Good Afternoon Members.

Tonight we are hosting the 2nd last ALES Club meeting of the season. The beer style of the month is “Sour Beers” and we’ve procured a number of local and Alberta based sours to taste.

The main focus of the meeting is “Sensory Training” for beer tasting/judging. We have vials of 6 essential off-flavors that will be doctoring standard beers, sampling, and discussing the off-flavors that are produced. The common off-flavors that we’ll be going through tonight are: DMS, Trans-2-Nonenal, Isolvaric Acid, Diacetyl, H2S, and Lactobacillus Contamination.

As always, the ALES Meeting is hosted in the Club Room of the Bushwakker; we will be hosting this at 7:00 PM.

On February 17th, I had the opportunity to do a short tour at the Moose Jaw Brewing Company. I met with Terry Zwarich and Cody.

The Moose Jaw Brewing Company is a new brewery just recently SLGA licensed.  (They went through much of the usual litany of dealing with SLGA, none of which I am going to mention here.)

At present they do not have their full size system construction finished, and are still waiting for control system, which they are using until their full-sized boil pots are ready. panel parts.  They have managed to kick off operations using a homebrewer-sized 15.5 gallon pilot

They have a hot water on demand system, which speeds getting water to temperature for mash in, mash out, cleaning, etc. The water is carbon filtered and some is also run through reverse osmosis to reduce mineral content depending on the style of beer being brewed.  Waste water from the reverse osmosis process is saved and used for cleaning.

The boil kettles being constructed feature a basket/screen liner which makes operation of the system similar to a homebrew ‘brew in a bag’ system.  The screen basket liner is attached to a cable and so can be winched up and out of the kettle for discarding the spent grains.  The kettles (there are two identical 3 barrel ish sized kettles under construction) are gas fired with gas burners located underneath.  The kettles are located under what is essentially a big stainless steel range hood.

Fermenters were purchased from Brewsters when Brewsters North was closing down.

Cody, who conducted my tour, provided me with a sample of Sleepwalker IPA which exhibits a wonderful hop/malt balance, is extremely smooth and drinkable, features a 6 per cent a/v strength, and is so pleasant to drink you don’t notice the alcohol until later.

On my way out of town I stopped at Sobey’s Moose Jaw, and got a growler fill of Sleepwalker IPA.  Due to the excellent head retention, the clerk had some difficulty filling my growler, and used a spoon to remove excess foam.

My wife and I enjoyed it later.  My wife, who is very sensitive to it, thought she could detect a hint of acetaldehyde, (green apple).  If I detected it at all I would say that it may have been due to the idea planted in my head by my wife.  The sample we were tasting may have suffered from the fill process at Sobey’s, and from excess head space left in the growler.  The clerk, however, did give us a free spoon, which we discovered in the growler as we were pouring out the beer. For me this confirms that for those in the know, the wisest way to get fresh beer is to get their growlers filled directly at the breweries.

Moose Jaw Brewing products are also available at some restaurants including: Cask 82, Crushed Can, Bugsy's Irish Pub, and of course by retail at Sobeys and at the brewery.

The Moose Jaw Brewing Company has also developed a Czech style premium lager beer called Cabaret featuring Saaz hops and an ABV of 5.3% which I am looking forward to sampling in the future.

For further information contact Terry or Cody at 306-681-3100 or by email at mjb@moosejawbrewing.ca. The Moose Jaw Brewing Company is located at 2012 Stadacona St West in Moose Jaw.