As Canada’s most Northern homebrew club, us folks at the Aroma Brewealis Homebrew Club set out on a mission to try to find a way to show they are not afraid of the cold. What better way to do this then to brew outside during Winter!
Year one: A Swing and a Miss….
Three years ago was the first attempt which unfortunately was a monstrous fail… it happened on February 3rd, 2020 on a balmy -41*C day. We had very little thought in to “What could go wrong” we ran into issue after issue from low flame due to frozen Propane and high winds, unreasonable drops in Mash temperatures, to a non-existent boil due to broken propane lines! all in all we had to come to the realization… if you fail to plan, you plan to fail!
Year Two: Success with a side of warm weather…
The following year as the snow started to fall the club dug deep into there experience pile and started to plan our next attempt. We knew two things: We needed some sort of shelter to block wind and retain some of the heat the burner was generating, and we needed to succeed! From there our plan grew from a -40*C brew day to a “winter brew day” which we picked a bit warmer time of the year, April 28th, 2021. I know what your thinking “That’s not winter?!?! that’s half way through spring!!!” well for most parts of Canada it is, but here in the Sub Arctic that’s still 0 to -10*C for a high for the day on a good year. For a shelter we decided to go with a 6 man Ice fishing Tent that one of our Members offered up. This cut the wind and was able to hold heat in. It wouldn’t be a winter brew day though without a couple issues going wrong, the biggest being we did not anticipate the fact that our burner would start to melt into the lake ice! half way though our brew day we had to pick everything up and start to move locations as our 10 Gallons of pre-boil was noticeably Tilting like the famed Tower of Pisa.
All in all the second brew day was a success, but we couldn’t help but feel like we may have cheated a bit since it was only -5*C out the day of the event. We felt confident that we had a good idea, but new we had to shoot for a bit colder of a day if we really were gonna show off.
Year Three: Meet the Neighbors…
This year we decided to have the event a month earlier towards the end of March. In the Territories “March Madness” holds a different meaning as temperatures can be anywhere from +4*C to -40*C, this year was no different as we had a very warm beginning of March that turned cold right at the end of the month… the same day we were hosting our event!
This year we once again learned from our previous fails and made some improvements to our Event and how we setup our equipment. First we wanted to find a way to engage with the public, as a homebrew club we always are reaching for the goal of exposing people to the hobby and letting them see what they could be doing at home as well. We were searching through local events happening in the Month of march and found the local francophone society was having events all March long across town called “Rendez vous de la Francophonie” to help encourage Francophone people to get out and enjoy Yellowknife and all it has to offer. We thought this would be a perfect scenario for us to join in as the francophone community is a large group of people that would most likely not make it to any of our other events out such complications due to the language barrier.
After we had a date and a plan we approached a local Company Called “CDETNO” in Yellowknife that helps organize events and support Francophone people with the idea of a co-sponsored event. We pitched them our event and explained that we had a French speaking club member that would help translate and take people through the brew day, right from designing the recipe, to milling grains, to the actual brewing process itself. They loved the idea and also provided a speaker to talk with individuals about liquor laws in the NWT and how to apply for a liquor License.
On the morning of the event when we went down to setup our equipment it was a bone chilling -23*C and had a Windchill of -35*C. Thanks to the help from our Co-partner for the event we were able to improve our space from a 6 man ice fishing tent to a 10′ X 20′ event tent which definitely gave us more room to move and interact and make sure we were all out of the elements, but maybe didn’t hold in the heat as well as the ice fishing tent, thankfully as the sun came up and the wind died down the day warmed up to -10*C at its peak.
This year we went with a “Fake floor” consisting of Styrofoam insulation and Plywood to help stop the melt we experienced the year before, and just for good measure we also set the burner up on a club members Brew Cube. We picked up a couple other tricks from years before such as to make sure your propane starts warm, and try to keep it warm. we mainly accomplished this by leaving it in a garage overnight, and insulating it before use to help keep a good evaporation rate which equaled a good solid flame. We also fixed the issue of fluctuating mash temperatures by doing away with just trying to insulate the Mash tun, but instead doing a constant recirculation and keeping a low flame on, this help keep us at a +/- 2 degrees away from 152*C in the Grain bed.
We had a great turn out this year we topped out at 12 people that most likely would have not been exposed to the hobby if it wasn’t for the will of the club to get there beloved hobby out there, great partners in FFT, AFCY and CDETNO who seen the benefit and fun in an event like this, and peoples ever curious minds on beer and how hard can it really be to make my own?!?!
till next time folks! keep the boil rollin’
Shawn Brennan is the regional rep for the Territories.
Shawn Paul Brennan is the Northern regional rep and is a born and raised Northerner from Yellowknife, NWT. He started homebrewing in 2014 with very basic extract kits, then moving to brew in a bag, and on to a 3 vessel electric brewery setup. He also brew ciders, meads, and a variety of different kinds of wines. Contact him at shawn@canadahomebrews.ca.