ve got. Remember you can enter the same beer in multiple categories and you can enter more than one beer in the same category. We highly encourage both practices, as it not only bumps up our numbers it’s a great way to learn about your brews.

First Annual Western Confederation of Brew Clubs Conference.

This year we are also hosting the now evolving Western Confederation of Brew Clubs first annual conference. In anticipation of the extra brews, and the time needed for the conference we have added another evening onto the judging. We will now start on Thursday. The conference will be held on the afternoon and evening of Saturday 5 June. We plan to have a BBQ banquet and an awards ceremony at the end. Regina has suggested that clubs brew kegs of brew and bring them to the event. I must say, we fully support that idea!! Right now we are lining up the educational sessions but they will include 2 BJCP seminars, one on how to prepare for the exam and a second one on detecting faults. Other suggested topics have been: advanced homebrewing equipment, extract brewing and meads. There will also be organizational sessions to help formally set up the Western Confederation.

It’s going to be one hell of a party. Details will follow. Membership participation is going to be required to help pull off this dream.

Calgary – date not set yet but these people are committed. They are almost certainly going to go to a two-bottle entry format, hoping to bump up their numbers. The popular Lawn Mower beer event is promised to make a comeback.

Gambrinus Cup Challenge, November 2003 Small but successful and growing

Saskatoon – I just came back from this relatively small, but sure to be growing event. There were about 80 entries. Ken Nyback and myself represented the Edmonton Homebrewers Guild and I had the honour of being appointed Chief Judge. Jim Beebe made sure things ran as smoothly as possible for what was effectively a first time event. I got to stay at Jim’s place for three nights and was treated to some of the finest Scottish Export that I had ever tasted. Strangely, although Jim loves his Golden Promise and Peated malts, and makes some of the finest Scottish beers in the land, he does not like Scotch whiskey. Go figure.

Given that there were only between 4-6 judges at any one time we were kept very busy with those 80 beers. Both Ken and I got to judge a whole bunch of beers. I had the pleasure of judging with Rod Savoie, who wrote his BJCP exam in Edmonton, but who now lives in the Yukon. Rod is a fine judge who has perfected his skills judging in homebrew competitions in Alaska. Rod told us he has access to a good supply of several years worth of vintage dated Alaskan Smoked Porter. Ken and I immediately suggested that he come down to the Edmonton conference and lead a vertical tasting! I must say, that Rod seemed rather taken by the idea, and so who knows.

Anyways, Edmonton did very well bringing home a total of 12 awards including Best of Show. I took a first in Strong Ales, a second in Dark Lagers, and two third place in European Pale Lagers and Strong Belgian. The strong ale also took BOS. Frank Kuzemski, continuing to make up awards to compensate for all his years of rough brewing (sorry Frank, you know I love you ☺) also picked up four medals including two firsts, in Kolsch and Wheat Beers, a second in North American Lager and a third in British Bitters. Jason Foster, who returned to our club this year after spending a year doing graduate work in Hamilton proved he continues to brew a mean dark ale by taking first in Brown Ales and third in Stouts. And finally, the sweetest win of them all, new EHG member Shawn Lamble took first place in specialties with his hot jalapeño American Pilsner! Shawn was highly encouraged to enter this brew by several Guild members at our last meeting and I’m glad he followed through. This was the most talked about beer at the competition and will certainly be the most memorable. BOS judges all ranked it highly, somewhere in the top 5. And this was a modified Brew House kit beer, brewed without refrigeration. You don’t need any more information than that to know that you don’t need to be brewing all grain to make some marvellous brew. Way to go Shawn, you did us proud and I hope you continue on the path of competitive brewing.

Many thanks to Saskatoon for putting on a great show to kick off the brewing season. I’ll be back!

The scoop on competitive brewing

You know I often hear the excuse, “I don’t make enough brews to be competing.” Well I gotta tell you that’s a pretty miserable excuse. Maybe the problem is that you’re not practicing enough to be making those brews.

Look, let’s get a few facts straight:

1. Like any other sport, the more you practice the better you get. In our sport that translates to: the more you brew the better you get. Who doesn’t like to drink good beer? Well? No one. So if you’re going to make good beer then you got to start brewing more. And if you’re brewing more then you’re going to have more beer for competition. I should be able to stop right there, but no, I’m gonna keep going!
2. Like any other sport, the more you compete the better you get. Yes, I know you think that you make a fine beer, hell your brother-in-law cleans out your stash every time he comes over! Isn’t that proof enough. Well, unless your brother-in-law is a recognized BJCP beer judge, I would have to say NO. Only in and from the unbiased mouth of a BJCP beer judge are you going to get an honest opinion about the quality of your beer. The fact of the matter is that all our best brewers are competitive brewers. And all our best brewers became best brewers because they were competitive brewers. Competition is not only about beating the other guy or gal, it’s mostly about learning. It’s about improving yourself. Who doesn’t want to get better at their craft? Well? No one. I should be able to stop right there, but no, I’m gonna keep going!
3. How many 333-ml bottles are there in a batch of beer? Well the last time I counted I got about 55 bottles for 5 US gallons. That’s quite a lot of beer. Now lets see, how many entries does it take to compete? In Regina and Edmonton and indeed in most competitions it’s two. Two whole bottles out of 55! God, I think I loose that much in my siphoning! Well ok that’s a bit of an underestimate, because if you have some faith in your ability, and you will because you’re practicing – right? Well then you’ve gotta hold back 3 bottles for the second round of the AHA (which comes up too fast to rebrew for). And of course you’re not gonna compete in just Regina, hell no, you’ve gotta support your local Edmonton competition! So what does that add up to? Seven or a little over a 6 pack of homebrew. And if you don’t place in Regina then you’ll still need those bottles because there’s Calgary’s competition. So we’re talking about not consuming 5-7 bottles out of 55 or about 10%. A 10% investment to improve the quality of any product is not all that much guys. And besides, you’re getting in lots of practice – right?
4. You gotta have a plan. Any athlete who gets better over time does it in part because he or she has a game plan. And part of that planning is to make sure you peak when it’s time to compete. So for us that translates to having the maximum number and variety of beers on hand when competition season is at its peak – late April to early June. Most guys just compete with whatever they happen to have in their basement. I gotta tell you, that’s a pretty sure way to guarantee minimal results. No wonder you don’t have enough beer to compete, you drank it all! So start planning now. Every September I sit down with a calendar and I plan out my brews for the year right up till the end of April. I say that on this weekend I will brew this type of beer. Now I’ll be a bit flexible and move a brew date around a bit, but success comes from regular consistent practice. And we all want to be successful, right?, because we all like great beer. I make a chart of which beers are going to go into which competition. After doing this for a number of years, and keeping careful records, you will learn when to brew a particular style to hit its peak on the competition weekend, or the best trade off possible given that you can’t brew 10 beers on a single weekend. And most important, set those beers that you designate for competition aside and DON’T DRINK THEM. They are not yours – they now belong to the competition. If you runout of beer go down and buy some Alley Kat Full Moon Pale Ale to get you through (Ed note: And rebuild your bottle collection!) And then get out the pots and start brewing, because obviously you are not practicing enough ☺.

Homebrew competition unlike many other competitions, provide a lot of feedback on your beer. It’s a valuable learning experience that’s not to be missed. So set aside a six+ pack for each batch you brew with no excuses of not having any beer to enter into competition!

What I am starting to learn More on entering your brews in competition

The July-August 2003 issue of Brew Your Own magazine had two excellent articles on entering your homebrew in a competition. The second article “The Heavy Medal Man – ten more ways to earn points and win awards” by Ed Meason, is the one that best fits the Master’s words of wisdom and several members of EHG.

1. Enter! – If you don’t enter, how will you know? You may be surprised even with entering the “screw-ups” as the EHG editor will found out with his “Porterhouse Rack of Lambic”
2. Take notes – Roxy’s form for keeping good beer records discussed in the November issue of The Worthouse News is a good foundation. Get a copy of the template file!
3. Chose the best style – and enter in multiple categories for those borderline brews.
4. Set aside entries – As the master said, it only takes a 6+ pack for each batch you brew.
5. Brew early and often – You will not only have beer to enter but improve your brewing with practice.
6. All-grain or not – As the EHG president is oft to quote “We are not just a bunch of all-grain beer snobs, we are simply a bunch of beer snobs, making the best brews possible by whatever means we choose.”
7. Do your homework – Read as much as you can, get to the club meetings and share your experiences.
8. Become a judge – and be a serious judge to yourself.
9. Constant temps – to provide stability for the yeast and consistency in your brews.
10. Have fun! That’s what it’s all about!

Don’t judge a yeast by it’s package Belgian Yeast Experiment

For most of my brewing career I had little interest in Belgian ales. I didn’t particularly like the commercial versions that were available and most homebrew just seemed to be overstated big beer. Because I wasn’t brewing any I got stuck with judging the class year after year. Over the past few years I noticed that a larger and larger portion of the brews were just getting better and better. Finally I decided that these beers were worth a go. Last year I started by brewing Saison. Saison, being the closest to British Pale Ales I figured I couldn’t go to wrong. My efforts were rewarded with a brew that won several medals including 3rd place in the AHA nationals.

After that positive experience, I have decided to move on to doubles and Belgian strong dark ales. And there I faced a problem. Unlike Saison where there is only one Wyeast yeast to choose from, there is a whole range of Belgian Ale strains to try. Where to begin?

Knowing very little about any of the strains I decided to experiment with three of what seemed like the most commonly used strains. I set up a test, that while not statistically valid would provide some insight into each strain with as fair a method as possible.

I obtained a Wyeast XL smack pack for each of three strains of Belgian Ale. I had Paddock Wood order them directly from Wyeast with the stipulation that all packs had to be dated within two days of each other. I decided that I would make a 3 US gallon base batch and split it between three 1 Imp. gallon fermenters. I poured the wort into each fermenter 1/3 gallon at a time to make sure there was no difference in the runnings. To avoid any possible contamination or inconsistencies in the way the yeast was handled I did not culture them – I pitched directly from each pack. I decided that I would ferment each one until all had finished their primary, even if some were done ahead of the others (5 days primary). Therefore, they were all racked and bottled on the same days. I noted how long each took to inflate the smack pack, how the ferment went, what they tasted like going into the secondary, into the bottle (2 weeks in secondary) and of course the final product. I had Neil Herbst join me for an evaluation after they had been in the bottle for 37 days. The results are as follows:

All beers were a Belgian Strong Dark Ale that started at 1.085 O.G. All ferments were started at 70F and then were maintained at 65F.

1214 Belgian Ale - Abbey-style top-fermenting yeast, suitable for high-gravity beers. Estery. Flocculation medium; apparent attenuation 72-76%. (58-68° F) Rumoured to be Chimay.

Pack Inflated: 3-4 days.
Ferment: slowest start, least vigorous
Final Gravity: 1.023 = 8.0% ABV

At bottling:

• spicy sweet phenol prominent
• banana and alcohol
• rich, malty chocolate
• alcohol warming
• almost smoky
• touch hazy

At 37 days:

• big banana nose with powerful candi sugar
• sweet and rich
• driest finish of the three

Overall: the best Belgian Abby of the group, does not taste like Chimay, much more flavourful. (A starter from this yeast was used for the executive strong spiced Belgian.)

1388 Belgian Strong Ale - Robust flavour yeast with moderate to high alcohol tolerance. Fruity nose and palate, dry, tart finish. Flocculation low with apparent attenuation 73-77%. (65-75 F)

Pack Inflated: within 1 day
Ferment: quickest start (< 8hrs), vigorous
Final Gravity: 1.030 = 7.1%

At bottling:

• banana phenols present but low, bordering on edge of perception
• soft, malty and rich with a light currant character
• almost too clean for a Belgian Trappist – good for Belgian Pale Ale and deGarde

At 37 days:

• lively pour that quickly dissipates
• under attenuated, almost worty
• low banana phenols
• closest to Chimay Red

There may have been something wrong with this pack because did not attenuate well. It should not have been dry and tart under any circumstances

1762 Belgian Abbey Yeast II - High gravity yeast with distinct warming character from ethanol production. Slightly fruity with dry finish. Flocculation medium; apparent attenuation 73-77%. (65-75 F) Rumoured to be Rochefort.

Pack Inflated: about 1.5 days
Ferment: quick start (<8 hrs), vigorous, needed blowoff tube, huge head
Final Gravity: 1.023 = 8.0%

At bottling: improved a lot between secondary andbottling

• more cloves than 1388 but less than 1214
• richer than 1214
• distinct ethanol taste, not just alcohol warming
• driest finish despite overall rich character
• at secondary was tart, thin with strong ethanol character – least character

At 37 days:

• big ethanol nose, distinct ethanol flavour that goes beyond alcohol warming
• creamiest head on pouring
• soft malt sweetness
• cleanest tasting, not really a Belgian Ale
• phenols just at border of perception – bananas or smoke?
• would make a wonderful Scotch Ale if coupled with a bit of smoke malt

The results of this experiment were quite revealing. The first thing I learned was that Wyeast’s descriptions was not exactly accurate. The 1388 especially seemed to be off the mark. It was described as having a robust flavour, and being dry and tart. I found it to have the most neutral flavour; it ended decidedly sweet and rich, and seemed almost too mellow for an Abbey. Maybe that’s why it’s called “Strong Ale” and not “Abbey.” But it was not the strongest of the three. However, given that I only pitched from one pack, thereby invalidating statistical comparison, this could have been due to pack-to-pack variation.

However, Wyeast was pretty much on the mark with 1762s ethanol character. Wyeast’s description of 1214 was so sparse that I really had no idea what to expect. Paddock Wood, not Wyeast, provided the suggested origins of these two strains.

In terms of choosing a classic Belgian Strong Dark Ale yeast there was no doubt that the 1214 was the best pick. This yeast had a huge banana clove character that defines all Belgian Ales styles. It had a great malt presence but its finish was dry enough not to be cloying. The 1762 yeast was the surprise of the works. It was the best brew on the table of the three homebrews plus Chimay Red. Too clean for a classic Belgian Ale, its soft maltiness, coupled with a subtle but clean phenol character would lend itself well to a large malty beer, particularly a Scotch Ale when coupled with a bit of peated malt which would take its phenol character from being a fault to an asset.

At 37 days all these beers were a bit flat. The 1762 showed the most promise in terms of carbonation and creaminess. Given another few months and the 1762 would probably pour a deep, rich and dense head with enough carbonation to satisfy the palate. Both the 1214 and the 1388 were pretty flat at 37 days and seemed unlikely to improve without help. These beers needed the addition of clean lager yeast at bottling to bring out the carbonation character. Even 1762 could have benefited from the addition of bottling yeast.

The final thing I learned was that this was a fantastic way to learn about the qualities of various yeast strains. It is only through relatively controlled experiments like this, that allow us to taste beers brewed under identical conditions except for one variable can we truly understand the influence of that character. Yeast is the easiest variable to control because we can use a smack pack and it is the last stage of the process. I would like to see other experiments being done on groups of strains. Ideas that easily come to mind: 1) London Ale 1028, American Ale 1056, Scottish Ale 1728; 2) German Ale 1007, Kolsch 2565, California Lager 2112; 3) Bohemian Lager 2124, Czech Pils 2278 and Steropramen.

I suggest that the club pay for the yeast of anyone who is willing to take on such a brewing experiment as I have done. Neil and I both suspect that 1388 did not perform as predicted and so a 2x2 experiment where two packs of each yeast strain are used for 2 separate ferments would vastly improve the accuracy of comparisons between the yeast strains.

Helping Out Our Unicellular Friends

Do you sometimes produce beer that has rough flavours such as vegetal, sour, sulphury, or solvent-like? Is your beer too fruity? Perhaps the gravity of your beer is still too high when bottling. Does it still taste a bit like wort? Is your beer chronically under-carbonated? Is it over-carbonating? Perhaps your beer tastes cardboard-like or papery. Do you have long periods of time between pitching yeast and the visible signs of fermentation? All of these problems are 100% preventable if you take the time to treat your yeast properly. With proper yeast management, your beer will be stunning to say the least.

