THE WAKKER WEEKLY

Issue #1501 – Posted on: 04-Nov-2019

BUSHWAKKER NEWS

NEWS FROM THE BREWERY! Head brewer, Michael Gaetz, reports our seasonally available UNRELIABLE NARRATOR IRISH WHISKEY & HEMP BROWN ALE, GREAT PUMPKIN SPICED BROWN ALE, BLOOD ORANGE BLONDE, GRANNY’S BITTER and BREW N’ GOLD DORTMUNDER EXPORT LAGER are currently on tap. There are also batches of ARCTIC DARK MUNICH DUNKEL, KAI’S MUNICH HELLES, UPENDI PINEAPPLE PASSIONFRUIT BLONDE ALE, HARVEST LAGER and MISSILETOW ALE working their way through the brewery.

Our GUEST TAP is currently pouring a POMEGRANATE PALE ALE from Saskatoon’s High Key Brewing. This will be followed by the LOKI IMPERIAL IPA from Paddock Wood Brewing.

Our November Premium Wine Features are the BURNT SHIP BAY from Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ontario. The red is a Cabernet Merlot and the white is a Sauvignon Blanc. Both are $7.95 for a glass and $21.95 for a half litre.

Chef Mike’s famous low and slow prime rib dinners returned last weekend and were a huge hit. Our Bushwakker PRIME RIB WEEKENDS will be offered every Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the next few months. Topped with rosemary red wine au jus and served with Jumbo Yorkshire Pudding, veggies and potatoes. Available in both an eight ounce and ten ounce cut.

Tickets to our November 23rd Single Malt Scotch Tasting Event are now on sale! This year’s featured single malts include: Glenmorangie Spios rye cask, Arran Marsala cask finish, Kilkerran 12 year Campbelton, Tomatin 18 year, Auchentoshan 21 year and Bruichladdich Octomore 9.1. Entertainment includes a performance from The Regina Police Services Pipes & Drums as well as a dance performance from The Regina Highland Dance Association. $89.95

2019 Bushwakker Single Malt Scotch Tasting Optional Meal Offering

Glenfarclas Berkshire Pork Loin Chops. The “New York” of pork! Topped with a Glenfarclas 15 year, bacon & shallot vinaigrette and served with oven roasted fingerling potatoes and vegetable ratatouille. Starts with your choice of Jura Single Malt Pumpkin Soup with chicken, ginger and braised leeks OR Dalwhinnie Single Malt Cold Poached Salmon Salad with apple and shaved fennel.
Highland Warm Spiced Apple & Walnut Cake. Served with Glenmorangie butterscotch ripple ice cream. One of our most decadent dessert offerings to date! 

Bushwakker Brewpub’s Writers Corner Seeks Books! Our 4rd Edition Writers Corner Launch will take place on Saturday, November 9 at 3:00 PM. We are seeking donations of recent publications (2017-2019 publication dates) from Saskatchewan authors (all genres) to help expand our library within the Writers Corner. The goal is to gradually increase the size of the library each year. More book shelves will be installed as the number of books increases. The books in the corner library will be available for patrons interested in reading works by local authors and the books are to remain in the brewpub at all times. To be considered for the library, books must be a minimum of 40 pages and professionally bound. Please drop off a copy of your recently published book (along with purchasing information which can be shared with brewpub patrons) to Grant Frew at Bushwakker. You can email Grant at bar@bushwakker.com. Rotating individual author biographies and brief book synopsis are featured in the brewpub’s weekly newsletter and social media channels on a regular basis.

THE BUSHWAKKER GOODNESS IS SPREADING!  ALL SIX REGINA SLGA stores are now offering a varied selection of Bushwakker beers in 650ml bottles. The Quance street SLGA store is also offering growler fills of our number one selling DUNGARVON IRISH RED ALE. Regina’s Urban Cellars east location and Metro Liquor also offer a selection of our bottled beers.

