We swept the GCHC 2010 Best of Show winning Gold/Silver/Bronze. 7 Gold, 5 Silver, 4 Bronze overall. Finally Homebrewer of the Year trophy also. 10 months of planning, brewing, sweat (don’t worry - not much made it in the beer), and tears finally paid off. The only thing that tasted better than our beer was victory!
We brought along 20 litres of the infamous BeerShack Snack Pack too. Ray Daniels and Mr Duggan were amazing. All the Best homebrewers and Brew Brains were there. What a blast!!
It’s going to be quite The Show this Saturday at the Rhino. This year’s GCHC has a line up unlike any I’ve *EVER* seen, Ray Daniels and Mike Duggan will both be presenting at the event. Even one of those guys alone is enough reason to show up, I just hope this area doesn’t implode under the sheer brewing brain power!!
Great Brewers, Great Homebrewers, and Great Homebrew all in one GCHC - now that’s a ‘G‘ event, G4, worth a billion (sorry G20+7)! I’m sure there will be some other pleasant surprises awaiting all too.
NOT TO BE MISSED!!
PS: BeerShack will of course be bringing along some award winning goodies for tasting too.
Well, it’s National Homebrew Day!! HAPPY HOMEBREW DAY ALL!! So BeerShack brewed up a storm of 3 brews in under 8 hours! That’s a record. All the stars aligned for this despite brewing 2 of the 3 decoction style (a bit time consuming). A flawless brewing session!!
We wont release what was brewed quite yet until the yeast has it’s way with the wort. You can usually tell a great beer from the wort. If the wort is great, so will be the beer (assuming you provide right yeast and temp). The 3 batches brewed today were all amazing.
On the homebrewers garden front.. the hops are wel established and the barley is sprouting out. Second driest April on 100 years! Yikes!! I’ll take some pics this week and post ‘em.
First time entry into NHC…. 4 silver and 4 bronze out of the best of the best in Canada (300+).
Another Successful Competition… not bad for a club of 3:
So now we go International amongst The Best in the World! Stay tuned to BeerShack channel for more victory. Raise a glass of Homebrew and hope we score in the top 3 of AHA NHC!! Shack Attack is coming!!!
7 medals MiM 2010… 1 gold… 4 silver… 2 bronze… 3 honourable mentions… not too good BUT better than a kick in the pants with a frozen boot. We’ll see what happens in the NHC next week. We have a strong line up indeed!!
Hops are 10cm out of the ground now. We dumped many bags of manure and other goodies last fall. I added some wood ash too. If it’s a hot year I expect great harvest this year. We’l see what happens.
Really want to nail down the 1m beer this year. I sowed some more fromosa barley. 1metre beer will happen. I will defeat the flying barley piranha from hell!! Who’s THE environmentalist now!!!
We’re off to MiM with the best of the CABA crew! Starts at Le Cheval Blanc next Saturday… that alone was enough to get me to sign up! This is one of the best…. if not The Best Brew Pub in Montreal. Once I saw Cheval Blanc I said ‘gotta go’. Last Sept after our Beau’s adventure, Ed, Bill, and I met the brewmaster Elloi, great guy (super knowledgeable) and he wasn’t even officially in that day but just happened to pop in on his vacation -great timing for us! We ended up there the Sunday afternoon AFTER hitting a bunch of other places and being VERY disappointed. DDC was even bit disappointing (we were banking on them being #1 so our expectations were EXTREMELY HIGH) as it was the weekend after their 10th anni celebration and most of the good stuff was cleaned out (just bad timing). All the Cheval stuff we tried was most excellent and Ellio gave us some of his ‘Grand Reserve’ stuff. It really made the Montreal portion of the Beau’s trip worth while.
You may not know but MiM competition was in jeopardy this year. Thanks to the efforts of Tico and the rest of Montrealers, it was rescued it from the claws of doom! A debt of gratitude is owed to them, esp Tico for putting in the effort to revive it and putting together a dream line up with CABA (Cheval Blanc/McAuslan/Brasseurs Illimitees/Broue Pub Brouhaha/etc - are you kidding me?). Steve Hodos also worked most diligently to put this show together. He’s done so for many years selflessly, so if you see him or Tico buy them a pint of The Finest to show your gratitude!
It’s going to be a great time to be sure! I’ll try to take some pics and post it to the site but mostly we’ll be enjoying The Show and the great company of brewers (home and craft) around us.
What a dream!! I CAN NOT WAIT!!!!
Hey! It’s the BEST month of the Year!!!