Brewing is such a unique hobby in that we have to wait for such a long time to determine if we did a good job or not. Cooks can taste their creations immediately. When an artist’s work is done, he or she needs only to look up at the masterpiece to evaluate it. We spend a day making the wort, and then have to wait weeks before we can taste the final product. The wort may smell and taste great going into the fermenter, but that doesn’t guarantee success once fermentation is over. Sometimes the beer is as we expected, sometimes it is surprisingly better than expected, but far too often there is disappointment. As it turns out, it is simply not worth our time to make an entire batch of sub standard beer. For this reason, too many home brewers give up, believing that they lack the ability to make great beer. Truthfully, you CAN make great beer. If you need proof ask any experienced home brewer that too has made crappy beer in their past. As a brewer, you have far more control over fermentation then you may think. Making good wort is your job. How good the beer is depends on the type, amount, and health of the unicellular micro-organisms that you put into the wort. Therefore, good yeast management is the ultimate key to making great beer. This article will focus on the procedures that ensure a healthy addition of pure yeast culture to wort.

What causes the “off flavours”?

Vegetal flavours such as cooked corn is caused by the presence of the chemical compound dimethyl sulphide (DMS). DMS can accumulate in beer if the wort isn’t boiled enough, if boiled with the lid on the brew kettle, or if the wort was cooled too slowly. If this volatile chemical is properly blown off during the boil, then the only way to acquire it in beer during fermentation is by unwanted micro-organisms in the wort. Presence of these microscopic creatures is usually facilitated by a long “lag time”. The lag time is the period from when the yeast is pitched to when the wort begins visible signs of fermentation. During this time, the yeast cells are busy consuming oxygen in order to make molecules of glycogen. When enough glycogen has been reserved, the yeast cells will use it to build new cell membranes during cell division. The cell division phase is noticeable in the fermenter. A thick layer of protein and yeast cover the top (called kreusen) and carbon dioxide is released constantly. When the yeast are great in number, they prevent these unwanted organisms from surviving in the wort by competing with them for nutrients. The longer the lag time, the more opportunity there is for other competing micro-organisms to take hold and add their off flavours to your beer permanently. The best way to reduce lag time is to add adequate amounts of healthy active yeast to a well oxygenated wort.

Sour flavours are typically caused by bacteria. Acetic sourness (like vinegar) and lactic sourness (like yoghurt) are both typically caused by bacterial contamination. To prevent these flavours, there are two things for the brewer to focus on. First of all, replace all plastic equipment and sanitize everything that comes into contact with the wort using a strong sanitizer such as iodophor. Next, make sure that you add an adequate amount of healthy yeast starter.

If you notice a strong fruitiness in your beer, but you haven’t added any fruit, it’s due to a family of chemical compounds called esters. Some strains of yeast such as “Weihenstephan Wheat” are well known for producing these compounds and their ester production is desired, but most beer styles, especially lagers, call for restrained fruitiness. In general, yeast cells produce esters in abundance when there is too little oxygen in the wort or if the temperature of fermentation is too high. Be sure to aerate the wort by agitating it prior to or just after pitching the yeast and allow fermentation to occur at the recommended temperature for the strain you have chosen.

Solvent-like flavours are caused by a family of chemicals called fusel alcohols. These are alcohol molecules with a greater number of carbon atoms than two. Yeast produce these molecules during cell division, therefore all beer contains fusel alcohols. However, if an inadequate amount of yeast is added to the wort, then more cell division must take place after the lag phase, thus increasing the amount of these higher alcohols in the finished product. Again, this problem is solved by adding plenty of healthy active yeast to the wort.

What causes the fermentation to stop prematurely?

“Stuck fermentation” and slow fermentation are caused by a variety of things. It is no surprise that the most common cause is the addition of an inadequate amount, inactive, and/or unhealthy yeast to the wort. Another possible cause is failing to oxygenate the wort enough. Perhaps it is the choice of yeast strain. Some strains of yeast are highly flocculent (that means that they drop out of suspension easily and sit at the bottom of the fermenter) and therefore the wort doesn’t attenuate completely. Lagers need to ferment and condition at colder temperatures than ales, therefore yeast flocculation occurs more readily in these beers. (Don’t talk about this too loudly with your friends though. People will draw their own conclusions when you say that you’ve been experiencing premature flocculation lately.) When brewing high gravity beers such as dopplebock and barleywine, it is common for the yeast to quit early. Therefore, when brewing lagers or bigger beers, always add more yeast to the fermenter than normal.

The problem with under-attenuation is that the beer tastes worty – kind of sweet – and if the yeast kick starts again in the bottle, you could end up with a real explosive situation. Nothing could be more depressing than spending the day cleaning the sticky remains of dried beer off the cellar floor, walls, and ceiling. It’s also possible that the exact opposite situation could happen. If the yeast has given up, you may not be able to get the yeast active again to carbonate the beer.

The best thing about stuck fermentation is that it is a really easy problem to solve. Simply add some fresh active yeast to the fermenter and stir gently. In no time, the wort will continue bubbling away as if nothing was ever awry. Don’t agitate the beer after adding the wort unless of course you want your beer to taste old and stale by the time it has carbonated. At this point of fermentation, adding oxygen to wort will have a negative effect. Oxidized compounds will make your beer dull and papery.

How do I avoid all of the problems mentioned?

The beautiful thing about this is that so many problems in brewing can be solved by doing the following four things:

1. Prevent wild yeast and bacteria from getting into the wort. Sanitize everything that comes into contact with the wort…twice to be sure. Limit your use of plastic equipment to your siphon tube only and replace it after ten brews. Do all fermentation in well-sanitized glass or stainless steel. Be especially careful about sanitation during the initial stages of yeast management i.e. when you prepare your yeast starter and when you pitch the yeast into the wort.
2. Add an adequate amount of healthy yeast. Make a yeast starter cultured from a pure strain of liquid yeast. Some brewers have great success with packets of dry yeast, however, it is just no substitute for pure strain liquid yeast. Plan ahead, because it takes about 5 days to make a good starter, possibly longer to culture enough yeast slurry for a big beer like a barleywine.
   • Activate the smack pack by bursting the inner bag of nutrients. After the package swells to the size of a pop can it is time to prepare a starter culture. This swelling may take from 1 to 3 days. If it takes any longer, do not use the yeast. It is probably too old or has been stored improperly. (Always store liquid yeast in the refrigerator and avoid using yeast that is more than 4 months older than the date stamped on the package.)
   • Make some basic wort by adding 1/4 cup of good quality dry malt extract (DME) to 2 cups of water. This should make wort with a specific gravity of about 1.020. Low gravity wort is much easier for the yeast cells to ferment, so start there and step up the starter with higher gravity wort next time if you wish.
   • Boil the wort for about 10 – 15 minutes, cool in an ice bath, then add to a sanitized glass fermenter. I use one gallon jugs, but any glass container that can be sealed with an airlock is perfect for the job. Erlenmeyer flasks are ideal, because you can boil the wort in the flask, cool it, and add the yeast. The heat will sanitize the inside of the flask just fine.
   • Carefully sanitize the outside of the yeast package before you open it. As well, sanitize the scissors used to open the package. You can soak everything in sanitizer, or you can use rubbing alcohol.
   • When adding the yeast to the fermenter, be quick about it. Minimize the exposure of the solution to the air. Dust in the air carries wild spores and bacteria that will happily grow in the starter.
   • Seal the fermenter with a sanitized lid and give the yeast starter a good shake. Agitating the starter will introduce oxygen into solution. Oxygen is essential for the yeast to multiply in number. Once you have a good head of foam, put on the airlock and let the starter go to work.
   • Once the starter is active, add more wort. Adding wort to active yeast is the best way to have a yeast culture that bubbles away on its own. Otherwise your starter will only bubble when you swirl it. Just be careful to release the carbonation by swirling before adding wort and shaking. Like I said earlier, beer explosions are terrible things to clean up.
   • At the start of your brew day, add some wort to the starter so that by the time you are finished making the wort you will have active yeast to add to the fermenter.
   • It is best to add at least 2.0L of starter to ale with an original gravity around 1.050. For lagers, add at least 4.0L of starter. For big beers, always add more yeast slurry than for normal beers. The rule of thumb is that you can never add too much yeast as a home brewer, so err on the side of adding too much yeast rather than too little.
3. Oxygenate the wort at the time of pitching. Some brewers purchase aeration stones and bottles of oxygen and blast the wort for a couple of minutes with pure O2. This method is extremely effective, especially if the brewer is making larger than normal batch sizes. However, for the 5 gallon brewer, adding pure oxygen is an unnecessary expense. Most brewers can make gold medal beers by simply agitating the wort. I seal the top of my glass carboy with a sanitized rubber stopper, lay it on its side on a blanket, and then roll it back and forth, producing a giant head of foam. Using this method I’ve produced many excellent beers that have performed well at international competitions.
4. Finally, keep an eye on the temperature at which the wort ferments. There is a difference between the optimal temperature for yeast activity and the optimal temperature for yeast making great tasting beer. Many beginner brewers erroneously think that warmer is better. In general, ales taste best when fermented between 16°C and 20°C and lagers are best between 7°C and 13°C. The exceptions to the rule, not surprisingly, are the Belgian ales. Some Belgian ales must stay above 24°C in order to produce the esters that define these styles.

It seems unbelievable that by changing four small procedures in your brewing, that so many problems can be prevented. However, I can assure you that the first time I used a healthy starter of pure liquid yeast, it was the first time that I made beer that I really enjoyed. If you plan to put the effort into combining top quality ingredients for making a great wort, then it’s lunacy to not put the same effort into making a healthy yeast starter. I look forward to tasting more great successes at future EHG meetings from beginner brewers. There is no greater feeling than seeing the look on a beginner brewers face after you say, “Wow, that was really well made”. Good luck, and happy brewing.

Executive Brew Recipe Belgian Strong Spiced Speciality

by Roxy Hastings and Frank Kuzemski

Five US Gallons; OG=1.097

11 lbs Pilsner Malt
4 lbs Munich Malt
20 ozs crystal malt 75°L
8 ozs cararoma malt
8 ozs chocolate malt
Wyeast 1214 Belgian Ale yeast
45 gr Progress 6% AA 60 minutes

Mash 125°F for 20 minutes, 155°F for 60 minutes

Boil wort for 75 minutes

1 lb amber sugar candy for 30 minutes
1 tsp Irish moss (rehydrated) for 25 minutes
Zest of 3 large oranges for 10 minutes
6 gr coriander (fresh crushed) for 10 minutes

Primary 1 week at 70°F

Secondary 2 weeks at 70°F

View from the Top of the Tun

Wasn’t that a party!! If we ever needed proof that Edmonton Homebrewers Guild members know how to throw a great party then our December meeting should have done the trick. A great turnout with the room feeling comfortably full, a great spread of food, and of course who could forget the awesome executive brewed Belgian Strong Ale. The keg was pretty light when I loaded it into my car for the trip home and considering that the beer was pushing 10% it was pretty clear that people had a good time. Such a good time in fact that there was no incentive to taste any of the other Belgian beers that members had brought, so we will do them in conjunction with the Stouts and Porters in January.

I hope that we can carry on with putting on a good show because we are going to need it. The long anticipated conference that we have talked about for years is finally going to happen. No doubts…. It’s a go. And it’s happening in your hometown on the weekend of June 5th. Boyd has booked the hall, we have a keynote speaker lined up, two of the four teaching sessions have been set and we have spread the word to brew clubs across western Canada that we are hosting the event. There’s no backing down now… at least not without a total loss of face and that’s not going to happen. We’ve had a great response from other clubs, most notably Regina and so now it’s time to start bearing down and doing the nitty gritty planning. We are going to need all members to pitch in and help pull this one off. Conference co- chairs Neil Herbst and Kevin Zaychuk will be giving you regular updates and will be press-ganging you into helping on various organizational committees. It’s a honour for Edmonton to be the first western club of the new Confederation of Western Brew Clubs to host what we hope will be an annual conference that will rotate between western clubs. You’ll find start up information on the conference inside this newsletter.

It’s nice to get mail and a sure sign of success is when unsolicited mail asking for help, starts arriving in your mailbox. In addition to a flurry of emails from new members I’ve been getting email from brewers in B.C. and other parts of the country. Most of these people have found us through our web page, with many commenting on the fact that we’ve got the best web site in Canada. So everybody should take a moment and thank our web administrator, Jim Whittome for putting up the site. It’s attracted members to the club and helped establish our presence at the national level.

Jim’s work is just another example of a dedicated EHG member serving the homebrew community. The Edmonton Homebrewers Guild is without a doubt one of the most influential clubs in western Canada, which in effect puts us at the top of the six-pack in Canada. We may not be the biggest, or score the most points in competitions, but our members have always been the leaders when it comes to quality brewing and pushing the boundaries of what defines an excellent brew club in the Canadian homebrewing scene.

As this year draws to a close we should all take a moment to reflect on what a great club we are, and give thanks to the dedicated team of people that make us more than just a brew club- for we truly are a GUILD, a group of craftsmen striving for excellence in our chosen hobby and endeavour. I wish all members well and hope you all excel in this craft in the year ahead.

From the Bottom of the Mash

With the holidays coming fast upon us, the newsletter is out a little early so we all can relax and enjoy time with family and friends during the start of the new year. We are now getting into the swing of the competitive part of the brewing season. Even though I am just starting to enter my beers into competition, I have already learned much about brewing and taking my beers beyond tasting like rejects from a Budweiser plant.

Next week when many of us have time off is an opportune time to brew some beers for entries in the First Annual Brew House Brew Off! Instead of fighting the crowds on Boxing Day, open up a Brew House box and brew away. If you start on Boxing Day, there will be plenty of time to get the beer into the bottle before the Feb 13th entry deadline.

Several members have already started brewing their beers. And while the original intent of the competition was for Edmonton only, our colleagues in the other brew clubs want to participate in the competition. So, we definitely need to open the boxes and start pouring or Roxy will never let us hear the end of it if Regina out does us in our own local competition.

One box, two beers

One of the nice features of the Brew House kits is the ability to make two beers, maybe three, from one kit. For the upcoming competition, I already have four entries from two kits. I would have had more but I ran out of carboys.

As discussed in November issue of The Worthouse News, once the undiluted wort is mixed with the acid neutralizer, varying amounts of water can be added to take the wort to a desired gravity. And there is nothing in the directions that say the water added to the wort has to be plain water. Take the water, do some partial steeping or partial mashing and throw in some DME to change the flavour profile and bring the gravity back up to a stronger ale.

As many of us have learned, just changing yeast can dramatically change the flavour and style of a beer. Just pitch a Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abby yeast instead of the supplied Coopers dry yeast in an undiluted Brew House Pale Ale kit for a different taste experience.

The Brew House kits are a great way to introduce someone to the fun of homebrewing. So, don’t just break open the box by yourself, invite a friend, relative, co-worker or neighbour to join you. Or better yet, there is still plenty of holiday shopping time left to give a Brew House kit with an offer to help brewing entries for the Brew Off.

Remember, as Roxy is oft to say “We are not just a bunch of all-grain beer snobs, we are simply a bunch of beer snobs, making the best brews possible by whatever means we choose.” For me that includes the Brew House kits.

Have a safe and relaxing holiday season.

The 2004 ABC Update

The EHG 2004 Aurora Brewing Challenge on June 3-5, 2004 has been registered with both the BJCP and the AHA. The Edmonton Home Brewers Guild is proud to once again to be hosting this event as an MCAB qualifier. Our strong commitment to provide excellent feedback and results to our competitors in a short turn around year after year makes our event among the best. Without the enthusiasm from the volunteers in our club and those in the Western Canadian clubs this wouldn’t be possible.