BUSHWAKKER EVENTS

Nov. 1: FIRST FIRKIN FRIDAY. A decades-old Bushwakker tradition! A piper from the Regina Police Services Pipes & Drums leads a keg of special brew in a procession throughout the brewpub. A guest volunteer is selected to wield the handmade wooden maul affectionately referred to as “The Mighty Firkin Wakker,” and attempt to tap the firkin in one mighty blow. Hopheads rejoice! This month’s firkin offering will be a Fresh Cascade Dry-Hopped Harvest Lager. The delicious suds-soaking experience takes place at 5:30 PM.

Nov. 2: RIDERS VS. ESKIMOS. The final regular home game of the season starts at 2:00 PM. We open at 11:00 AM. Enjoy our gourmet EDMONTON BURGER & A PINT special all day or all night. Come join the Sea of Green and devour the competition! Stay tuned for our upcoming home playoff game gourmet Burger & a Pint Special.

Nov. 4: Monday Night Jazz & Blues. BILLY HUGHES & THE INSTIGATORS. Rockin’ blues band will take you back to the days of the Plains Hotel Saturday Afternoon Jams. 8:00 PM.

Nov. 6: Wednesday Night Folk. JAMES IRVING. Nickletree frontman delivers a solo acoustic folk rock show. 8:00 PM.

Nov. 6: MONTHLY ALES MEETING. If you are looking to improve your skills as a homebrewer or just want to sit in a room filled with people who have a passion for creating great beer in the basement, then the ALES Club is for you! This month’s discussion topic will be Belgian Quadrupels. Meetings are held in the Bushwakker basement clubroom on the first Wednesday of each month at 8:00 PM. New members are always welcome.

Nov. 9: BUSHWAKKER WRITERS CORNER 4TH EDITION READING. Presented by the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild and The Bushwakker Brewpub.  Join us for this 4th edition author’s reading in the Bushwakker Writers Corner, a space dedicated to celebrating recent works of Saskatchewan published authors. Enjoy readings from five local authors including: Carol Rose GoldenEagle, Raye Hendrickson, Mark Cote, gillian harding-russell, Shane Arbuthnott and Randy Lundy. It has become very apparent that local authors love Bushwakker desserts so a special Chocolate Surprise Dessert will be available that afternoon. 3:00 PM.

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How to Cellar Beer

By: Jason Johnson

If you have been involved in the craft beer community for any length of time, I’m sure you have seen or heard of someone bragging about enjoying a 2008 vintage of an extremely limited-release Barleywine. Maybe you’ve seen a post on social media of someone showing off a 15-year-old Russian Imperial Stout. You may be wondering, “Can that beer really be as good or better than it was when you bought it?” With the help of a beer cellar, the answer is yes. With proper storage and maintenance in a beer cellar, that vintage bottle of Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine will mature and change within its bottle in fascinating ways. In this article, I’ll explain how to cellar beer, why any true beer connoisseur should have a cellar and the effects cellaring has on different beer styles.

A good beer cellar does not have to be fancy. Key factors include maintaining a steady temperature, restricting the amount of light that can reach the beer and having ample storage space for the beers you want to age. If your cellar doesn’t meet these requirements, you could end up with an oxidized, light-struck mess that will leave you severely disappointed after all that time you put into aging expensive limited releases or white whale one-offs.

Temperature is the first, and probably most difficult, hurdle to address. A quality beer cellar will be able to hold a steady temperature that is cooler than standard room temperature.

Different beers tend to age best at different temperatures. For example, darker and high alcohol beers like Barleywines and Russian Imperial Stouts age best at temperatures in the 50°-60°F range (10°-15°C), while sour and wild beers tend to do better in the 45°-50°F (7°-10°C) range. Most people choose to cellar in that middle range to hit the best of both worlds and try to maintain a 50°F (10°C) temperature at all times.

