The Brewer's Guild

In this audio clip, a few folks from the group get interviewed by CBC Thunder Bay’s Gord Ellis. The piece originally aired on Dec 29, 2011 at 8:15 am on 88.3 FM Thunder Bay, and was orginally recorded on Dec 21, 2011.

Jay Dampier, Home Brewer, Science Guy, Beer Nerd

Darren Foulds (Home Brewer and Dreamer)

Beautiful things can come, 23L at a time. I did up a batch of blonde ale beer (maybe a bit like MGD). I added 2 kg of blueberries into the secondary fermentation vessel, then added my brew. I am going to let this go for another two weeks before bottling. The sugars from the blueberries have given the yeast something to munch on. Cheers! -Jay

Jay’s “PhD” Russian Imperial Stout. How I did it…

In this video I kind of walk you through the steps I took in making one HUGE beer. The ABV when it was all said and done, is a little shy of 11% ABV. This high gravity beer will be very bitter-sweet with a low-ish carbonation. The plan is to let this brew age for as-long-as-it-takes for me to do my PhD. I am hoping in less than three years.  In this video I do not show you all the steps in putting a brew down, so I’d encourage to you to check out Craig’s yt channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/CraigTube 

I brewed my first partial mash recipe this weekend and it was the best brewing experience I’ve had to date. Everything smelled and tasted so delicious. I can’t wait for Christmas when this Belgian Dubbel will be in it’s prime!

I wrote up my experience, including some of the joys and pitfalls I encountered at my blog. If you’re thinking of stepping up from the extract kits to a partial mash, this will tell you what to expect and hopefully encourage you to take that step.

It’s taken me weeks to bottle my latest batch of cider. This time, I found some cider to ferment, not juice. It had lots of pulpy stuff in it. I was concerned for a while because, without thinking, I pitched the yeast into the cider straight out of the fridge. But the little critters warmed up and did their thing. I let it sit for weeks, so it was really clear when it came time to bottle. Still, I picked up some sediment in the process and hope that with the dextrose I added to the 750ml bottle, I’ll get a bottle conditioned sparkling cider this time around.

Darren

(Source: darrenfoulds.com)

In this video we sample a couple of Derek’s sweet wines. We also chat a bit about why sulphites are used in wine making and other things as well.

In this video we’re back at it, tasting a bunch of home made beers representing a few different styles. Here we try a 2 year old dark ale, a stout, a coffee stout and a draft. We were also snacking on freshly caught smelt and some homemade whole wheat bread.

Benjamin Franklin