The ABC will run from Thursday to Saturday, different from previous years. This is to attract out of town judges, stewards and other club members and their spouses to not only attend the competition but also the conference and dinner that will follow on the Saturday night.

I have received emails from brewing clubs in the U.S. that are interested in submitting entries and I must admit I have to work harder on recruiting more interest from the clubs in our Eastern provinces to submit entries into the ABC. The Western Canadian clubs; the Headhunters from Saskatoon, Marquis de Suds from Calgary, Lethbridge and ALES from Regina will again show strong numbers this year and we need to return the support for their competitions.

This year will be a memorable event for the Guild and its members. We are shooting for the stars and aim to shatter last year’s record of 238 entries. We are anticipating over 300 entries this year – a 26 % increase from last year! Am I nuts for expecting this? Yes! Is it possible? Well I wouldn’t be organizing the event if it wasn’t. To do my part there is an article in the December newsletter on building up an inventory of homebrews strictly for competitions. See “The Scoop on Competitive Brewing by the Master Competitor”. I have adopted that philosophy in my brewing by bottling six to twelve bottles per five-gallon batch and storing them in a room in my basement never to be seen again until competition time. By doing this, my inventory has grown leaps and bounds. I ask my fellow EHG members to do the same and enter many and in multiple categories if so desired.

Cheers

Upcoming Competitions

Edmonton Homebrewers Guild First Annual Brew House Brew-Off

February 21-22, 2004. Entries due Feb 13, 2004.

The Edmonton Homebrewer’s Guild in co-operation with Southside Brew Crew and Harvest Brewing Co. are having the first annual contest for the Best Brew House Brewer!

The competition brochure and entry form can be printed and downloaded from the EHG website, http://www.ehg.ca. A copy of the brochure is also included with this month’s newsletter email. Encourage any homebrewing friends and neighbours to enter the competition.

Lethbridge – competition is set for 6 March 2004. No details yet, probably a two bottle entry this year.

Regina – the AHA has awarded the Regina Ales the first round site for Canada in their national competition. Date has yet to be set but probably in mid-April.

Edmonton – Aurora Brewing Competition, 3-5 June 2004. In addition, it will also be the:

First Annual Western Confederation of Brew Clubs Conference.

Plans are underway for the now evolving Western Confederation of Brew Clubs first annual conference in conjunction with the ABC on Saturday, June 5, 2004

Tentative schedule at this time:

• Organizational meeting/luncheon of the Western Confederation pf Brew Clubs
• Conference presentations Saturday afternoon
  • BCJP Exam preparation
  • Sanitation techniques (tentative)
  • Quality brewing with Brew House kits (tentative)
• Saturday evening dinner BBQ with keynote speaker and ABC awards ceremony

It’s going to be one hell of a party. Details will follow in upcoming newsletters. Membership participation is going to be required to help pull off this dream.

Calgary – date not set yet but these people are committed. They are almost certainly going to go to a two-bottle entry format. The popular Lawn Mower beer event is promised to make a comeback.

It’s BS - Towards a “Better Stout”

I brewed such a horrible oatmeal stout for the Aurora Brewing Competition in Edmonton last June that I have been researching stout brewing ever since. How bad was my batch? Well, one judge scored it at a 12. The next judge went all out and awarded a grand total of 14. The third judge, a novice, just plain quit judging right then and there, really!

So what has my research yielded to date? Well, I have read many articles on stout, but a good general outline by Thomas J Miller was found in Brew Your Own in the Jan/Feb 2003 issue.

A general outline would be, in no particular order:

1. First goal is to design a well-balanced recipe or formula. The typical stout malts are roasted barley, chocolate malt and black patent malt. Overuse of these darker grains can cause an astringent, acidic or burnt flavour. The darker grains should be less than 20% of the total grain bill.
2. The defining character of stout generally comes through the use of “roasted barely”. To add more complexity, you can use other dark grains. Caramel or crystal malt add some sweetness. Black malt gives a “bite” to the stout. Chocolate malt adds color with less aggressive flavour. Caramalt or dextrin malt add sweetness and body because they are less fermentable than other malts.
3. When crushing the malt for the stout, crush the pale malts first. Then adjust the mill to a bit wider to crush the dark malts. The dark grains are drier and tend to shatter into smaller pieces if crushed together with the pale malts. Also, after crushing, ensure your grains are well mixed before wetting.
4. Hops add a more floral or spicy type of bitterness to the stout. Any type of hops may be used but the higher alpha varieties seem to be detectable through the roasted grains more so than the lower alpha varieties, even when the same amount of IBUs are added to the wort. Common stout hops are Chinook, Centennial and Galena, all rated around 9-15 % alpha acids. Conversely, another professional brewer prefers Nugget, Northern Brewer, Challenger and Amarillo, avoiding the high alpha acid hops because they sometimes leave a cloying raisin taste. Since even the “experts” cannot agree, take your choice and use what pleases your palette.
5. The most popular yeast for stouts seem to be the Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale or the White Labs WLP004 Irish Ale. But any English ale yeast is acceptable as long as the yeast does not produce excessive amounts of diacetyl.
6. A challenge is to get a more full-bodied mouthfeel in a stout. The best way is to build the mouthfeel in the mashing process by mashing at a higher temperature (155-160°F). Another option is to use caramalt or dextrin malts at 8-10% of the grist.
7. Stouts tent to blow off a lot of foam during fermentation. Pitching at a lower temperature and then allowing the wort to warm to your preferred temperature can reduce excessive foam.

Keep in mind that there are several types of stouts to experiment with including: dry stouts, sweet stouts, oatmeal stouts and high gravity imperial stouts along with other variations.

Probably the most popular stout for beginners would be the oatmeal stout. Adding oatmeal to a stout lends a nice velvety mouthfeel, mainly from the oils and proteins of the oatmeal. This helps round out the aggressive roastiness and acidity of the dark grain.

Now you can start planning a stout and beat my best score combination of “12-14-QUIT”.

December Strong Belgian tasting and mini- competition during the January monthly meeting!

A reminder that due to the overwhelming fun at the EHG Holiday Party, the formal strong Belgian ale tasting and mini-competition was delayed to the January meeting. The tasting will take place along with the regularly scheduled Porters and Stouts tasting and mini-competition. So, bring any of your strong Belgian ales with you along with your porters and stouts.

The Ales of Old

The Beerstein

In medieval England, huge festivals were held in celebration of various important events. At that time, these festivals were called ‘ales’. Of course, the term has evolved over the years to now define a type of beer. Many of these medieval parties still exist today, and some regrettably do not. Here is a list of some of the ales of old:

Bachelor Ale: This was the precursor to the bachelor parties of today. The primary purpose of the bachelor ale was to raise money for the new couple. Donations were given for each tankard of ale consumed. If a few people happened to have a great time in the process, it was a bonus.

Bride Ale: The obvious way to get double your money and gifts when you got married was to have one party for the boys, and one for the girls. The bride ale was analogous to the modern bachelorette party. As with the bachelor ale, each tankard of ale was exchanged for a gift or money. The term bride ale was shortened eventually to the term used today, ‘bridal’.

Weddyn Ale: On the special day, the mother of the bride brewed ale that was to be served at the weddyn ale, or what we now refer to as the reception party. As with most ales, the purpose was to exchange beer for money and gifts. A guest would make sure to bring enough money or gifts to the wedding to afford the amount they wanted to drink.

Groaning Ale: At childbirth, a celebration was held for the new addition to the family. I doubt that the new mother was too enthused about this festivity, or its name.

Give Ale: If a first son were born, the parents would celebrate the arrival of the legacy by having a huge party with free beer for all.

Cuckoo Ale or Lamb Ale: A celebration of springtime. Cuckoo refers to the singing of the birds, and lamb refers to lambing season, when the baby lambs are born. You would think that in our frigid country we too would place more emphasis on celebrating the end of a cold winter.

Harvest Ale: A celebration of Autumn, when the harvest was done. Farmers could now afford to celebrate, and plenty of grain was available for brewing.

Tithe Ale: Churches held festivals serving beer to bring the people of the community in and persuade them to pay their tithes.

It’s interesting how the traditions have changed. Can you imagine a couple trying to make a profit by selling beer at their wedding today? Perhaps, just for the sake of tradition, some of you may decide to hold a harvest ale this autumn.

Beers to try over the holidays

Alley Kat has released two venerable favourites just in time for the holidays. Chat O Oatmeal Stout is available in bottles at Chateau Louis. Coming in at 5.5% it is considerably stronger than Guinness at a whimpy 4.2%. Chat O is for the serious stout lover. It is a true oatmeal stout being on the dry side of spectrum with just enough oatmeal for a bit of slickness. Plenty of roast coffee character coupled with a firm body makes this a memorable brew.

Alley Kat’s second release is the much-anticipated 2003 edition of Olde Deuteronomy Barley Wine. It is available at several liquor stores, including Chateau Louis, and also at Alley Kat. At 10.0% this beer is not for the faint of heart. It makes a statement with a huge malt palette coupled with an assertive hoppiness, an excellent winter warmer. Roxy suggests buying at least a few if not more, 24-bottle cases to put down for several years. At around $2.00 -$2.25 a bottle, this is a bargain barley wine. And it is only going to get better as it ages. Quantities are limited and those “in the know”, know that this beer is a keeper.

While at Chateu Louis, Roxy also checked out some Belgian Ales. One of the nicer finds was Artevelde Grande Cru, a nice double. It has a distinct chocolate malt palette and just enough cloviness to be interesting. Goes down nice and easy with a soft yet dry finish. Unlike Chimay Red, which tends to be quite fizzy being conditioned with a lager yeast, the Artevelde comes across like a fine ale with enough carbonation to throw a distinct but not huge head. Less gassy than Chimay, she found it easier drinking. The solid malt character also separates this beer from Chimay, which tends to lean towards a more distinct yeast character. At 7.0% Artevelde is big but not huge, pleasantly warming but not a pounder. It’s a soft kiss at midnight. Well worth seeking out.

View from the Top of the Tun

So here it is, late on a Sunday night, I’ve got The Worthouse News “View” to write and ARRGH!!! I’m out of drinkable homebrew! What?? Impossible you say. How could one of Canada’s most competitive homebrewers be out of beer at this time of year, on the cusp of our competitive brewing season? Does this mean no beers into this year’s competitions from Roxy? Is it a wide-open field for Brewer of the Year in 2004?

Hardly. Read that first sentence closely my friends for I did not say I am out of beer or that I am out of homebrew. Sadly, I am merely following the marching orders that I spewed out a few months ago. For while there is a basement full of homebrew, I have currently run out of homebrew that I can drink. What?? Did Roxy have a bad run in with a cracked racking cane? Well, I hope not. For you see, all the homebrew in my basement, some 100 or so bottles, is committed to competition – it is no longer mine to consume. All those beautiful bottles of brew now belong to competition organizers in Regina, Lethbridge, Calgary and of course, you lucky devils – Edmonton, to freely dispense to their judges in fair and open competition.

My current sad state of affairs has arisen from a wee bit of temporal bad planning – a streak of brewing lagers along with big and nasty ales. All of my potentially drinkable beer is just that – potentially – because it’s currently all still in carboys!

You will now remember, I am sure, that a few months ago I suggested that for each batch you brew you set aside seven bottles for competition AND that to your mind you make those seven bottles no longer yours. Seven bottles will ensure that you have enough entries to get through the first rounds of the AHA (2 bottles), being hosted in Regina, and the final rounds if you should be so good as to get through (3 bottles). Plus it will give you enough to enter into Edmonton’s MCAB qualifier (2 bottles). If you should not be so lucky as to go on to the AHA finals, you will still have enough beer left over to enter into either of Lethbridge or Calgary, regional competitions well worthy of entry regardless. Plus, if you should be using those bottles to compete in the latter two cities you will actually have one bottle remaining, as those competitions require only two bottles.

That remaining bottle is important. So important in fact that if you think you’ve brewed a real zinger – hang on to eight bottles rather than seven. That remaining bottle will be your consolation prize for giving competitive home brewing a go, for trying to better yourself as a brewer, and for having the pride to represent your club on the national stage.

After some 15 years in this sport I know homebrewers all to well. So I know, that in all likelihood, that bottle will be the last bottle of brew that you have from that particular batch. The rest will have been well consumed many weeks to months ago. As your consolation prize, take the time to savour the flavour of that wonderful bottle of brew. Think about where it took you. This is best done while pouring over your competition score sheets, trying to figure out how to do better next year. You’ll think about how that beautiful beer showcased your potential talents at no less than three first class homebrew competitions. But most importantly you’ll remember how much fun you had doing it. Then, at the end of the competition season in mid-June you can take a few moments to congratulate yourself for a job well done, you’ll have earned it!

Have a great competition season. Best of luck to all Edmonton Homebrewers Guild members and indeed, to all homebrewers across western Canada.

P.S. Thank God for Alley Kat. Thanks to Neil and his staff, I may be out of drinkable homebrew but I’m never out of excellent beer!

From the Bottom of the Mash

Well, it’s been one of the coldest weeks of the winter season. But I’m pretty warm right now with a Scotch Ale made from a modified Brew House kit. In this really cold weather when we can’t brew outside and many of us don’t have the luxury of an electric brewery, the Brew House kit is a good way to ferment some drinkable homebrew when all our all-grain brewed beer is committed to competitions.

And speaking of competitions, the deadline is coming up for our first annual Brew House Brew- off. So get your entries ready and bring them to the February meeting. Thanks to the efforts of Greg Wondga, the competition is now BJCP sanctioned. I understand the competition has already grown beyond the Edmonton city limits with entries coming from Saskatchewan where it was the coldest on Earth yesterday, January 28 at –52C. I’m sure the kits have been handy for them.

As Roxy has mentioned in her View from the Top of the Tun and you will see in Greg Wondga’s Beerstein column this month, you only need to set aside 7 to 12 bottles to meet all of the major competitions for the season. To keep track of my beers for competition, I have started to put the completed entry forms on the bottles as soon as they have dried after bottling. The forms also serve as warning signs for me and others to “not touch the bottles!”

Both ALES and Lethbridge have posted their entry forms with the EHG and Calgary entry forms coming to a website near you very shortly. If you don’t have the entry forms for this years competition, use last years until the new ones come out, or duplicate several EHG entry forms as they follow a fairly standard format. The important thing is to not dip into your competition brew when there is no drinkable homebrew. Get a Brew House kit or visit Alley Kat for your drinkable brews.

At the February meeting and in this newsletter, we are announcing the second annual BURRP! contest with more Really Ridiculous Parameters. There are two Outrageous awards this year and I’m aiming to get them both this year!

The EHG 2004 Aurora Brewing Challenge

The EHG 2004 Aurora Brewing Challenge on June 3-5, 2004 has been registered with both the BJCP and the AHA. The Edmonton Home Brewers Guild is proud to once again to be hosting this event as an MCAB qualifier.

Basic Competition Information

ABC/MCAB7 Canadian Qualifier 3-5 June 2004

Entries Due:
Friday 28 May 2004 to

Alley Kat Brewing Co
c/o Neil Herbst
9929-60 Ave
Edmonton, AlbertaT6E 0C7

Styles:
All 20 MCAB styles plus additional non-MCAB categories.

Entries:
Two, 300-500 ml bottles - any shape, type or color but must be unmarked and with plain or blacked out caps. Groelsch swing top bottles are accepted.

First three entries are $6.00 per entry with the fourth and additional entries at $4.00 CAD per entry.

We encourage brewers to enter as many beer styles/subcategories as they wish. You may enter more than one entry per subcategory. Please identify multiple subcategory entries on the entry form with a unique name or number.

All entries must identify a style and subcategory. Acceptable subcategories are listed under the style.