Most basements have a cool corner tucked away that would make a good spot for a beer cellar. If you must, you can install a small air conditioning unit in an enclosed area to maintain that cooler temperature. Refrigerators may at first sound like an ideal place to cellar beer, as they will easily keep the beer cool and provide minimal light exposure. The reality is refrigerators are not ideal for long-term storage because they are designed to pull away moisture and can lead to drying out corks. You are much better off storing those beers on shelving in a cool area and reserving that fridge for the short-term storage of beers you are serving.

The next consideration in creating a good beer cellar is light exposure: Make sure your beer cellar is not near a window or fluorescent light. Maintaining a dark environment so that your beer does not become light-struck, or “skunked,” is paramount. Even beer in brown bottles can become light-struck when being aged for long periods. Brown bottles do provide more protection than green or clear, but even a brown bottle exposed to years of light will become light-struck. Light in the ultraviolet spectrum, from either sunlight or fluorescent lighting, will react with the iso-humulones from the hops, cleaving the molecule into a sulfur-like compound that smells faintly like a skunk.

Third is having ample storage for your beer, and I don’t just mean having enough shelf space to store the hundreds of beers you will accumulate as your hoarding cellaring begins – vertical space is almost extremely important. A common misconception is that beer should be cellared on its side, particularly corked beers, because wine is cellared on its side. But there has been no evidence that laying beer on its side to store is beneficial. In fact, it does more harm than good. Cellaring beer on its side exposes the beer to oxidation because of increased surface area exposure as the beer bottle or can lays flat. With wine, you want some of that oxidation to occur, and long ago, corks would dry out a lot faster than they do today. Wines are still aged on their side, but beer should be stored upright.

You also want to have ample shelf space for the number of bottles you plan to cellar, as it’s much easier to store the beers in an organized manner with the right amount of space. You can separate your collection by ABV, by beer style or by brewery. Trust me when I say there should be a method to your madness – organizing your cellar will help you plan out tastings in the future and allow you to see exactly what you have on hand – or what beer styles you should focus on obtaining.

The final component that goes into a good beer cellar is humidity control, with the ideal humidity range clocking in between 50 and 70 percent. Realistically, this may be the least critical aspect of a good beer cellar, but it can make a difference. Mold growth on the cap or cork could be an issue if you are letting beer sit for 5+ years in a dark and damp environment, so investing in a dehumidifying device might make sense for your cellar. Don’t get too aggressive because you don’t want to prematurely dry any corks out but rather inhibit mold growth on or near your bottles. The level of humidity varies from basement to basement, so placing something like DampRid on one of the shelves may be a better solution than obtaining a dehumidifier. On the other hand, if you live in an overly dry climate like in the desert states, you may need to go the opposite direction and be sure you have enough humidity to prevent the corks from drying out excessively.

Aside from the conditions, another factor to consider is what you want to accomplish. Are you looking to taste the subtle differences in a beer after a specific amount of time, or are you looking to age something for years and open it for a special occasion? For the first scenario, you can age just about any beer for a year or more just to test the differences that time and oxidation yield. You can test how the beer changes as flavors mellow or intensify. But in the latter case, you want to choose something you know will be stable for an extended period of time, so you want to choose a higher-alcohol style or sour beer for that purpose.

TIME OUT

Top Ten Signs Your Girlfriend is Going to Dump You

10. Your visa card and your belt both hit their limit.
9. She’s been wearing an engagement ring for three weeks, but you don’t recall proposing to her.
8. She just started a college course that meets seven nights a week.
7. She says she has to tell you something… on Jerry Springer.
6. Her love letters come soaked in formaldehyde rather than perfume.
5. Whenever she introduces you it’s always “I would like you to meet an old friend of mine…”
4. She leaves a message on your phone and identifies herself by both her first and last names.
3. Your other girlfriend told you so.
2. The dartboard behind your photo on her wall.
1. Her girlfriends look at you, tilt their heads, and say, “You haven’t got a clue, do you?”

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