Canberra Brewers

Wig & Pen Brew Day

By Sam Highley, Editor

One of the most popular days on the Canberra Brewers calendar each year is the Wig & Pen Brew Day. The extremely generous support of Lachie McOmish (owner) and Richard Watkins (brewmaster) of the Wig & Pen allowed about sixty members and friends to gather at the crack of 9am on Saturday 4 June, for a day full of beer, coffee, cheese and food.

Richard set out to provide evidence that a focus on the process, rather than the ingredients, is the best way to improve your brewing. With this in mind, he designed a beer featuring no less than sixty ingredients, including twenty different types of both malt and hops. The resulting beer was on-tap recently at the July club meeting, and the general consensus was that it was a definite winner.

Club competition two — 2011

By Mark Bilbrough, Competition Secretary

With 45 beers, 10 judges, three stewards, one-and-a-half days and a great venue, we judged a fantastic selection of beers for the Canberra Brewers Club Comp 2 on July 2 and 3. Over the course of the weekend, Canberra Brewers finest Scottish and American Ales, Lagers and a couple of RISs were on show.  Club Comp 2 covered: American Pale Ale, American India Pale Ale and Imperial India Pale Ale; Premium American Lager, Munich Helles, Dortmunder Export, German Pilsner, Bohemian Pilsener, Classic American Pilsner; Vienna Lager, Oktoberfest, Munich Dunkel, Schwarzbier, Maibock/Helles Bock, Traditional Bock, Doppelbock; Scottish Light 60/- and Scottish Heavy 70/-; and, last but definitely not least, Russian Imperial Stout.

June club meeting

By Sam Highley, Editor

The Canberra Brewers hold a club meeting on the first Thursday of every month, except in January, because a large chunk of the membership is away on holidays. These meetings are held in the cosy surrounds of the Harmonie German Club's bierkeller, deep inside their building in Narrabundah, and kick off around 7:45pm.

The meetings are a great opportunity to socialise with other people who are passionate about craft beer and brewing, and everything that this entails. Members bring along samples of beer that they've brewed, and there's always plenty of quality product on offer to sample. This not only gives people the opportunity to get feedback on their beer, but also to swap recipes, and details about the process, with other people when they sample something they like.

IPA is Dead? I think not

By David Gilks

You either love or hate the Scottish brewery Brewdog.  They deliberately create controversy, breaking the British brewing mainstream and producing ridiculous beers like Tactical Nuclear Penguin, their 32% ice-distilled Imperial Stout.  That said, they also make some quality beer, and are one of the few breweries we get in Australia that produce a commendable American IPA.

Brewdog recently release a series of four single hopped American IPAs called IPA is Dead.  Using four of their favourite hops, Bramling X (UK), Citra (USA), Sorachi Ace (Japan) and Nelson Sauvin (NZ), Brewdog sought to highlight the features of these hops in a 7.5% single-hop IPA.  All four beers use the same malt backbone and the same late hopping schedule, with the only difference being the amount of bittering hops used to get the beer to its 75 IBU.

Member Profile: Chris De La Rue

Compiled by Patrick Baggoley

People get into serious home brewing for many different reasons. They might enjoy the creative side of learning new recipes, the engineering side of solving process issues or building equipment, the material side of collecting gadgets and toys, the sharing good beer with mates, or just the challenge of creating a quality product from first principals.

Chris De La Rue, aka Growler, is one person who ticks all those boxes, and more. To say he is passionate about beer and brewing is an understatement. Some may say he's obsessive, and who are we to say that’s a bad thing!

Meticulous is the best word to describe both Chris’ brewing and his home brewery. On a brew day, everything is polished (literally) and planned to the nth degree, an impressive sight. The equipment is carefully thought-out, and you know he’s spent just as much time planning the recipe as he has working out the process.

Member Profile: John Worthy

Compiled by Sam Highley

For this second member profile, we thought we'd introduce you to a member that many people in the club will not have met, despite being a member since 2007. John lives all the way out in rural Royalla, about twenty minutes past Tuggeranong on the way to Cooma, so he doesn't get to too many club meetings. I guess the lack of carpool opportunities, along with the non-existent bus and taxi service out that way, makes meeting-attendance somewhat challenging.

In between being attacked by trees while mowing paddocks around his property, John leads the ideal semi-retired rural life: brewing beer in his garage, and then consuming it!

Member Profile: Mark Bilbrough

Compiled by Patrick Baggoley

Like many good brewers, Mark Bilbrough (better known as Billy) started out playing with kits in order to get cheap beer. But the Canberra Brewers helped turn this into a full-blown addiction to American hops and an unsettling devotion to Jamil Zainasheff and the Brewing Network.

Billy’s engineering background makes each brew session an exercise in striving for precision, chasing numbers and playing with gadgets while trying to eliminate unnecessary steps from the process. And this has resulted in some outstanding results.

This year while juggling work travel, family duties and brewing as much as possible (all while listening to BN podcasts), he’s also taken on the role of Competition Secretary, having successfully run our first club comp for 2011 — a huge effort considering we had a whopping 50 beers.

And, like most good engineers, he enjoys the challenge of finding the bottom of a beer glass, whenever possible. Repeatedly. ;-)

The brewers behind the beer

By Patrick Baggoley

This week we’re starting what we hope will be a fortnightly series of club member profiles. The plan is that these will help us get to know each other better, and share some useful information about the different ways we aim to go about achieving essentially the same thing: brewing great beer. The philosophy is that there are few “wrong” ways to do things, and an almost infinite number of “right” ways. The brewer with the simplest process can often teach the brewer with the most complicated equipment a thing or two, and vice versa.

We’ve drawn up a list of basic questions, which may evolve over time or change depending on the person being questioned. And, as usual, a picture tells a thousand words so hopefully we’ll be able to put together a good image bank to help illustrate how different members go about their hobby. Anyway, to kick things off, our first profile will be of our venerable Competition Secretary, Mark Bilbrough (aka Billy), and will be published in the next few days.

Club competition one — 2011

By Mark Bilbrough, Competition Secretary

Wow, what an awesome day, 50 beers over eight styles and not an APA in sight. On Sunday 27 March the Canberra Brewers were out in force for Club Competition One. Dicko’s place was the venue (thanks Dicko) to judge English Brown Ales, Light & Amber Hybrids, English Pale & English India Pale Ales, Belgian & French Ales, Belgian Strong Ales and Stouts. A big thank you to the judges (Ross Mitchell, Tom Dixon, Sam Highley, Jamie Harwood, Chris Duffy, David Gilks, Ben Harmer & Paul Haesler), the new judges who stepped up to the challenge (Craig Stokes, Martin Budden & Chris De La Rue) and the hard working stewards (Patrick Baggoley and Paul’s mate Steve).

Canberra Brewers Incorporated

By Sam Highley, Editor

The Canberra Brewers club reached a significant milestone on 10 March 2011 when the club successfully incorporated as an association in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). This followed the successful vote on various motions at the February meeting that allowed the club to proceed to the formal registration process.

Incorporation as an association allows the club to, amongst other things, obtain public liability insurance. Having this insurance will mean that the club can participate in a greater number of public and community events. Club President Tom Dixon (aka Dicko) points out that being able to provide fully insured brewing demonstrations and tastings at events like the Australian Science Festival, National Capital Craft Beer Festival and Multicultural Festival, is a great way of enhancing the connection of the club to the community.