Special awards for Best of Show (top 3 brews), Brewer of the Year (most medal points in competition), and Best Club (most medal points).

Medals will be awarded in each beer style and in the mead category. Each split category will have it's own set of medals. Beers entered into the split category will be judged in a second round to determine the MCAB qualifiers. Only the top beer of the style advances to MCAB finals.

Judges qualified under the Beer Judge Certification Program will perform judging. Everyone who enters will have an evaluation form returned within 30 days of the end of the competition. Results will be posted on the EHG website within 48 hours.

Competition entry forms for ABC/MCAB7 are being updated for 2004 and should be on our web page http://www.ehg.ca by early February.

ALES Homebrew Open And AHA Qualifying Competition

The 11TH ALES Annual Homebrew Open Competition will again be hosted by the Regina A.L.E.S. Club at the Bushwakker Brew Pub. It will be bigger and better than ever. ALES is proud to announce that for the first time its competition will also act as a qualifying site for the American Homebrews Association National Homebrew Competition which expects to draw over 3800 entries.

The ALES Club, along with our major sponsors, Bushwakker Brew Pub, Paddock Wood Brewing Supplies, The American Homebrewers Association, Harvest Brewing and Wyeast, will be offering major prizes totalling over $1200.00 in value.

Introducing for the first time to the ALES Competition is the New Entrant category. Come and learn with us. Also for those way out brewers, ALES is showcasing our own new Extreme Category, #99, EXTREME BEER. This new category is designed to test and exceed the limits of the style guidelines, the brewer’s skills and the pallet. For the Extreme Category #99 we have only two specifications, the SG must be 1.070+, and you must tell us why it's Extreme.

Our competition mirrors the ALES Club’s mission: we are about learning and training. We encourage entrants to enter their beer into more than one category and let some of the best judges in the country tell them about their beer, with constructive comments to help the brewer improve.

Cost to enter is $6 each for the first 6 entries; each subsequent entry is $1. Example; 6 entries for $36, or 10 entries $40 or best yet $15 entries for $45. This works out to only $3 per entry. Our entry form, with the official rules, will be available online at http://www.alesclub.com

Competition deadline is April 30, 2004. All entries can be sent to:

The Bushwakker Brewpub
2206 Dewdney Ave.
Regina, SK S4R 1H3

For more information contact Competition Co-Chair Russ Temple at rtemple@accesscomm.ca

Second Annual Brewing Under Really Ridiculous Parameters! (BURRP!)

It time for the second annual BURRP! - Brewing Under Really Ridiculous Parameters! - an in-house competition to see who can brew the best beer within certain limitations. Since beer historically has been served to workers as a source of sustenance, this year’s BURRP! is themed “The Breakfast of Homebrewing Champions”

To start there will be the same limitation of starting with 10 lbs/4.5 kg of Westcan 2-row pale malt as your base malt. As with last year's BURRP!, you can roast, toast, smoke and stew to make any specialty malts for your recipe. To have Really Ridiculous Parameters, along with the malt, you need to add at least 1 lb/0.45 kg of cold breakfast cereal (no Quaker Oats) for a beer that will truly be the “Breakfast drink for homebrewing champions!”

Your mission, should you decide to accept this ridiculous challenge, is to take that 10 pounds of base malt, and we mean base and try to make your own Munich, your own crystal, your own black or brown or smoked malt. Then throw in a pound of cold breakfast cereal for something really delicious and nutritious. How about a Cocoa Puffs stout? Or, a Honey Nut Cheerios brown? Or, what may be a real challenge, Fruit Loops Lambic. And since St Patrick’s Day is coming up, there is Lucky Charms Irish Ale. For those less daring, you can make a Spoon-size Shredded Weizen.

EXTRACT BREWERS – As with last year, you’re in the game also, but the rules are a wee bit different for you. Instead of 10 lbs of malt you will start with 5 lbs of DME and 5 lbs of malt but you still need to include at least 1 pound of cold breakfast cereal.

THE BREW HOUSE KIT BREWERS - You can be in the game too! But rules area to work with 2.5 lbs of the malt and at least 1 pound of cold breakfast cereal for the 1-2 gallon water addition of either the American Premium Lager or Mexican Cerveza kits. Both kits have primarily Canadian 2-row malt for the base. No other kits are accepted.

Rules of the game:

1. Sign up at the February and March meetings. You can enter as many brews as you want. Teamwork is encouraged.
2. Go down to Harvest Brewing to get your malts – even if you have the malts at home. To ensure that we all start at as close to the same point as possible we have arranged for Harvest Brewing to supply the 2-row Westcan pale malt. From our list of names, Brian will package the malt in 10lb and 5 lb bags. It will cost you a buck a pound. Extract brewers, you can get your DME from where ever – as long as you only use pale DME. BH kit brewers will have to settle for a minimum purchase of 5 lbs of malt. Please be honest and respect these basic rules – get your entire 2-row pale malt from Harvest Brewing. Use only a maximum of 10 lbs (you can use less, but then why not just make more beer?).
3. Go to the local grocery store and get a pound or more of cold breakfast cereal. Any cold cereal can be used as long as it does not require hot water to be edible. So any of the hot grain cereals such as oatmeal, malt-o-meal and grits are not allowed. Any of the cold cereals are acceptable, including flaked cereals such as Wheaties and Corn Flakes; the shaped cereals like Cheerios, Chex and Captain Crunch; the puffed cereals such as Rice Crispies and Cocoa Puffs; and the mixed granola-type cereals such as Muselix and GoLean. If you are not sure, check with Roxy as she will be the final arbitrator.
4. Make up your own grain bill, create your own malts and brew to your hearts content. Go for any style you want. Hops, yeasts and whatever box cereal is up to you. You can add other stuff as long as it is not another fermentable homebrew grain product. Since fruit is often added to cold cereal, it can be used in your recipe such as extra blueberries in a Booberries milk stout.
5. Keep notes on what you did – particularly in how you created the malts. Write up a recipe to bring with your beers and for possible publishing in an upcoming issue of the newsletter.
6. Name your beer, which should include the name of the cereal such as "Muselix Dunkel"
7. Bring at least 4 bottles of the results to the May meeting – more is better, this should be a real hoot. We don’t care how you package your brew – even kegs are fine, heh, heh! We will hold a mini competition judged by our BJCP judges. Classes will be light ale, dark ale, light lager, dark lager and “I don’t know what it is but I can drink it! – shortened to “just brew”” Except for “just brew,” ID the concoction to as close to a style as you can get it. Blondes and ambers go into pales, browns and blacks into dark.
8. Awards will be given for
   • Best overall beer – regardless of style
   • Closest to a BJCP style
   • Most outrageous attempt at a style – e.g. a Porter, a Schwartz, an Imperial
   • Most outrageous use of cereals
   • Best dressed bottle (Details to follow in next newsletter)

   With some other award categories to be announced in upcoming months (as we think of them)

9. If you’ve got a real interesting beer, we encourage you to enter it in the ABC the following month - specialty category would be a natural but go for any style you think is close.
10. This is a real, traditional, RELAX, DON’T WORRY, HAVE A HOMEBREW event. Don’t get too uptight with it – have some fun!

To help extract and Brew House brewers who might want to take this as the opportunity to try all- grain, Neil and Roxy will donate a Saturday to helping you brew. We will bring all equipment to Alley Kat. You bring your recipe, all your ingredients and a fermenter. We will help you do a single infusion mash and get the wort into your fermenter. You have to get your wort home after it’s made – no fermenting at Alley Kat. To be fair, we will not advise you on how to create the recipe. Sign up at the meeting and Neil and I will arrange a Saturday to do the brews. We will do AM and PM runs with 3-4 people at a time.

Other Upcoming Competitions

Edmonton Homebrewers Guild First Annual Brew House Brew-Off

February 21-22, 2004. Entries due Feb 13, 2004.

The Edmonton Homebrewer’s Guild in co-operation with Southside Brew Crew and Harvest Brewing Co. are having the first annual contest for the Best Brew House Brewer!

The competition brochure and entry form can be printed and downloaded from the EHG website, http://www.ehg.ca.

The Lethbridge Werthogs 4th Annual Homebrew Competition

Saturday March 6, 2004. Entries due Monday March 1, 2004-01-27

The Lethbridge Werthogs AHA sanctioned competition is a two 350ml bottle entry with one entry per class but as many classes and categories as you have beer. Cost is $6.00 per entry. Entry forms can be found at http://netcon.ca/werthogs/

The 20th annual Marquis De Suds Calgary Open in Calgary

It looks like june 18 and 19 is the date for the 20th annual Marquis De Suds Calgary Open! Please mark your calendar. Details to follow but it will be a two beer entry, BJCP and AHA sanctioned and, since it was fun to judge last year, there will again be the coveted “Best Lawnmower Beer” award up for grabs. Also, in light of the 20th anniversary of the competition, there will be a special prize, the “Triple 20” Trophy!” for the best tasting non-prize winning beer with…

1. a final gravity of approximately 1.020 (chewy!)
2. an IBU bitterness level of approximately 20 (more malty than bitter!)
3. an SRM color of approximately 20 (dark velvet brown)

(Eligible beers that can fit this profile: Wee Heavy, Bocks, and Belgian Strong Dark Ale!). Calgary is putting out the challenge! Who can brew the triple 20 the best? Big prize for whoever does it!

Calgary knows you are up to the challenge so let’s get abrewin’!

Entry forms and web links to follow in an upcoming issue of The Worthouse News.

FIRST ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE WESTERN CONFEDERATION OF BREWCLUBS

3-6 June 2004, Edmonton, Alberta

• Aurora Brewing Challenge/Canadian MCAB qualifier competition
• Conference with four educational sessions
• Organizational meeting of the Confederation
• Awards banquet with keynote speaker
• A rocking good time for all western Canadian home brewers! And others who may choose to attend.

Conference Cost:
$30.00 in advance – till April 1
$45.00 on site
$10.00 spousal or guest to attend banquet

Agenda

• Thursday 3 June
  • 5:00 PM till whenever
    Alley Kat Brewing
    Judging of ABC short flights
• Friday 4 June
  • 12 noon till late evening
    ABC Judging of most of the flights of beer
    Brewster’s Brewpub get-together
• Saturday 5 June
  • 10:00 AM
    wrap up of any remaining flights
  • 12:00 Noon
    Best of Show judging
  • 12:00-2:00 PM
    

    Capillano Community Hall

    Organizational meeting of the Western
    Confederation of Brew Clubs

  • 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM
    Conference Talks
  • 6:00-7:00 PM
    Pre-dinner get-together enjoying homebrew from the Western Confederation clubs
  • 7:00 – 9:00 PM
    Western style potluck dinner
    • Keynote speaker – Greg Evans, UBC Canadian History Professor – “The Bar to Heaven – a Knockoff History of Brewpubs”
    • Awards ceremony

Conference Presentations

• How to prepare for and write the BJCP exam
  • Roxy Hastings – National BJCP judge and exam grader
  • Mark Nesdoly – Certified BJCP judge and exam grader
• Beer Faults commonly encountered in the BJCP exam
  • Neil Herbst – Certified BJCP judge and owner Alley Kat Brewing Co.
• Quality Brewing using Brew House Kits
  • Bob Boufford – Editor, EHG newsletter
  • Kevin Zaychuk – Vice President, EHG
• Dirty Beer Talk (Sanitation for home brewers)
  • TBA

Conference Notes:

1. We will need to have the judges for ABC sign up well in advance so that we can effectively and fairly create the judging pool. We will be looking for a pretty secure list of out of town judges by early May. To encourage out of town judges to sign up we have steeply discounted early registration to the conference.
2. In the spirit of this being a Western Confederation Conference a representative from each of Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Calgary, Lethbridge and B.C. has been appointed to help promote the event in their region. We are forwarding all conference material to these people on at least a monthly basis and look forward to their input into helping plan the conference. Reps are:
   Mark Nesdoly – B.C.
   John Gray – Regina
   Jim Beebe – Saskatoon
   Veryl Todd – Lethbridge
   Tim Oborn – Calgary
   Sean Richens – Winnipeg
3. Taking up on a suggestion from an ALES member, Dave Neilly, we are encouraging that each club bring up to 3 kegs of homebrew to share with other brewers at the conference. This is totally voluntary, as EHG will make sure there is plenty of homebrew at the event. But we are sure others clubs will not want to be outdone by the locals.
4. Edmonton Homebrewers Guild will arrange billeting for out of town judges and their guests. Sign up sheets will be included with conference mail-outs.
5. Awards banquet will be a western style “potluck” BBQ with all food being organized by EHG members.

Contact for Conference including fee payment made out to Edmonton Homebrewers Guild and list of judges: Neil Herbst neil@alleykatbeer.com Contact for ABC competition questions: Glen Hannah glhannah@telusplanet.net

Beer Bling Bling

Medals. As competitive home-brewers, we covet these babies. A medal is a symbol of competence. Despite the popular misconception that homebrew “tastes like piss”, your friends can know that you are, indeed, someone who can produce great beer. In addition to showing off your brewing talent, winning medals can make you a better brewer. Competition motivates brewers to get better and better. Home brewing clubs compete against one another, and therefore the sharing of brewing knowledge is key to a club’s success. No matter how you look at it, clubs and competitions make home brewers better at what they do. Let’s face it, this is a rewarding hobby, and we all want to make impressive beer.

Some brewers plan out their brews weeks in advance with careful thought regarding the ingredients, brewing process, and yeast selection. The idea is to produce a beer that fits the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) parameters. Other brewers brew without a style in mind, and then enter what they have in a category that best fits the beer and hope for the best. Some brewers take competition very seriously, with a goal to win as many medals as possible for the club, and some just want some genuine feedback. Either way, competing brings out a flavor of camaraderie, anticipation, and often pride.

To be perfectly honest, I am not a very experienced competitor, and therefore have much less advice to offer than could many other members in the guild. However, I have learned a few things from competing.

Don’t ever take this too seriously

This is a fun hobby. The goal is to make great beer, share it, and enjoy it. If competition is taking the joy away by stressing you out, then you have the wrong mindset. Competing gives you the spark you may need to move forward in the hobby and try something new.

Start with beers that are easier, and work your way up to harder styles

The whole idea here, I presume, is to make better beer. In order to improve, I’ve found it’s best to take baby steps. As an illustration, your first beer should not be an all grain Munich Helles. Start with a simple ale such as an American pale or British bitter. Minor flaws are less detectable in beers with plenty of hop flavor, fruit, or spices. Also, these beers are much easier to brew to style.

Research the style before you brew the beer

Zymurgy, Brew Your Own, and the Brewing Techniques Archive are magazines that contain a wealth of information from experienced brewers on how to brew specific styles of beer. Often these articles include recipes that can be copied directly, or used as a guideline to help you design your own version. In the back of every issue of Zymurgy is a list of recipes that have medaled at a prior National Level home brewing competition. If you really want to know a lot about a style, inquire about a set of books called the Classic Beer Style Series. Each book focuses on a particular style and will tell you absolutely everything about it. Many other books exist as well, such as Designing Great Beers and Dave Miller’s Homebrewing Guide and Greg Noonan’s Brewing Lager Beer. I tend to take any information on the internet with a grain of salt, but some sites offer a lot of useful information. Ask Guild members if they have any good recipes or suggestions. Finally, check out the BJCP style guideline. The judge of your beer will be using that as the guideline, so the beer you make needs to look, smell and taste the way the BJCP says it should. I realize that style guidelines can sometimes place limitations on your creativity. However, if you want to be creative, then do so! You can enter your beer under several creative categories. Examples include the Belgian styles, experimental, spice/herb/vegetable beer, etc.

