“In 1988, May 7 was announced before [US] Congress as National Homebrew Day. The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) created AHA Big Brew as an annual event to celebrate National Homebrew Day around the world. AHA Big Brew is held each year on the first Saturday in May.” – The American Homebrewers Association
Homebrew clubs around the USA and around the world celebrate National Homebrew Day differently. Our club has decided to celebrate it by partnering with a great local brewery, Lansdowne Brewery at 303 Lansdowne Ave.
On Saturday May 7th, we will collaboratively brew a 10 bbl batch of wort and split it among 50 club members to take home for a fee of $10 each (to cover the costs of the wort and competition). You can straight up ferment the wort as is, or Continue reading Toronto Big Brew for National Homebrew Day – May 7th→
A while ago I asked people if they would be interested in a club Rastal teku glass. Lots of people were interested so I thought I would put together a sign up sheet. We were able to find a new supplier that allowed us to lower the price to $10/glass without sacrificing the quality of the glass (still name brand Rastal Teku). The minimum order of now 200 qty instead of 144, but hopefully the 33% price reduction convinces more people to jump on or existing orders to be increased.
2015 was a busy year for our club! With 2016 now upon us it’s a great excuse to reflect back at what we accomplished together! It’s also a great time to look forward to the year ahead!
GTA Brews Club Members at Cask Days 2015 – photo by Ken Woods
Brew Slam and Summer Showdown
The first thing that comes to mind, is the huge success that was Brew Slam 2015. Our club put together a big competition from scratch this year. Starting Continue reading 2015 Wrap Up – What A Year!→
The 2015 GTA Brews Advent Exchange is done and we’re off to the races with two separate advent calendars this year! Twice the size from last year, and twice the excitement!
Note for participants: Please remember to indicate which calendar you are drinking when posting on the FB group. Eg. “Drinking beer 21E, great job Nick Perry!”
Thanks again to Toronto Brewing for hosting, please make sure to give them your love and make some purchases on pick up day!
Key Dates
Sign Up Open: Tuesday, Oct 13th, 2015 Sign Up Close:Tuesday, Oct 27th, 2015 (11:59 pm) Payment Deadline: Tuesday Nov 3rd, 2015 (11:59 pm) Split Date: Friday Nov 13th, 2015 Main Pick Up Date: Saturday Nov 14th, 2015 (10:30 am – 1:30 pm) Continue reading GTA Brews Fall 2015 Grain Buy→
Brew Slam 2015 judging and awards wrapped up last weekend and it was quite a whirlwind of activity. If you haven’t noticed yet, results from Brew Slam 2015 have been posted to the site. We ended up with 318 entries, 31 judges, and 9 stewards over both days of judging. Pretty great turnout for a first year competition!
Our first annual BJCP-sanctionned competition, Brew Slam 2015, is here and we are very excited. The entries are all in and we are working on unpacking and sorting them all before the first judging day on Friday. We will update when we have a final tally of entries. We are adding sponsors constantly and already have a few Pro-Ams lined up for winners! This competition is part of the Brewer of the Year circuit has entrants from all over Canada.
Deadline: September 25th, 2015
Judging Dates: October 2nd-3rd, 2015
Pop-Up Bar and Award Ceremony: October 4th, 2015 @ Lansdowne Brewery
Tickets are now on sale for the Brew Slam Pop-Up Bar, where the awards for Brew Slam 2015 will be presented.
I thought this would be a good place to start documenting all the awesome prizes our winners from the Brew Slam 2015 Homebrew Competition will get. Time to get excited because we have some amazing prizes that will make you want to enter and win! Follow this link to register!
Ontario, and Toronto in particular, is currently experiencing a renaissance in homebrew retail, and public interest. There are countless new homebrewers buying starter kits every day, just ask the local homebrew shops (LHBS). This is definitely related to the exponential growth that craft beer in Toronto has experienced in recent years. People have been Continue reading The Toronto Homebrew Scene→
We had a very successful club meeting last Saturday at Mark’s house! It was 35*C outside and calling for rain but we still managed to have a great time and sample lots of awesome beer. We had several members come out and join us for their first meeting, and it was a pleasure meeting all of you in person!
