On Saturday, Oct. 26, S.F. Brew, the Simon Fraser brewing club, met up with brUBC — their cross-town counterpart — at Deep Cove Brewers and Distillers in North Vancouver for the first Annual University Home Brew Awards Party.
The party was both a celebration and an awards ceremony, the culmination of a friendly competition, as each club had submitted several home brews for judgement earlier in the week. The atmosphere was merry at Deep Cove as members from each club milled about, chatting and tasting each others’ submissions.
Daniel Collins, managing director at Hops Connect, a grower, procurer, and distributor of hops throughout Canada, explained how the idea for a university home brew competition was hatched, aptly, over drinks.
“It kind of came out of a few beers, a conversation with a couple of us [from Hops Connect] and the guys from Deep Cove, said Collins; “We just decided we could do something fun here with the homebrew scene by taking two of the university clubs and putting them together and creating what eventually became the Hops Connect Cup.”
He continued, “Originally, we reached out to UBC, who we were already selling hops to regularly for a lot of their brews anyway . . . then we started searching around, [asking,] well, who else has a brew club, and the first one we found, aside from UBC of course, was S.F. Brew.”
According to S.F. Brew vice president, Natasha Peiskar, the club just recently got re-started. After attending a meeting last year, Peiskar decided to take on S.F. Brew’s social media and, through Twitter, got connected with Vancouver’s burgeoning craft beer community.
The idea for a university home brew competition was hatched, aptly, over drinks.
“At Vancouver Craft Beer Week, Daniel from Hops Connect approached me and said, ‘What do you think about doing a SFU vs. UBC home brewing competition?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah! Let’s do it! . . . Oh no, I have no idea what I’m doing,’” recalled Peiskar with a grin.
Once committed to the competition, S.F. Brew had to reconnect with its members, many of whom had lost interest due to the club’s general inactivity. Club executives organized several learn-to-home-brew sessions, made their presence known at Clubs Days, rounded up new recruits with a range of home-brew experience, and started brewing up a storm. Their efforts paid off; S.F. Brew members submitted 14 entries to the six category competition and swept brUBC.
The panel of Hops Connect Cup judges was made up of local brewers, three from Deep Cove, the owner of Four Winds Brewing, the brewmaster from Bomber Brewing, and Collins from Hops Connect. The judges used a points-system based on standard criteria to score each brew: appearance, aroma, flavour, and overall thoughts and feelings about each beer. S.F. Brew won in five of the six categories and had a higher overall score, garnering them the Hops Connect Cup.
“It’d be awesome to have our own space at SFU so we could brew up [there].”
-Kyle Middleton, S. F. Brew social committee director
Peiskar’s IPA, Hop-A-Rella, was the bell of the ball, winning the IPA category as well as Best in Show. “The beer is called Hop-A-Rella because a couple of girls brewed it,” laughed Peiskar. “Honestly, people might not appreciate this, but it was the first beer we ever brewed.”
It’s a first-attempt that won big, as the prize for Best in Show is a commercial brew of 12,000 litres; Hops Connect will supply the hops, Deep Cove Brewery will supply the space, and Deep Cove brewmaster, Kevin Emms, will help Peiskar scale her home-brew recipe. Production is to take place early next year.
Post-competition, S.F. Brew executives have high hopes for the future of the club. “It’d be awesome to have our own space at SFU so we could brew up [there]. I’m so jealous of UBC – they talk about how they have this huge refrigerator full of beers and every Sunday they have someone transferring a beer over . . . I hope SFU does that one day,” said social committee director, Kyle Middleton.
With over 250 new student sign-ups this fall and between 50 and 70 active club members, it doesn’t look like S.F. Brew will be drying up any time soon.