Don’t get too attached to the style

Even the greatest beer ever made will do poorly if it is entered in the wrong style. Many brewers, experienced or no, set out to brew a specific style of beer but unintentionally end up with a final product that misses the target completely. This “mistake” is NOT a problem! Look through the BJCP guide to see if your beer fits anywhere else. If you are still unsure, bring it to a meeting and ask as many people as you can to try and fit the beer to a BJCP style. If in doubt over two styles, enter the beer in both. You would be hard pressed to find a brewer who has never had to switch styles after the beer was made.

Reserve 12 bottles of your beer

Competition probably isn’t the reason that you entered this fine hobby. Most likely, you just happen to be someone who loves beer and everything having to do with beer – including making it yourself. Use competition as a tool to learn the craft better. The sacrifice is that you will need to put away some bottles from every batch you make. If you feel like you are just paying money to have some stranger drink your beer, then think of it this way instead: You are paying for unbiased, honest evaluation of your beer. If the beer does well, then you will actually save money by winning prizes that will be used to make more beer. You brewing will just keep getting better every time. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Don’t ever take this too seriously

When you get the judge sheets back, remember something Roxy told me; it’s important to keep in mind that “sometimes the judges don’t know shit”. Last year I entered my American Brown Ale into several different competitions under the same class and had a range of scores from 28 to 43! It is this reason especially that you should try to enter the same brew more than once. One bad score certainly doesn’t mean that the beer lacks quality. Even though a judge is BJCP qualified, he or she may still be learning about that style of beer. Consistency is the key.

It’s kind of like the “circle of life” except that it’s really the “circle of great beer”. If you join a club that consists of extremely talented home brewers, you will quickly learn to make better beer. If you make beer and compete, you will get feedback and initiative to improve. Every member’s small improvement then increases the value of the club to other brewers. New brewers join (and taste fantastic beer at the meetings) and the quality of beer just gets better and better. Let’s get those beers going for this year’s competitions and win a ton of medals! We belong to easily one of the best clubs in North America, so let’s do the EHG proud. Oh yeah, and be sure to raise a glass of your finest home brew when you win a medal, and drink that beer with pride.

The Annual Hop Order

The club makes an annual hop purchase in November, available only to current Guild members. We purchase fresh leaf hops and plugs. The bulk purchase is a great membership benefit as it ensures we get the best available hops at a good price.

The order placed at the end of November has now arrived. If you place an order for hops, you can pick up your purchase at the February meeting.

View from the Top of the Tun

Well, I’m in far better shape, in terms of beer on hand, than I was last month at this time. As we get closer and closer to major competition season my beers are starting to come on line and I now have a Czech Pils, and a Wiezenbok on tap, minikegs of Old Ale and Belgian Double carbonating and a London Brown that just made it into the keg. So I’m drinking homebrew again!

Last Saturday we packed up 28 entries to send to Lethbridge, which is about 2x more than we’ve sent before. I hope that’s a sign that Edmonton is once more on the road to becoming a volume powerhouse in homebrew competitions. Regina sent in something between 30-40 so we are pretty close to them this year. Hopefully we’ll make up in quality what we lack in quantity.

Speaking of Regina, their entries are due at the end of April and while that seems a good ways off it isn’t really. I figure that you’ve got until about the weekends of 13 to 21 March in order to brew an ale that you can be assured of being in good condition for that competition. That’s only a few weeks after this months meeting. So if you have any questions about entering brews in this prestigious AHA qualifier then the March meeting is the time to ask. If you have questions about what categories to enter a brew in, my first advice is to enter it in more than one. Regina encourages multiple entries of this nature. And after 5 entries there is no additional charge for more entries – so go for it. My second bit of advice is to bring a sample of those questionable entries to the March meeting and pass them around to some of the experienced members for an opinion. As Jim Whittome found out last weekend when asking what style of ale he should be entering, you may get some surprising answers – like “put it in German Pils”. Remember, the EHG pays for all shipping to Regina so all you have to do is brew the beers and pay the entry fees. I figure we’ll have a group packing session on 17 April to meet the 30 April due date.

This is the first year Regina is hosting the AHA and it’s critically important that they demonstrate they can support a big competition. If they don’t get a big number there is a very good chance the AHA will pull the site from Canada. A good showing this year will secure a first round site in Canada. Otherwise we’ll be shipping to Denver! I promised Regina at least 45 entries from EHG to help them reach their goal of 300.

I plan to enter at least 15, including several multiple entries, and I know another member who will be in that range. So surely we can double the entries to Lethbridge and give Regina at least 60, if between two members we are already close to 30! Give Regina 2 of everything you’ve got. Better yet, enter a beer in more than one category and give them 4 of everything – making sure of course you save an equal number for Edmonton’s ABC! Regina has promised to match us bottle for bottle - that is for every entry we send them they will send at least one entry back to Edmonton for the ABC, so by supporting Regina you also help our own competition achieve its goal of 300.

This mutual support system is one reason why western Canada has become the centre of homebrewing in the nation. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve decided to formalize our association at the club level and form the Western Confederation of Brew Clubs. You’ll have a chance to get in on the ground floor organizing the Confederation this summer when Edmonton hosts the first WCBC conference “Hotbreak 2004” being held in conjunction with our annual Aurora Brewing Challenge on the weekend of 3-5 June. Keep these dates clear because it’s gonna be a fantastic weekend with homebrewers coming in from across western Canada to celebrate quality brewing. We’ve got a great range of sessions planned and there’s gonna be some awesome kegs of homebrew that you’re only gonna be able to sample by coming to the conference. Details will be forthcoming starting at this month's meeting. See you there.

From the Bottom of the Mash

The competition season is in full swing and so far, it's been fun, even when you don't expect it. I was just interested in trying out some new brewing techniques with the Brew House kits and gather valuable evaluations from the judges. Mostly, so I can learn more about brewing different styles and improve my brewing experience. I never anticipated looking at the Best of Show award mug as I write this column. So what did I learn from the Brew Off competition?

While it reduces the number of "drinkable homebrews", splitting my Brew House kits gave me more styles, different recipes and different yeasts to try out. While I still ended up with 5-6 gallons of homebrew, it's not all the same homebrew! It also gave me some insight into managing two (actually four) fermenting beers at one time. A technique for when I try brewing different all-grain beers from first and second runnings.

The biggest experience I learned primarily from some other members is: "If you never enter, you will never win." I have already heard from some members saying they wished they had entered more beers or entered beers, period. Even if you don't win a ribbon, you will still win by learning how to be a better brewer.

There are four more regional competitions coming up where you can win by learning to be a better brewer. And don't pass up the BURRP! 2 club competition. This is a great opportunity to experiment with a new recipe and for the extract and Brew House brewers, an introduction to working with grain. It was last year's BURRP! that gave me the push to start doing all-grain brewing. From last year's BURRP! I won many times over. My biggest wins were not just a BURRP! prize and an ABC bronze medal, but more importantly, an ongoing improvement in my homebrews.

I now have lots of "drinkable" beers to enjoy.

BURRP! 2 All grain brewing session

To help extract and Brew House brewers who might want to take the opportunity to try all-grain, Gunther and Roxy will donate Saturday, March 13th to helping you brew. They provide the equipment. You bring your recipe, all your ingredients and a fermenter. They will help you do a single infusion mash and get the wort into your fermenter. You have to get your wort home after it’s made – no fermenting at Alley Kat. We will do AM and PM runs with 3-4 people at a time. Sign up at the March meeting.

The EHG 2004 Aurora Brewing Challenge

The EHG 2004 Aurora Brewing Challenge on June 3-5, 2004 has been registered with both the BJCP and the AHA. The Edmonton Home Brewers Guild is proud to once again to be hosting this event as an MCAB qualifier.

Basic Competition Information
ABC/MCAB7 Canadian Qualifier 3-5 June 2004

Entries Due:
Friday 28 May 2004 to
Alley Kat Brewing Co
c/o Neil Herbst
9929-60 Ave
Edmonton, AlbertaT6E 0C7

Styles:
All 20 MCAB styles plus additional non-MCAB categories.

Entries:
Two, 300-500 ml bottles - any shape, type or color but must be unmarked and with plain or blacked out caps. Groelsch swing top bottles are accepted.

First three entries are $6.00 per entry with the fourth and additional entries at $4.00 CAD per entry.

We encourage brewers to enter as many beer styles/subcategories as they wish. You may enter more than one entry per subcategory. Please identify multiple subcategory entries on the entry form with a unique name or number.

All entries must identify a style and subcategory. Acceptable subcategories are listed under the style.

Special awards for Best of Show (top 3 brews), Brewer of the Year (most medal points in competition), and Best Club (most medal points).

Medals will be awarded in each beer style and in the mead category. Each split category will have it's own set of medals. Beers entered into the split category will be judged in a second round to determine the MCAB qualifiers. Only the top beer of the style advances to MCAB finals.

Judges qualified under the Beer Judge Certification Program will perform judging. Everyone who enters will have an evaluation form returned within 30 days of the end of the competition. Results will be posted on the EHG website within 48 hours.

Competition entry forms for ABC/MCAB7 are being updated for 2004 and should be on our web page http://www.ehg.ca by early March.

More to BURRP! Two

As announced at the February meeting and in the last issue of The Worthouse News, the second annual BURRP! - Brewing Under Really Ridiculous Parameters! - an in-house competition to see who can brew the best beer under challenging conditions, is building to a full wort boil. The odor and smoke of roasting barley can be seen floating over the homes of several EHG members.

Shortly after the competition was announced, there were several concerns expressed of stuck mashes and messed up wort from the various additives found in cold cereal. Relax, Don't Worry, Have a Homebrew! Based on a small test run I did a couple of weeks ago, many problems that might be associated with cold cereal can be avoided by selecting the right cereal and a few other tips.

1. Read the Label! While deciding on a cold cereal for your BURRP! brew, look at the ingredient label. Select a cereal that is low or no salt and little or no oils. Also watch for preservatives in the cereal. Labels are supposed to list ingredients in the order of most to least. So, sodium bicarbonate as the last ingredient will be minimal in your mash and wort.
2. Do a simple hot water test. Take a small amount of the cold cereal and put it in hot water. Stir gently then leave alone and watch what happens. It will be a good indication of how the cereal will hold up in a mash or steep.
3. Be gentle. For all-grain brewers, stir the cereal into the upper layer of the mash after dough-in of all the other grain. Avoid extensive stirring after putting in the cereal.
4. Bag it. For extract and Brew House brewers, do a partial mash/partial steep, keeping the cereal in a grain bag. The November 2003 issue of Brew Your Own magazine has an informative article on partial mashing and steeping.
5. Pitch a large amount of yeast by building up a big yeast starter and don’t depend on just a XL slap pack.

To clarify the rules, there is no restriction on minimal batch size as long as you meet the requirements of using the 10 pounds of WestCan pale malt and 1 pound of cold breakfast cereal. Split batches from first and second runnings along with 3 gallon big brews are all acceptable.

First Annual 2004 Brew House Brew- Off! Results

The results are in for the First Annual 2004 Brew House Brew Off! Competition. The competition had 29 entries across all categories with most from Edmonton but also several from outside of Edmonton, all the way to Winnipeg. Thanks to all that participated and congratulations to the winners.

Edmonton

Munich Dk Lager
-Munich Dk Lager

Name	City	Category	Final Place	BOS
Bob Boufford	Edmonton	Am. Prem Lager-Belgian Gldn Ale	1st	Y
Bob Boufford	Edmonton	Cream Ale -Scotch Ale	1st
Kevin Zaychuk	Edmonton	India Pale Ale -IPA	1st
Bruce Sample			1st
Bill Verasky	Winnipeg	Am. Prem Lager -Am. Prem Lager	2nd
Barry Hunt	Edmonton	Cream Ale -Cream Ale	2nd
Frank Kuzemski	Edmonton	India Pale Ale -IPA	2nd
Lori Steel	Edmonton	Munich Dk Lager -Bock	2nd
Frank Kuzemski	Edmonton	Am. Prem Lager -Am. Prem Lager	3rd
Bob Boufford	Edmonton	Cream Ale -Amer Brown Ale	3rd
Bruce Sample	Edmonton	India Pale Ale -IPA	3rd
Chris Hillman	Winnipeg	Munich Dk Lager -Munich Dk Lager	3rd

Mead with TLC

It’s interesting that home brewers consider mead to be part of their “territory”. Being that I don’t make wine or belong to a home vinters club, I don’t know if the vinters celebrate mead at all. The BJCP includes mead and for that we should all be very glad. Not only is mead an absolutely amazing drink, it is quite easy to make. Experimenters beware! Making mead will consume you forever! There is no end to the different kinds of meads that can be made. If you are wondering what it tastes like, simply come to the next meeting where we will be trying some fantastic meads made by club members. Expect a delicate drink that offers a wide variety of flavors for you to enjoy. I actually close my eyes when I drink mead.

Mead is simply a mixture of honey and water fermented over a much longer period of time than beer. There are a few tricks to making incredible mead that you should consider before your first attempt:

What kinds of meads exist?

A look through the BJCP, Internet, and various books can give you a more complete answer, however I’ll give you a quick and dirty low down.

• Traditional Mead: These are made of honey, water and yeast. They are the easiest to make, and I believe, the nicest. A traditional mead showcases the honey used, revealing the subtle characteristics. These can be made still (uncarbonated) or sparkling (carbonated). As well, they can be dry or sweet. Many mead makers vary the mead by changing the honey itself. Honey varies depending on the flowers, bees, climate, etc. I recommend using only high quality honey from a bee keeper if you want an amazing product. Typical store bought honey won’t make a mead to be proud of.
• Metheglin: Spiced mead is another favorite style of mine. I prefer to make a traditional mead, spice it in the glass, tasting along the way until I get a good compliment of flavors. After that, I scale it up and add the spice mixture prior to bottling. Favorite spices for me are nutmeg, cinnamon, coriander, cardamom, ginger, and many others.
• Melomel: Mead mixed with fruit. Experimenting with various fruits can produce a wonderful concoction. I buy fruit juice that has been sterilized in the cardboard 1 liter boxes and add it during the rack to the secondary. Specific types of melomel include Cyser, a mead mixed with apple and Pyment, a grape juice mead.
• Braggot: Mead mixed with ale. Braggot is a wonderful multidimensional balance of malt and honey.

How do you make it?

There are so many different opinions on the best way to make mead that it’s not easy to say any one particular procedure.

• Obtain some high quality honey, approximately 3 pounds per gallon of mead.
• Heat up the water ( I use 50:50 tap water to RO water with added yeast nutrient and acid blend) to boiling and add the honey. At this point I would highly recommend adding Irish moss to aid in clarification.
• Mix the honey in well, crash cool and add to the primary fermenter. The resulting mixture is unfermented mead, or must. I don’t boil the must because I don’t want to lose the subtle aroma from the honey, however some excellent mead makers do boil the must.
• Add Lalvin EC-1118 dry yeast to warm water until you see activity and then add it to the must. This champagne yeast does an excellent job of fermenting it down to a low finishing gravity, and thus making a dry mead. For sweeter mead use Chardonnay yeast.
• Aerate the must, add an airlock and allow the must to ferment for several months to a year before racking to the secondary. Store in the secondary for another equally long time and then bottle. Good mead usually takes about a year for me. The yeast nutrient speeds up this process however.
• Bottle and age. Mead can last many years, and some enthusiasts believe that most mead will not reach its peak until 5 years old.

I can come home from work and get the mead finished and the brewery cleaned up well before bedtime without any worries. Compared to brewing, mead making is very fast, and in my opinion, equally enjoyable. Experimentation is the next natural step, making this hobby one that will persist for many more mead making sessions. Good luck!

View from the Top of the Tun

Because it is that time of year I’m devoting this View to competitions. The season could not have started off better for the Guild, and put us back on track as being the top club in the nation by what happened in Lethbridge a few weeks ago. In that competition EHG claimed something like 12-13 medals, including a Best of Show by Glen Hanna, out of a possible 21. Frank Kuzemski was the all round best brewer taking home 3 awards. Otherwise the wins were well spread amongst those of us who competed, illustrating that once again we are on our way to having a depth of competitive brewers that we can draw on. Besides Glen taking home a well-deserved BOS, I was especially pleased to see new member Shawn Lamble taking a second place in the very tough pale lager class. Congratulations to all EHG members who competed, a very inspiring job to everyone.