Time for BS to go International. No more Mr Nice Guy. The gauntlet has been dropped. BS will target the NHC this year in hopes to get placed in AHA (http://alesclub.com/index.php/competitions/details/21-homebrew-open-2010). The kettle is a cooking. Failure is not an option! Enough of 5 word sentences! Dammit, I did it again! DOH!!! Anyways, targeting the Belgian category this time so rest of the homebrew world better WATCH OUT! It’s ‘take no prisoners’ right! We are up to 40 medals since 2008 for CABA competitions. We need some international medal to prove we are the leaders and the rulers of the homebrewing world.
I’d really like to see a Canadian Pro-Am competition because I TRULY believe there’s A LOT of Canadian HB Craft that is equal to or even better than Commercial Craft brew! Hear that SOB brothers? Nuff said!!
Long live The Craft!
That’s it for 2009 competition. AGM Nov 14th BS crew added another 6 bronze, 4 silver, and 4 gold. Including BOS (Best of Show) silver and bronze. Total medal count for 2009: 10 gold, 10 silver, and 8 bronze in Canadian Amateur Brewing Association competitions for 2009. GCHC BOS Gold and AGM BOS silver and Bronze, not bad. Almost triple our 2008 medals!!
Tommy Gun APA rx’d solid reviews and won Ontario East for in the Cask Days votes ( http://www.caskdays.com/ ). Also scored decent reviews on Rate Beer and Bar Towel. All in all I think we showed all that homebrewers are able to stand up amongst the best of the Commercial Craft Brewers. Oh, if anybody wants to order Tommy Gun, please contact Beau’s, it’s $9 for 750ml bottle and $18 for 2L growler. All tax included. Will be at some select LCBO’s soon.
Between working at the Pioneer Brewery, brewing at Beau’s, and winning best club of 2009 along with 31 medals 2009, I’m really not sure how we can top all this going into 2010. It’s been the busiest year in memory and we’ve brewed over 6000 Litres of beer commercially and homebrew wise. In addition to judging Ontario Brewering Awards and Canadian Brewing Awards, gained a lot of knowledge and experience along the way, which has exponentially increased our craft brewing points!
This year there’s a certain electrical magic happening amongst homebrewer crowd, from Eastenders/Biergotter/SOB(TAFTHBD)/BT/BS and beyond, there’s more interest in The Craft this year than I can remember. Several suppliers to homebrewers like Bryan ( http://www.homebrewersretail.com/servlet/StoreFront ) and Soda Shop folks ( http://www.sodacentre.com/ ) have stated that business is way up. Hopefully we can keep the momentum rolling into 2010!
Long Live The Craft!!
Quick update.
Well… the harvest is in but it’s only about 70% of last years harvest. Due to Pioneer work and the excursion to Beau’s and Montreal, kinda missed the prime picking window. Lost a bunch of cascade but still picked a fair quantity of premium hops! Used a bunch to make a wet hopped brew, which is pretty amazing so far, if I dare say so myself! I have some pic’s to add but my puter is fried right now so adding them is delayed.
Dried all and vac packed within 2 days of harvesting! The BS patented “cold drying” really makes a BIG difference in retaining the aromatic qualities. So we are fully armed with excellent quality hops for our competitive brewing this fall/winter. That’s right! The BeerShack kettle is fired up!!
Cask Days begins in a week away now and the beer we crafted at Beau’s “Tommy Gun” will be there under the Beau’s banner. We’ll see how it stacks up amongst the other great craft brew! We haven’t even tried it yet!
A BIG heartfelt thanks extended to Beau’s, CABA, and OCB for making this happen. Hope it’s a success or we will go down in flames! At least it’s better then fading away LOL!!
Well, my 2 row did very well this year and was very plump end of July. I left it there to dry out a bit before harvesting and The Birds got to it before I did. It was a massacre beyond belief. My neighbour said he witnessed the crime and saw about 50 black birds descend upon my unprotected barley, cleaned everything within about 5 minutes, and then made a gateway before any action could be taken. I was left with about 2 lbs of skinny left overs. So much for the barley! Next year have to use netting. Didn’t have a problem last year. Weird.
WRT hops, Goldings suffered this year due to potassium deficiency. Once I realized it and added K the Golding quickly recovered. Guess have to be more careful next year. Nugget weren’t as big as last year. Cascade are doing well though. Saaz already harvested, dried, and vac packed. Golding and Nugget will have to be harvested soon. Don’t think I’ll get the 26lb of total wet hops as I did last year. We’ll see!