The Gratzer we brewed at Noble Hop at the May meeting came out wonderfully with a medium level of oak smoke character from the 100% oak smoked wheat grain bill. We brewed the wort for a club saison that will be dry hopped with 2 oz of Pekko hops Continue reading July 2015 Meeting Recap!→
Results are up for the GTA Brews Summer Showdown 2015! As we begin to wrap up our first competition run as a club I must say it went rather well. We planned for 20-30 entries in our club only competition and we had a total of 35 entries judged, all local to the GTA. Congrats to Matt Sulker and his Best of Show winning IPA! Congrats to all the winners! Scores have been input to the system, and score sheets will be emailed out to participants in a few days.
At the GTA Brews January Club meeting Eric presented this intro to water slideshow. It has been asked for a few times so here it is in a publicly accessible place! This presentation is meant to somewhat basic, it also makes some generalizations that hold true for Toronto water but may not hold true for other water sources.
Welcome to the homepage for GTA Brews. This page serves as an central location for items that would get lost on our Facebook Group, and to host our competition software. All of our groups discussions happen on our Facebook Group, so don’t miss out and join today!
When people think of advent calendars they usually think of candy, but since we are a homebrew club we were thinking beer. The idea was that we would get 24 people to sign up and brew a beer to put in the calendar. Each person would be assigned a day of the month so that we are all drinking the same beer on the same night, then we can discuss it. James Kennedy put in the effort to make it happen, organizing the exchange and making the calendar below. In the end we had 26 brewers participate in the exchange. Here’s to a month of great beers!
The calendar schedule for 2014.
I took a few blurry pictures of the exchange, it was a bit cramped and everyone was moving around!
This past weekend was our 15th monthly meeting as a club and I’m constantly amazed that so many great brewers come out to share their beers. We had a good amount of new faces and lots of repeat attendees. I found the that the quality of beer was very high this time around, including beer from several people that were insisting they weren’t that great! Remember, just because you didn’t hit your gravity or mash numbers right on, or it doesn’t taste exactly how you imagined, doesn’t mean it doesn’t taste great!
I dragged them outside in the cold for a picture!
The Brett IPA we brewed in October at Geof Trail’s house was fantastic. On the nose I got a little bit of funk but also tons of tropical fruit (mango, pineapple). Right on with what we were aiming for. I’m hoping to bottle some up to bring to future club meetings, and to do a full review.
Our wonderful hosts Shaun Staples and Peter Kirby guided us through their Brew In a Bag (BIAB) system on stove top. A great system that many small space brewers can take inspiration from. We brewed a clone of Firestone Walker’s Double Barrel Ale, which is an oak aged English Pale Ale.
Unfortunately this was the last meeting for our friend Shaun Staples who has been an active member since meeting #3 and when the group was less than 40 people on Facebook (now over 360!). Best of luck in Australia, come back and visit sometime!
8.5 lbs of Pearl / 2 row (67%)
2 lbs of Maris Otter (16%)
1 lb Munich I (10L) (8%)
12 oz Crystal 75L (6%) (preferably english crystal)
4 oz Crystal 120L (2%)
1 oz Chocolate Malt (0.5%)
0.33 oz @ 14%AA Magnum for 60 mins (13.5 IBU)
1 oz @ 5%AA EKG for 30 mins (11 IBU)
1 oz @ 5%AA EKG for 20 minute whirlpool after FO (4.5 IBU)
1 oz @ 4.5%AA Fuggles for 20 minute whirlpool after FO (4 IBU)
WLP002
1.25 oz Medium toast oak cubes for 14 days, to be added after first 24 hours. Will soak in Whiskey or Cognac first, depending on what’s handy.