Now to the future:

For those in the know, those who have been around a few years and competed in our annual ABC/MCAB qualifier, you know these are the last few weeks to squeeze in those final few brews for the competition. For those who are new to the art of competing let me draw your attention to three critical dates – May 28, April 25 and 3 June. May 28 is a critical date because it is the last day that you can enter brews into the ABC. April 25 is a critical date because it is about the last possible day to start an ale and have a reasonable chance of having it fermented, in the bottle and well- conditioned before the final critical day, 3 June, which is the first day that the stewards will be cracking open your bottles and serving them to the judging panel. So if you’ve been holding off for any reason, delay no more, get out those pots and hops and get going on that final batch!

It is now too late to brew for the other very important competition in the region, the AHA qualifier being held for the first time this year in Regina on May 7&8. However, if you have two bottles of brew of any quality at all, do not hesitate to send these beers to this competition. If you have any doubts about whether a beer should be sent on or you are wondering what style to enter them into I have two bits of advice. 1) It is worthwhile sending any beer into competition – even if you don’t medal you will get great feedback, knowledge alone is priceless. And then you can send the same beer into ABC and compare the comments from two sets of judging pools. 2) If you don’t know which category to compete in, compete in more than one. That way you will get two sets of opinions on each beer. The ALEs competition is beautifully, and craftily, designed to foster this. Why? Because after 6 entries each additional entry is only a buck per entry! Nada, not one cent more you have pay out than $1.00 each entry except for shipping. And since the EHG is paying your shipping, this should inspire you to do everything possible to send more than 6 beers to Regina.

Now if after all that you are still unsure about what to enter, feel free to bring a bottle of those borderline beers to this month’s Guild meeting. Get a few experienced beer judges in your corner and pour your brew. Listen to what they say and then go for it. Neil, Gunther, Harry and myself are always on hand to provide good advice but there are other great judges in the club so don’t limit your self to our opinions.

The final reason to compete in Regina is that Regina is our sister club. They have a similar ethos towards brewing, have a well-qualified judging team, are aggressively competitive, but have a fantastic regional spirit. Regina is one of the reasons why in the past the ABC has been so successful – Regina has piled beers into our competition. Last year they won more first place medals in ABC than any other club. It’s time to repay that favour. We want to pile beers into the ALEs, both to prove that Regina can support an AHA first round site, and secondly, so that EHG takes more first place medals than any other club. Fair is fair. But seriously, supporting Regina supports brewing across western Canada. They are a fantastic brew club and a pillar of home brewing in the nation. As a small example of their commitment to the hobby, Kelly Deis, a good friend of mine in Regina, has promised that they will match us entry for entry. That is for every entry we send to Regina, they will send at least one entry back to Edmonton. So by supporting Regina, and helping them grow, you are also helping grow the ABC. So go for, give Regina everything you’ve got, except of course for the two bottles going to our ABC!

Packing Day for Regina

To help make this all happen we are having a group shipping get together. In addition to Lethbridge and Calgary, Regina ALEs is one of the competitions where the EHG pays for all shipping costs. All you have to do is cover your entry fees.

Fees are: $6.00/entry for each of the first 6 entries, $1.00 each for every entry after that.

When and Where: Saturday 17 April at 2:00 PM we will meet at Alley Kat. If you cannot meet that day, drop off your beers to Alley Kat sometime that week. Make sure those bottles are labelled so we know what they are.

What to bring: 1) 2 bottles each for each entry – remember to keep back 3 bottles of each in case you medal and go on to the AHA finals. Black out the caps. 2) filled in labels attached to each bottle with an elastic band (if you can’t do this we will have entry forms on hand). 3) A cheque with your entry fees. 4) Optional but helpful – an empty partitioned wine box. If a few of us bring boxes it will really help.All other packing materials including bubble wrap and brown paper will be available at Alley Kat.

I will have a sign up sheet at the meeting. It would be very helpful for planning purposes if you could let me know how many beers you plan to ship to Regina so I can organize supplies.

Bob Boufford modified the PDF entry form for Regina that will make filling out the forms much easier. For the computer challenged, you can just print the form and fill it out with pen. Further information on ALEs competition can be seen at: http://www.alesclub.com

Call for judges/stewards- Regina

Regina is expecting 300 or so entries this year. They need help from out-of-town judges to expediently get through this event. Full scale judging starts in the late afternoon of Friday 7 May at Bushwakker. There is an awards banquet with guest speakers being held at Bushwakker on Saturday – banquet tickets are $25.00. So far we have three judges Ken Nyback, Kevin Zaychuk and Roxy and one steward, Bob Boufford who will be travelling to Regina to participate. If you are interested in helping out please contact Roxy at roxanneih@shaw.ca or John Gray (ALES President) at damntasty@accesscomm.ca

If you are planning to attend as a judge, send John an email telling him what styles you are entering so they can make sure they put you into non-conflicting flights. Do this ASAP.

From the Bottom of the Mash

The days are getting longer and at times warmer. That means the brewing season will be winding down as we sit back, relax and watch the long sunsets while sipping brews we made during the cold winter. Of course, I hope to keep brewing as much as possible during the nice cool Edmonton summer. Compared to summers in the States south of the Great Lakes from Toronto, it will be still nice enough to brew a few Belgians.

As Roxy has noted and you will see from other articles, we are in the middle of the competition season. Besides the knowledge gained from feedback provided by the judges from sending your beers to an event, I am finding my "network" of homebrewing colleagues is expanding beyond Edmonton. With the upcoming 1st Annual Conference of the Western Confederation of Brew Clubs, this is a prime opportunity to expand your own network of homebrewing colleagues. Mark you calendars and plan to attend. Also, set aside some time to help with the conference. We want to make this a success and show all of Canada that the Western Provinces have the best homebrewers in the country out to make the best beer possible by any means, be it all-grain, extract or boxed wort.

Extract mini-competition for April

You will notice that there is no Style of the Month for this month. Our monthly theme tasting and mini- competition is Extracts – All Classes so we can select the best beer made from extracts to send down to the AHA Club Only Competition. The competition is open to entries with extract making up at least 50% of the fermentables in the recipe. So, if you have any beers sitting in the closet that meet the AHA requirements, bring them to the meeting on Monday. It should make for an interesting and fun time.

BURRP! Two

Also, the second club-only BURRP! Competition is near. The May meeting will be big tasting of the results of adding cold breakfast cereal to a brew. Later in the newsletter, you will find the details of the new "best-dressed bottle" contest.

See you on Monday…

1st Annual Conference of the Western Confederation of Brew Clubs

Details on the conference can be found later in the newsletter and on the EHG website, http://www.ehg.ca. The important note I want to make here is - Bring your chequebook to the April 5th club meeting - so you can take advantage of the early bird savings. There are several good speakers lined up for the conference along with a great dinner with lots of homebrew from not only EHG members but also our sister clubs in Regina, Lethbridge and Calgary. It will be an opportunity to meet other Western Canada homebrewers.

Sign up Sheet:

I will have a sign up sheet at the April 5th club meeting for those interested in volunteering their time at the ABC 2004 at Alley Kat and the Hot Break Conference at the Capilano Community Hall. To reiterate, we will be judging the short flights on the Thursday night from 5:00pm till 8:00-9:00pm, the remaining flights on the Friday from noon till approx. 6:00pm followed by a brewpub get-together at Brewster’s Brew Pub and the BOS & wrap up on the Saturday from 10:00am till noon before heading over to the community centre. Areas we could use help in are: judging (of course), stewarding, set-up, take down, Saturday lunch and registration at the conference. Please give it some thought. Your help is greatly appreciated.

T – Shirts:

I will discuss briefly T-shirts we are planning on having made up for this special occasion.

Glasses for Sale:

EHG gold embossed beer glasses $5/each. They would look great in your hands at the ABC 2004 & Hot Break Conference. Show ‘em off to the outta-towners. I’ll have some for sale at the April 5th club meeting. Please support the club.

See you at the April Club Meeting!

More to BURRP! Two

As announced at the February meeting and in the previous issue of The Worthouse News, the second annual BURRP! - Brewing Under Really Ridiculous Parameters! - an in-house competition to see who can brew the best beer under challenging conditions, is bubbling to the sweet end. The alcohol and CO2 levels have increased greatly over the homes of several EHG members. Global warming be damned, they are out to make some beer!

Best-dressed bottles

As announced in the February issue, there is a new category of Best-dressed Bottles. For this competition, an award to be judged by your peers for the best-dressed bottle and maybe carton that epitomizes the BURRP! competition.

What constitutes a "best-dressed bottle"? It can be something as basic as a unique beer label such as the labels seen in Brew Your Own magazine's Label Contest, to the extreme of the finest BURRP! cold cereal glued to the bottle complete with a spoon!

And for a little more fun, how about bringing a best-dressed beer carton! Buy a six-pack of Alley Kat Buffalo Beer from Neal, drink the beer and decorate the white cardboard carton. For those who did not get a chance to brew, this may be your opportunity to help the BURRP! brewers by contributing your artistic or crafty talents.

A quick "google" on the Internet will bring up several sites for artwork besides the cereal boxes you had when you brewed your BURRP! Beer. If you tossed out your boxes, the Web is the place to find inspiration.

It will be interesting to see what the KGB reveals from their secret brewery. And rumour has it that some Cuckoo smuggled cereal from south of the border with boxes that will blow the corny Puffs away.

A Short Course in Hoping Strategies

Introduction

Unlike using malts where there are a number of methods: e.g. all-grain, partial mash and extract, and strategies within methods: infusion mash, step mash, decoction mash, when it comes to hops we are all in the same pot. No matter how you created your basic wort all brewers are faced with identical hopping strategy problems. For any given beer style you have to consider the bitterness, flavour, and bouquet (commonly caller hop aroma) that are appropriate for the style. All beers have at least some hop bitterness (although that may be hard to believe with most piss-water industrial lagers) but a number of styles do not require flavour or set it at a low level and this is also true for bouquet. Since flavour and aroma are intimately connected we usually use the phrase “hop character” to mean the combined affects of flavour and bouquet.

Hoping Strategies

In terms of hop presence beers fall into three broad groups: 1) hop bitterness only with no hop flavour or bouquet e.g. Dry stout, 2) beers with low hop flavour and light bouquet, e.g. Oktoberfest and Scottish Ales, and 3) beers defined by hop presence being bitter with lots of flavour and aroma, e.g. IPA and American Pale Ales. Some classic styles of beers are very narrowly defined and will fall into only one of these categories, e.g. Dry Stout where hop flavour and aroma are never acceptable, whereas others can occupy all three groups e.g. British Bitters where beers can be just bitter with no hop character through to beers that are blazingly hoppy with hop flavour and aroma steaming out of the pint glass. No one interpretation of bitter is inherently better or more traditional.

Group 1 – Hop bitterness only

In this group of beers we can have styles ranging from very bitter due to hops, e.g. British Bitters, bitter due to a combination of hops and dark malt e.g. Dry Stout, and beers that have low bitterness with either lots of malt character e.g. Bocks or low malt character, e.g. American Lagers.

For all these types of beers there is basically a single hopping strategy. That is a single hop addition for 60 minutes. Some early homebrew publications suggested that the 60 minute addition was for bitterness only. The reasoning was that having boiled for 60 minutes all the hop resins would have evaporated, and hence they would not contribute to hop character. Therefore, the variety of hop chosen was felt to make no difference. Experience over the past decade has proven otherwise; you are well advised to choose a hop whose flavour you would enjoy if it were being used as a character hop. Sixty minute hops additions do provide a background flavour – usually too subtle to overtly detect, but none-the-less important on the palate. So choose a nice tasting hop like Kent Goldings for these styles of Bitters or Mt. Hood for American Lagers rather than say a bland Cluster.

Group 2- Low, just noticeable hop character

These beers almost always tend to be malt dominated. Hop bitterness can be very low, as in Scotch Ales where there is just enough hops to make the beer not cloying, to more commonly well balanced, such as Oktoberfests where the beer is well balanced with a drying finish and a hop character that you just notice as being slightly spicy. It is always a challenge to get the hop character just right for these types of beers. There are two basic strategies. Most commonly brewers put something like 75-85% of their total hop bitterness in at 60 minutes and then put the remaining 15-25% in at 20 minutes. The latter being just to give a bit of character. I prefer another approach and that is to make a single hop addition for 45 minutes. Since you want some character from this addition you can go ahead and split the addition between two hops or you can use a single variety. If you are splitting your hops between 60 and 20 minutes you might as well stick with a single variety because the amount of hops being tossed in for 20 minutes is very small and will need some of the residual flavour from the bittering addition to be affective. However, getting variety into hop additions is not the main reason I use the 45- minute strategy. I’ve simply found this to be the most effective method for getting that subtle but noticeable hop character into these types of beers.

Group 3 – Hop head beers

For this group of beers there is pretty much only one way to go. And that is hops all the way through: bitter, flavour and nose. No beer tastes right having lots of hop bouquet and flavour and being low on bitterness. In fact most people feel a bit cheated if they get a big hop nose and then there is no follow up. Beer judges in competition are very hard on that type of presentation. For these types of beers there is a classic hopping pattern that always works well. Spilt your hops up with 60-65% of the total bitterness going in for 60 minutes and 35-40% going in for 20 minutes. That combination assures a good balance between bitterness and plenty of hop flavour. Calculate your total bitterness based on these two hop additions. Then if you are making a European lager throw in 28-42 grams for the last five minutes or if you are making an ale then dry hop in the secondary with a similar amount. Actually I dry hop my lagers as well as my ales but purists insist on late hopping their lagers. It does give a softer approach that is more classic and commercial, but I like my Euro lagers to have lots of in your face hop bouquet. It’s your call. Either way do not worry about the contribution of this addition to calculated bitterness. Late hopping can give a perception of bitterness but it actually isn’t there.

Calculating Hop Bitterness

The only real way to measure hop bitterness in beer is in a food science chem. lab. Since most of us don’t have access to such facilities we do it by guessing – commonly called “calculating hop bitterness.” There are probably at least a dozen ways to calculate IBUs in beer. Frankly despite the proliferation of hop formulas produced by all sorts of beer geek gurus I find that a simple formula published by Jackie Rager way back in 1990 to still be the best. I’ve actually had one of my beers tested in a food science lab and the predicted IBUs where pretty darn close to what was measured.

According to Rager only two factors have significant effects on bitterness, length of boil and density of wort.

1. The longer the boil the greater the % utilization of alpha acids and thus the higher the IBUs. Boils longer than 60 minutes produce no greater % utilization. Jackie has a table broken down into 5 minute intervals but as you can see from my discussion above you only need to know three numbers: 60 minutes = 30%, 45 minutes = 27% and 20 minutes = 10%.
2. The greater the original gravity the less efficient the extraction. This is only of concern for beers above 1.050. Rager has developed a fudge factor formula that applies to beers above 1.050. In practical terms it has no affect until beers get above 1.060.

To use the formula, you as the brewer have to make a creative decision and decide how many IBUs to put into the beer and what the breakdown will be for the various hops. Use the BCJP guidelines to get basic IBU information and a sense of how much hop flavour you are looking for. Put the beer into one of the groups defined above. The formula will tell you how many grams or oz you need of each hop to hit that target.

grams = [ liters x (1+gravity adjustment) x IBU x .001 ] ÷ [ % Utilization x % Alpha acid ]

oz = [ U.S gal x (1+gravity adjustment) x IBU ] ÷ [ % Utiliz x % Alpha acid x 7462 ]

60 min = .3
45 min = .27
20 min = .1

Gravity adjustment = [ O.G. – 0.05 ] ÷ 0.2

Yes, these are the simple formulas! If you want to take into account your elevation above sea level and the age of your grandmother when she had her first kid there are formulas to help you along. For the rest of us, stick with Jackie.

