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.