Mr. Gregory has done well, very well indeed.....

[Tim Gregory]

I heard from the folks at Beau's today. We're going to brew the beer to be released at Toronto Beer Week in September. Works out well because I travel up that way every August.

[akr71]

& that works out well with my plans to visit my folks in Ottawa sometime around Thanksgiving.

Congrats again!

[mr x]

Excellent!

[jeffsmith]

Exciting stuff, congrats again!

[chalmers]

I heard from the folks at Beau's today. We're going to brew the beer to be released at Toronto Beer Week in September. Works out well because I travel up that way every August.

You're welcome.

Let me explain: I visited Beau's on Monday, and they were talking about their CABA pro-am brew, which was released Thursday. I asked about their Toronto Beer Week beer, with my brew buddy Tim. Well, neither Chris or Andrew (the two asst. brewers on hand) knew who or what the heck I was talking about. I said, "Well, you might want to look into it, because he definitely won something."

As an aside, Beau's has 26 fermenters going at any one point, and 20 of them are full of Lug Tread. That thing is crazy popular for them!

[KMcK]

Damn. You should have mentioned the rest of us who were offered a chance to brew with them.

[Tim Gregory]

Well that explains why I didn't hear from them til last week. I wonder if they were running around trying to figure out who I was after you left.

Thanks Chalmers! I owe you a beer

[Brewnoser]

I heard from the folks at Beau's today. We're going to brew the beer to be released at Toronto Beer Week in September. Works out well because I travel up that way every August.

Let's see about planning this one ahead. I can always find a reason to be in Toronto with adequate warning.

[Tim Gregory]

Just an update on this:

It's finally happening on Friday!

I'll post details next week.

[Graham.C]

Take some pics if you can!
Edit: or are they brewing it without you?

[Tim Gregory]

Nope, I'm flying up tomorrow night. We had a hell of a time getting it all finalized. Looked like it was gonna fall apart at the last minute, but it looks like its gonna happen.

[Tony L]

Way to go, Tim.
Knock them out.

[KMcK]

Are you taking your cat?

[homebrewcrew]

Are you taking your cat?

[Graham.C]

Are you taking your cat?

Cats are the secret to any good brew.

[Dirt Chicken]

Are you taking your cat?

Cats are the secret to any good brew.

They actually very well may be!! Proven to lower stress and blood pressure, key to good cooking and brewing !!

[Dirt Chicken]

as well as killing any mice that attempt to break into your grain supply!!!

[derek]

Cats are the secret to any good brew.

They actually very well may be!! Proven to lower stress and blood pressure, key to good cooking and brewing !!

Well, yeah ... but tastes like chicken.

[hogie]

Nope, I'm flying up tomorrow night. We had a hell of a time getting it all finalized. Looked like it was gonna fall apart at the last minute, but it looks like its gonna happen.

What's the latest news on your beer Tim? I'm going to Ottawa this weekend and thinking of visiting Beau's. Will they be serving it at the brewery?

[Tim Gregory]

At this point your guess is as good as mine. I haven't heard anything from them in a few weeks and they although they are really great folks, they don't seem to be too great about replying to emails... They're busy with a lot of stuff right now including a big expansion.

I was in contact with a person from the marketing department a few weeks ago about when/how it was going to be released, but I haven't been told anything firm. My understanding is that it will be released as part of TO beer week.

I will have a report on the brewday soon. In brief, it was great!
And no Kyle I didn't bring my cat, they supplied their own.

[Tim Gregory]

Ok, I'm finally gonna give the report. I've been holding off because I wanted to include pics, but I can't seem to get the pictures off my phone. So I only have this one pic that someone else took for now.

I arrived on the Thursday night and went out for beers and pizza with the head brewer Matt, and another brewer named Kevin, who was the one I actually worked with most of the day. That's him behind me in the pic. Matt was pretty busy overseeing a major expansion to the brewery so he was only dropping by now and then during the brewday.

IMG_0690.JPG

The night out was fun. We had some Beau's Lugtread at the pizza joint, then went to a bar I think was called Windsies or something like that and had their seasonal Festivale, and altbier. Vankleek Hill is pretty small and I'm pretty sure this was the only bar in town. It turned out that pretty well every person in the bar worked at the brewery, so I got to know quite a few of them before the actual brewday. I stumbled back to the hotel room somewhere around 2ish.

Bright and early on Friday morning we met at the brewery and got started. I was feeling a bit groggy but once we got going I was having too much fun to notice.

This would be better with pics, but you all know what a brewery looks like I'm sure. I think Kevin had a pretty easy day because I did most of the hard work (that's the way I wanted it of course). There were a total of 20 bags of malt in the recipe. I stirred the grain bed as the water and grains flowed in while Kevin was emptying the bags into the mill so I guess he didn't have all the easy jobs.

I think we were mashed in by around 10:30. Then we had a break and tried some beer. I got to meet some people. It turned out that Kelly who won the Garrison Brewoff this year was doing her work placement at Beau's, as well as a few other students. So I got to talk to her and help her clean and sanitize the fermenter the wort eventually went into.

Mostly though during the downtime we were sampling beers and talking brewing. Beau's encourages the staff to homebrew and so their cold room was full of cornies of test batches the brewers were trying to perfect, which they would then scale up for special events. I also got to do a tasting panel to evaluate their beers and attend a birthday party for a girl who worked there. We had cake..mmm cake.

After lunch when the mash and sparge were over I had to do some real work. Emptying the grains from the mash tun with a rake into a big tub. They sell all their spent grains and old yeast to a pig farm. This beer is pretty strong and they said it was the fullest they've ever seen one of their tubs. It took a long time. Did I mention it was really hot that day?

The rest of the brewday was pretty standard. Boil, add hops, chill, pitch yeast. The most work I did was climb into the kettle after the boil to scoop out all the trub. It was literally the hottest I've ever been in my life. I'm not 100% sure but I think they may have been making me do things the hard way just for laughs.

All in all it was a great day. The brewery itself is a lot bigger than I expected, and growing quickly. Their new fermenters they were installing are huge, and their new larger mashtun and kettle will make their jobs a lot easier. They had a lot of people working there (I'm pretty sure it is the biggest employer in Vankleek Hill) so I didn't get to meet everyone, but I did get to talk to a lot of them. They seemed to have a lot of fun. I guess my job would be fun to if I got to sample beer all day though. When we were finished we hung out and tried some of my beers that I brought including the dubbel we brewed.

We ended up brewing 1800L. It wasn't the exact recipe I originally brewed, but I think it will be pretty close. Beau's uses 100% organic ingredients so it was challenging coming up with the exact same recipe. I still think we made a good beer though.

They sent me home with some of their beer and I got a t-shirt and some glasses, etc. Matt said they could send me out some of the beer when it is finished. It doesn't look like I'll be able to make it up for the release unfortunately, but as long as I get to try some it's cool.

I'll post some pics once I get my phone figured out. Thanks for reading my long winded story!

[BBrianBoogie]

Good stuff Tim, thanks for the report. Sounds like a good visit/brewday.

[mr x]

Sounds like a fun time!

Sent from my Nexus S

[jeffsmith]

Sounds like a good time, thanks for the report!

[chalmers]

Awesome Tim!

It seems that breweries are usually giving away (or paying others to take away) the spent grain, so that's impressive that they've got farmers paying for it. I wonder what the old yeast would be used for? Marmite for the pigs?