Let’s do a 5 U.S. gallon India Pale Ale. Given the groups above that means we will be using a group three hopping strategy. That means two boiling hop additions, one at 60 min and one at 20 min and a third addition in the secondary. Lets just throw in one variety at each time, although in practice you can divide the IBUs between several varieties. We’ll have an O.G. of 1.070 and a total hop bitterness of 60 IBU (chosen using BJCP style guides). All 5 gallon carboys actually hold 5.25 US gallons so I calculate to have a full carboy of beer in my secondary (that is I actually make 5.25 US gallons of wort).

1. We are above 1.050 so we need to calculate a gravity adjustment. Remove the 1 from your O.G number e.g. 1.070 becomes .070
   G.A. = (0.070 – 0.05) ÷ 0.2 = 0.1
   Now add 1.0 to this number to get your GA = 1.1
2. Split the hop bitterness into a 60 minute and a 20 minute addition. Use 2/3 – 1/3 split. So 40 IBU bitterness at 60 min and 20 IBU bitterness at 20 min.
3. Choose your hops. How about Centennial at 10% AA and Cascade at 5%? Convert these to decimal - 0.1 and 0.05 respectively.
4. Do the math – for Centennial at 60 minutes.
   Oz = ( 5.25 x 1.1 x 40 ) ÷ ( 0.3 x 0.1 x 7462 ) = 231 ÷ 224 = 1.03 oz = 29 gms
   For Cascade at 20 minutes.
   Oz = ( 5.25 x 1.1 x 20 ) ÷ ( 0.1 x 0.05 x 7462 ) = 115 ÷ 37 = 3.1 oz = 88 gms
5. Dry hop with 1.5 oz using some combination of these two hops.

Notes: 1) There is no way to calculate hop bouquet. General guidelines are 1.5 oz –42 gms for high aroma, 1.0 oz – 28 gms for medium, 0.5 oz-14 gms for low. This assumes you are using high resin hops such as Cascade, Centennial, Bramling Cross, Mt. Hood or Santiam. 2) Be sure to boil your wort for 15-20 minutes before your first hop addition. This assures that hot break has occurred. Otherwise this break will remove some of the hops from the boil and reduce your IBUs.

Hop Combinations

Having gone through all the technical stuff now we get to the artistic, the non-quantifiable combinations of characters that work together to create wonderful hop character. Certain combinations of hops just seem to work wonderfully together. Some of these lead to absolutely classic profiles while others simply lead to great tasting beers that won’t fit into a well-defined category. Below is a highly opinionated rendition of some awesome hop combos.

American Ales

Centennial-Cascade. For American Ales it’s hard to beat the classic combination of Centennial and Cascade. I recommend using Centennial for bittering and a mix of Centennial and Cascade for character. Great for IPAs, American Pale Ales, American Amber Ales, American Browns and American style Porters.

Centennial-Cascade-Mt. Hood. Although a classic lager hop, Mt. Hood adds a nice spicy complexity to the mix. Substitute for about 1/3 of your Cascade. Works especially well for really hoppy beers like IPAs, American Pale Ales and American Brown Ales.

Cascade. Being the definitive North American hop, using Cascade throughout works just fine for all American Ales. It’s distinct citrusy signature defines all American ales and by using it exclusively you guarantee that you’ll be making a statement.

British Ales

Kent Goldings-Bramling Cross. These two floral hops just seem to feed off of each other when put together. Great for British style IPAs, Pale Ales and Bitters – any Brit. beer that has definitive hop character.

Bramling Cross- By itself Bramling Cross gives a pungent floral-herbal character. It can stand alone just fine in any bitter but becomes a bit one dimensional for complex beers like ESBs, Pale Ales and IPAs. By itself it is absolutely wonderful for Group 2 Ales because its low co-humulone content puts it into the noble hop category. These hops have a soft character that blends exceptionally well with rich malts and yet Bramling has enough punch to make itself known at a 45 minute addition.

Bastard Ales-IPAs

For this article I’m calling beers that don’t fit any national boundaries Bastard Ales.

Bramling Cross-Cascade. The combination of the floral and citrus qualities of these two classics is just unbeatable. It’s a perfect Anglo-American marriage. But it won’t fit any BJCP style except for IPAs. For a fine drinking ale not going into competition this is a perfect homebrew combination. However for competition what I do is mix in something like 10-20% of the countervailing hop just for complexity. Cascade is more aggressive so use it at the lower level and use Bramling at the higher. So for example, in an American Pale Ale you can mix in about 20% Bramling.

Bramling-Cascade-Mt. Hood. Hell while we’re at it why not go all the way and bring in the German Americans? While too muddied for Bitters this combination is fantastic in really big hoppy beers like IPAs and American Style BarleyWines.

Euro Lagers-Classic American Pils

Santiam-Mt. Hood. This is an American powerhouse combo that just knocks the socks off of any traditional European Pils duo. Santiam is a tetraploid cross between Hallertauer and Tettnanger. It has oodles of spiciness coupled with a deep earthiness. Mt. Hood is a North American Hallertauer, very much in the Old World style, but often being literally fresher and always with a crisper, palate. It is intensely spicy. While either hop can stand alone, when used in combination they are awesome. Santiam is an excellent bittering hop with lots of flavour to lay down a dynamite palette. Then use Mt. Hood as your flavour and dry hop to intensify the spicy character. Use for all pale German Lagers and for Classic American Pils.

Sterling-European Saaz. Sterling is an American version of Saaz and quite true to the style. The big advantage is that it is about 2-2.5 times as bitter as Saaz while still retaining a lot of flavour. Use Sterling as your bitter base and then dump in loads of European Saaz for flavour and late hopping. This will give you a classic Bohemian Pils character. (Note: American Saaz is generally too candy-like and is not a good substitute for Euro Saaz. If you cannot get real Euro Saaz stick with Sterling.)

Sterling-Santiam. Gives a great combination of spicy herbal character and deep earthiness. Great for German lagers defined by their hop character.

Santiam. Used by itself as a 45 minute hop addition this wicked hop makes itself subtly known in Amber and Dark lagers and in Boks. Being a combination of Hallertauer and Tettnanger you get both classic Germanic hops in one package. This also lends itself well to being the only hop for multiple additions in all German Pils.

Good Reads

Garetz, M. 1994. Using hops. The complete guide to hops for the craft brewer. HopTech. California. 222 pp.

Rager, J. 1990. Calculating hop bitterness in beer. Zymurgy 13(4): 53-54.

Zymurgy 1990 13(4) Hops and Beer. Special Issue.

Zymurgy 1997 20(4) The Classic Guide to Hops. Special Issue.

HopUnion website http://www.hopunion.com/ click on “information about hops”
This website is a gold mine of information about hops. It includes a 56 page PDF document describing every type of commercially available hop in the world. Anyone planning to take the BJCP exam would be advised to take a look at the basic hop information available on this website. No, you don’t have to memorize the 56 pages. (just 48 of them ☺)

Malty, Roasty, and Hoppy – The American Brown Ale

Most of the beer lovers out there have a great appreciation for smooth roasted chocolate flavors of a brown ale and the citric American hop flavors of an American Pale ale. Some brilliant Texan home-brewers decided to mix the two flavors together and thus the American Brown Ale was born. Brewers of the ABA beware! This style of ale is a huge crowd pleaser, so plan to have it consumed quickly after it is ready to drink. I brew about 3 batches of this style every year in order to keep up with the demand of my friends and brothers in law. Making this beer has a few tricks to it that I’ve learned over the years, and being that it is the one style that I have brewed many times over, I finally feel confident writing an article about a beer style.

Ingredients:

For the extract brewers out there, this style is perfect for you. Dry malt extract works well with the American brown ale, but I would recommend a pale extract with specialty grains rather than using dark extract. For the all grain brewer, use West Can malt for the base. It has awesome diastatic strength and therefore can handle a simple single infusion mash with no problems. There is no need to use special base malts like Golden Promise, because the subtle flavors of these malts would be lost in the hops and roast. Specialty malts include crystal and chocolate – and feel free to experiment. I use about 10 pounds (4.53 kg) of West Can (extract brewers can substitute about 6 pounds or 2.72 kg of DME), one pound (453g) of Crystal, and 6 ounces (170 g)of Chocolate malt.

For hops, I recommend any American hop variety such as Columbus, Cascade, Centennial, or Amarillo. For the big alpha hops, add them early in the boil, say for 60 min and put the low alpha guys in later to get the huge hop flavor and aroma.

Any European or American ale yeast will probably do the trick, but I’ve had the best results using Wyeast London Ale and/or British Ale.

The Brewing Process:

The Mash:

As I’ve already stated, this is an easy brew day from a mashing perspective. A single infusion at about 67 °C (153F) will do nicely for body and starch conversion. If you desire more body in your brown ale, mash a little warmer. Lauter for 20 minutes at a rate of 2 cups (0.5 L) per minute and sparge at 75 °C – 80 °C but a tad slower – at 1.5 cups (0.35 L) per minute for about an hour or so.

Hops:

You need a well balanced hop bitterness against the malt along with a good blast of hop flavor and aroma. Plan to get between 50 – 60 IBU if you have an original gravity of 1.060. For hop flavor and aroma, GO BIG. The lower the alpha acid in the hop the better, because more hops can be used and the flavor/aroma will be bigger. Without a doubt, this style requires you to dry hop or use a hop jack. A hop jack is for those who have an automated system with a pump and a counter flow wort chiller. It is an air tight vessel that holds hops as boiling wort passes through on its way to the CFWC. For those who are like me and have a simple brew set up, dry hopping works really well. Simply add hops to the secondary fermenter after racking. Let the hops soak in the beer for a week or two then siphon the beer into bottles. How much hop do you add? That depends on whether you have the hops in a hop bag or if they are loose. I like to go loose and add about 0.13oz (45g) of hops. The beer will taste grassy at first, but wait a few weeks and the vegetal flavors mellow right out.

Fermentation:

Use a healthy, active starter and ferment at 18 °C for as long as it takes.

When you open the first bottle and pour it, ask yourself – is the hop aroma big? If not, then next time add more flavor/aroma and dry hops. All of the flavors should balance nicely with the roasted flavors.

Good luck!

View from the Top of the Tun

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.

AHA Club-only 2004-2005 brewing season

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.

From the Bottom of the Mash

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:

• Best overall beer
• Closest to a BJCP style
• Most outrageous attempt at a style
• Best dress bottle

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…

Aurora Brewing Challenge 2004

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

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:

• By mail with cheque or money order (Registration mailing address below)
• On site (Capilano Community Hall - address above)

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:

Early bird (by April 17)

$30

After April 17 or On Site

$45

Additional banquet ticket

$10

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

Warm It

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.

Getting Keg Quality Carbonation in the Bottle

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.

View from the Top of the Tun

It should not be hard to tell were my mind is at right now. Competitions! We are right smack in the middle of the biggest 5-7 weeks of brewing competitions in western Canada: early May Regina, early June Edmonton, and the wrap up to the season, mid-June Calgary. Get those entries in to Edmonton by 28 May. I could go on and on about this but I know the rest of my team will be banging the drum so I don’t have to here. Rather I’ll devote my space to the kick off show of the season.

The season certainly started well with a total blow out in Regina: 615 entries! That is 360 more entries than either Regina or Edmonton had last year. Of those 615 entries, 160 came from Edmonton – we had 50 more entries from our club alone than the total number of entries last year when the competition was held in Toronto! Amazing. We kind of spooked Regina a bit with our high number of entries. Ours were the first entries to arrive and Bushwakker brewer Dave Rudge emailed me and said their cooler was already full and that was just from Edmonton! Not to be outdone Regina members responded to our challenge by coming up with some 200 of their own entries. Those numbers tell you just how powerful home brewing has become in western Canada this past year. But finally, yes finally, there is life in eastern Canada as the Montrealers and other Quebec clubs also competed with significant numbers this year and walked away with several fists full of medals. But the rally from the east could still not match the momentum of the west; Regina and Edmonton clearly dominated the show with a one-two punch in total medals taken. Well done to the West and what a great way to kick off the inauguration of the Western Confederation of Brew Clubs.

Besides the medal counts there were lots of things to be very happy about. It was great to see best of show go to their hard working competition organizer, Kelly Deis, who also dominated the show with a huge whack of medals. Kelly pulled off a Herculean feat – faced with 360 more entries than ever before, he organized his team of judges in an extremely efficient manner. Largely due to his efforts (although he would not admit it himself) Regina blew through the entries in a week, with the help of a last minute push with judges from Saskatoon and Edmonton. Kelly is just the most awesome gentle giant of a man who has to be the most modest brewer I’ve ever met. He has a generous spirit that well symbolizes the heart of western brewers.

Kelly will represent Canada well in the AHA finals. He is one of 6 Regina members coming to our competition and conference; make every effort to meet this man and make him feel welcome. We are privileged to have such talent working for the Confederation.

But Edmonton certainly wasn’t shut out of BOS, long time member Barry Hunt finally had a break-out-year and took 2nd BOS with a fantastically crafted Scottish 60. And a guy who has been absent on the national scene for a number of years, Harry Wagner, reasserted his presence with a fine 3rd BOS with his signature American Pale Ale. To top off BOS, mead maker of the year went to our local beer scribe, Greg Wondga, who not only had the best mead in the show, but also took two other medals for meads. Greg also was the 3rd best brewer in the show taking home something like 6 medals in a wide range of styles. This is fantastic from a guy who entered his first competition only two years ago. Of course his path was set right from the beginning because he took a silver medal in his first ABC and got a medal in the AHA finals last year.

For me there were a lot of highlights at the show but three were particularly outstanding. For years the AHA first round event in Canada has largely been dominated by a few brewers taking home most of the metal. This year was quite different and I think it marks the maturity that has been achieved by the western brew clubs. The reason it was different was that this year the medals were very well distributed amongst all the competitors; yes Kelly, Barry Bremner, and Greg each won quite a few, but other than that, the wins were well spread around. For example, Edmonton had 18 competitors this year and of those 18 something like 13-15 medaled. Not only did we jump from 3-4 guys competing, so many of them came away with one or two medals. That tells me there is a depth of talent that both clubs can tap into for the future, because we are most strong by having many talented people rather than having a few of us at some kind of demi-god status. I felt hugely proud both for Edmonton and Regina to be hearing so many different names being called at the awards banquet.

The second thing that felt so good was to have both cities shouting for and applauding the other city’s wins. As their president John Gray pointed out several times through the weekend, not only are we their biggest rivals we are their best friends. We are indeed sister clubs.

The third thing was more personal for me and what an honour it was. The best thing about being a high-ranking judge who doesn’t get a gold is the chance to do Best of Show. This is something that hasn’t happened in a long time for me at a national level show. The chance to do it with the dream team of judges that Kelly assembled more than made up for the lack of wins on my part. Kelly graciously chose 3 out of 5 judges to come from out of town, so not only did I get to judge with Dave Rudge and Garry Falkenstein of Regina, two of the most knowledgeable beer geeks in western Canada, I got to have Ken Nyback and Mark Nesdoly at the table. The way that team worked to efficiently and fairly get through that tough final flight was awe inspiring unto itself, let alone considering the quality beer on the table. If anybody needed reassuring that the most competent judges in Canada come from the west, they only had to watch that team of experienced people work their way through that flight. It was impressive. These guys are all leaders and I know each of them will continue to contribute to quality brewing in Canada, hopefully for a long time to come.

I know I left out several people integral to the success of the show and my excuse is simply that I don’t know all of you, but one name I cannot overlook is Regina’s President, John Gray. This is a really cool and gracious man, able to listen to my rants and move on, able to judge with masterful competence, and able to pull his team together under adversity. Make sure you meet the man when he comes to Edmonton. You won’t be able to miss him, he’ll be the guy standing there with long hair in a pony tail and a huge smile on his face.

Finally, I have to say congratulations to all the brewers from across the nation for helping making Regina’s show such a success. Several new brewers got medals, several people who have been trying for a long time finally broke out and some long-term winners kept their place at the podium. Even if you didn’t place you are a winner for competing and your future in brewing will only be better for it.

Now let’s move on to Edmonton and make that show the success that Regina’s was!

From the Bottom of the Mash

It’s been fun! As Roxy noted, we are in the middle of some of the biggest competitions of the season here in Canada. But, let’s start with some smaller competitions first.

The second annual BURRP! contest was a big success with 13-16 entries (depending on how you count the KGB’s entries.) Surprising, it was the newcomers to the competition who pushed out the last year's BURRP!ers. And, like last year, it was an opportunity to create something special with the potential of winning in other competition. The Cocoa Puffs Porter earned a silver medal in the Extreme category at the ALES competition right behind a barley wine-style wheat wine. If they haven’t done so yet, all of the BURPP!ers should definitely get their entries into the Experimental category for ABC.

The other exciting time for me at ALES in Regina was judging for the first time. I had volunteered to be a steward but due to the overwhelming number of entries, Roxy informed me that I would be judging! What! I’m supposed to try and pick out the “barley from the chaff” while sitting next to the more experienced judges? Well, it wasn’t a difficult time at all since I was paired with some more experienced judges who were very willing to guide me through my first flights. It turned out to be a wonderful time and a very good learning experience.

To be honest, I think my experience as a university professor helped with marking the entries, as the process is very similar to when I would mark student projects. But I am confident anyone who has been involved in some type of assessment or evaluation process will not have any trouble at all.

I am finding a big advantage of judging is being able to hone the skills in determining the “off flavours” in beers and recognizing when a good beer has been made. I found I was even developing a more discriminating taste for craft and macro-brewed beers including some not-so-good beers at a brewpub outside of Edmonton. With those skills, I am now seeing where I need to improve my own brewing techniques including being more “Mr. Clean”.

See you at ABC and Hotbreak...

Aurora Brewing Challenge 2004

It’s hard to believe our humble little competition is just a little week away. The medals have been ordered, just about all the sponsors have been recruited and many of the judges are ready to go.

Even though we have some volunteers for our event, we can really use some more help at both ABC and Hotbreak. 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. 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 selected your entries for our competition. We are striving to surpass the 300-entry level this year. Given Regina’s overwhelming success, I believe we can achieve our 300-entry goal - 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.

Any last minute information pertaining to the Aurora Brewing Challenge can be found on our website www.ehg.ca or send me an email if you have any other concerns. Besides the fill-able entry forms on the website, you will find them attached to the end of this issue.

I look forward to seeing you ABC and Hotbreak 2004.

On Becoming a Certified Beer Judge; BJCP exam scheduled for Mid-winter, 2005

Every two years the Edmonton Homebrewers Guild hosts a BJCP training session followed by the exam. Neil Herbst and I will again be teaming up to lead the training sessions starting in September 2004. The exam will be in late February 2005. Training sessions will be once a month on a Saturday afternoon starting September 18. We will also hold a few cram sessions in January. You don’t have to take the training session to write the exam, but it sure helps.

What will be most different this year is that a number of judges will be rewriting in order to attain higher grades and thus advance through the system. Having these additional experienced beer judges participating in the training sessions is sure to make this one of the best of all possible years to be going for your BJCP certification. If you have any interest at all in becoming a BJCP judge this is the year to do it. The tremendous growth in the number of entries in western Canadian regional competitions means there is growing demand for quality beer judges and also means there are many more opportunities to advance through the ranks. We highly encourage all interested members to sign up for this session and for the exam.

Exam fees are supposed to be $50.00 US but we will only be charging $50.00 CAD, the club will subsidize the rest. There will probably be a fee of about $20.00 to cover purchasing some of the beers necessary for the training sessions. We will have a sign up sheet at the September meeting but if you are interested talk to Neil or myself just so we can gauge interest in this event. For persons rewriting the exam, remember you do not have to write the whole exam, you can do either just the tastings or just the essays depending on which area you need most to improve. Exam writing fees are reduced for partial rewrites. You can check your exam scores on the BJCP website.

Seeing that it is never too early to start preparing for this exam we encourage you all to check out the BJCP website. There you will find style descriptions and a lot of information about how to prepare for the exam. Of course everyone would be well advised to attend the two BJCP training sessions being given at this years Hot Break conference! Unless you have been totally out of it in the last few months you will know that Canada’s only BJCP exam graders, Mark Nesdoly and myself, will be giving a session on how to prepare for the exam. And Neil Herbst will be leading an in-the-mouth session on beer faults that commonly are encountered in the tasting part of the exam.

Why be a BJCP beer judge?

On May 8th I had the honour of being a guest speaker at the Regina ALEs AHA qualifier competition. Following is an outline of that talk.

The reasons for becoming a BJCP judge fall into three broad categories: Personal - Club -Regional

PERSONAL

1. Makes you a better brewer
   1. knowledge of styles
      • get to taste a lot of different types of beer and interpretations of styles
      • Oh, I like that – I want to brew a beer like that.
      • I hate that style so I always get stuck judging it – This can teach you to appreciate and even come to enjoy a style that you once disliked knowledge of faults – you’ll taste a lot at competitions
   2. learn from other judges
      • naturally from more experienced judges
      • but someone is always better at identifying a flavour, aroma or fault than you are, whether that person is higher ranked than you or not
2. Makes you a better competitor
   1. know what goes on in a competition
   2. better idea of what a winning beer is
      • quality
      • uniqueness
      • what’s currently hot in your region and elsewhere
3. Makes you aware of trends in brewing
   1. you’re now part of the system so you have to keep current
      • why are style guidelines changing?
      • What new ingredients are out there?
      • Changes in techniques
      • Encourages you to try new brewing techniques, to experiment to be creative
        • oh, I like that – I want to brew a beer like that
4. Learn not to take judging or yourself too seriously
   • you’ve seen the booboos and burnout that can happen in competitions and so this helps you not to get too pissed when a good beer occasionally gets a bad score
   • or maybe you do come to understand that a certain region just doesn’t judge fairly or they don’t know what a certain style is all about
   • you can avoid them and know why
5. Makes you feel good
   1. it’s a good feeling to help other people, whether it’s your friends in the club or an anonymous stranger in a competition
   2. gives you confidence that you are a competent brewer
6. Makes you an effective teacher

CLUB

1. Makes your club stronger
   1. judges are often the teachers, the leaders or the people that other members naturally turn to for help
   2. every member’s improvement adds value to the club
      • ideally every member should be a judge
   3. creates a core of experts
2. Sense of comradery/bonding
   1. you’ve been through the exam, you’re judging at competitions – you’re part of a gang, fraternity or sorority
   2. you’re part of a benevolent elite that you want every member to attain
3. Your club can hold competitions
   1. if you don’t have judges you cannot hold competitions – the more judges you have, the higher their quality and the higher their rank the more prestigious competitions you can hold
      • and competitions are one of the two key elements to learning to Brew Better Beer, the other of course being a member of an active brew club

REGION

1. Clubs are not strong unto themselves – they are strong amongst themselves
   1. in other words we need each other to be strong, to be good, to be the best we can be
      • we need each other to compete against and to learn from
   2. judges are the emissaries between clubs
      • they are the ones who travel, share ideas and bring that knowledge back to their home clubs
   3. judges are naturally the ones to form political ties between clubs and between organizations
   4. judges hold political clout, they are the ones who will get the ear of the AHA and the BJCP
      • if you really want to be heard in beer politics then you have to be a judge – the higher rank the better
      • judges attract judges - the more judges you have in your club or region the more power your club or region has in the system. This makes sure good competitions keep coming your way, it makes sure that other judges will want to come to your club or region. The knowledge that those outside judges brings helps educate your people – and, as I said before, every members improvement adds value to your club

View from the Top of the Tun

Well we did it! We set out to break 300 entries for this year’s Aurora Brewing Challenge. Not only did we break 300 but we also passed the 400 mark, 401 to be exact. It could have been more! There were some 30 entries from The Houston Foam Rangers that didn’t make it to Alley Kat in time for the competition. At the time of this writing I’m still not sure where they all are other than some of the Foam Rangers have been tracking their shipment. Last year’s competition received a total of 238 entries that were judged in two days plus the BOS round on the Saturday. This year we added only one extra night on the Wednesday for a total of three nights plus the BOS round and we were able to give constructive evaluations on all 401 entries from our qualified judges and reliable stewards. This kind of commitment and effort typifies the quality of our membership in the Edmonton Home Brewers Guild. You should all be proud of your accomplishments this year.

Our club president, Roxy Hastings deserves a huge congrats for creating the competition/conference concept to celebrate our fifth year as an MCAB qualifier. Without Roxy’s persistence on turning an idea to reality this never would have happened. Neil Herbst did an outstanding job once again in serving as head judge and was also responsible for all the administration of the entries. Once the competition was over and the results were known there I was standing by Neil’s printer while Neil was spitting out all the results. Neil also was a major speaker at the conference held immediately after the competition. I didn’t know until a week later that Neil and his wife Lavonne were going through major renovations at their home during the week of the competition and conference. Talk about stressful and he never showed it for one minute. Bruce Sample, Richard Bruins and Mark Nesdoly did an excellent job in maintaining and recruiting new sponsors. We had some heavy- duty prizes to hand out this year thanks to their efforts.

It was great seeing so many of our fellow club members win and place at the competition. People who have never placed in the past received medals this year. Kudos goes to Roxy and Neil and other members for sharing their knowledge and training us so well. I for one have learned a great deal of knowledge from the two of you and I find the science of home brewing exciting as well as challenging.

The Hot Break Conference was fantastic. For those of you who missed it I feel sorry for you. New club member and fine arts student Loren Letourneau had his art works on display. His exhibit was impressive and I believe he sold some of his work that night.

We had four major talks starting with our club president Roxy and Mark Nesdoly addressing how to prepare for the BJCP exam which is a very time consuming, demanding test in your knowledge of brewing. Believe me you have to prove to the exam graders that you know your stuff!

Neil took the stage shortly after and presented major beer faults you’ll encounter during the BJCP exam. He doctored up a bunch of beers for all to sample – a totally interactive seminar that everyone appreciated. A good introduction for when Neil and Roxy conduct another BJCP course starting in September.

Club VP Kevin Zaychuk and EHG Editor Bob Boufford showed us how to turn Brew House kit beers into medal winners by tweaking the wort ingredients by adding steeped grains, liquid yeast and dry hopping. With a little time to spare Kevin shared his recent trip to Europe with a slide presentation on breweries. I only got to see a portion of it but judging from what I saw I have to go there one day.

Graham Monda of Johnson Diversey made a presentation on sanitation. I’m sure everyone is aware how sanitation plays a major role in the success or failure depending on how you look at it in brewing.

Our Keynote speaker was Greg Evans of Brewer’s Gold based in Victoria, BC who presented a one-hour slide show titled “From Bar to Heaven – the Evolution of Saloons in Victoria.” He showed us the lighter side of brewing – quite a rich history. A special thanks goes to Jim Whittome for arranging this.

Rose Oberhoffner put together a fantastic dinner for us. I don’t think anyone left hungry. Frank Kuzemski cooked the steaks to perfection on the grill. With help from Linda Hannah and Sarah Foster-Stubbs the dinner was awesome. Thanks everyone!

Now let's check out the awards. It was great to see so many of our fellow club members place at the competition. This shows that the quality of home brews coming from our club is getting better and better. The 1st place Best of Show went to Gary Falkenstein of the ALES Club - Regina for his Berliner Weisse, 2nd place BOS went to Kelvin Kundert of Marquis de Suds - Calgary for his “Catherine” in the Specialty Class and 3rd place BOS to our own Bob Boufford for his “Dante's Mixed up Lambic”. Brewer of the year went to Boyd Oberhoffner who tallied up 17 pts from the 30 entries submitted in the competition. An honourable mention goes to Frank Kuzemski who sent in 24 entries and Bruce Sample with 20.

Brewer of the Year, Boyd Oberhoffner (l) and ABC Competition Chair, Glen Hannah

Fellow members Bruce Sample and Mark Nesdoly assembled a great raffle prize - a beer fridge and programmable thermostat won by Kevin Zaychuk. Kevin’s on a roll, having won the grand prize at last year’s competition. The money raised from Boyd’s ticket sales went to the club for future functions. Rose Oberhoffner won the grand door prize – a home kegging system donated by Bruce Sample and Ernie Koban. Looks like we’ll be sampling many of Boyd’s draft beers later this year, right Boyd?

Six members from ALES Club from Regina came up armed with 3 kegs. Bob Boufford, Mark Nesdoly and I also donated kegs for the conference. That along with some 350 bottles of home brew was on hand for all to sample. The beer was flowing and needless to say we never ran short.

In club points the EHG took 1st with 88 pts, Ales Club 2nd - 42 pts and Foam Rangers/Marquis de Suds 3rd - 8 pts. Full details of the ABC winners can be seen on our website, http://www.ehg.ca.

Thank you to all helped out and made this year’s event the best one yet. If I forgot anyone I’m sorry.

See you in September.

From the Bottom of the Mash

It’s been fun and very educational time! Instead of waiting until September after the summer rains and sun have bleached away the memories, we thought a short "Best of Show" issue would be enjoyable summer reading. As Glen has noted, it was the best Aurora Brewing Challenge to date. And topped off with a wonderful Hot Break 2004 conference. It's not often one can sit through conference sessions while sipping beer at the same time.

For most homebrewers, summer is the time to relax and enjoy the beers made this past winter, even though many members continue to brew. While you may not brew during the summer, it's a good time to evaluate your beers, review the score sheets from the past competitions and plan for next seasons brewing along with the upcoming competitions. Don't forget our club mini-competitions starting off with smoked beers for September and IPAs for October.

See you in September after Labour Day…

Upcoming Events and Competitions

First EHG meeting of the 2004-2005 season

The club meetings are held on the first non-holiday Monday of each month. And since Labour Day falls on the first Monday in September, the first Edmonton Homebrewers Guild meeting will be September 13, 2004 starting at 7:30 PM at Alley Kat Brewing.

The theme and mini-competition for the meeting will be Smoked Beers. If you have any smoked beers, bring them along to the first meeting. There is still plenty of time to brew up a batch.

Foam Rangers Dixie Cup 2004

The Foam Ranger's Dixie Cup 2004 competition will be held in early October 2004. Besides being one of the largest homebrew competitions in North America, they always have a unique speciality category. Last year's category was "Beer that gets you Lei'd", a strong but smooth beer with a minimum OG of 1.080 but alcohol must not be detectable.

The year's planned special category is "2 for 1" by brewing a combination of previous Dixie Cup special categories. Those of you who brewed in the BURRP! 2 club competition may have an opportunity to re-enter your BURRP! beer as one of the previous Dixie Cup categories was Breakfast Cereal. The Cocoa Puffs Porter has a good chance since it had an OG of 1.086 and over 1 box of cereal. Current information on the competition can be found in the Foam Ranger's June newsletter, http://www.foamrangers.com/PDFs/tbu_200406.pdf and a listing of prior special categories at Dixie Cup homepage, http://www.crunchyfrog.net/dixiecup/index.phtml.

Beer Summit competition

This looks to be interesting as this BJCP sanctioned competition appears to be hosted by a commercial venture in the Boston area instead of a club. Entries are due in late October with judging in mid-November. Details can be found at http://beersummit.com

Other upcoming competition

There are many upcoming competitions listed on the BJCP web site, http://www.bjcp.org.