  Another year has come and gone, and BSNBB is but a memory once again. Sigh. To recap, about a decade ago now a group of a half dozen or so brewers here in Ottawa started a mailing list. For the longest time it was just 5 or 6 of us, but then about 8 years ago the list started to expand. More and more brewers were signing up - but not just in Ottawa - right across the country. 7 years ago we decided to have a "Big Brew" - which is what you get when a bunch of brewers haul there breweries to someone's house, and they all brew a crazy amount of beer, drink beer, talk about beer, and so on. The first event was here in my back yard in Ottawa, and every spring we do it all over again at someone's house.
A year later the list had so many members from New Brunswick, that the lads down there decided they should do a Big Brew as well. By this time the guys on the list started calling ourselves "a club", and one of the guys in Winnipeg gave us our name - The Members of Barleyment. Catchy, no? :-) Oh, and where does the "Strange" come from? Well, one of the guys from Ottawa is the author of the popular Strangebrew brewing software, which helps in recipe formulation. Every year for both the Ottawa and NB events, he gives a free copy of the software to anyone who brews. So it's called "Big Strange Brew" in Ottawa, and "Big Strange New Brunswick Brew" in NB.
Anyway, the first few years in NB, the event was held at the house of one of the Honourable Members (see, we refer to ourselves this way given our name :-)). He's got a good sized acreage outside of Fredericton with lots of room for camping and so on. But as hospitable as he and his wife were, and as big as their property is, the event just got too big even for them. In 2007 we lucked into the rental of Camp Pascobac, which is on the Belleisle Bay between Fredericton and Saint John. It's about 200 acres, with cabins, a lodge, tonnes of space for tents, and it's right on the Bay so you can go fishing and swimming. And you can also have huge bonfires and other pyrotechnic delights on the beach. More on that in a bit :-) Oh, and after the first year, the Board of Directors of Camp Pascobac liked JW so much that they made him President of the Board! So now we're guaranteed to get the place every year!
Since we rent the Camp for and entire week, this year Melissa and I decided to head down on the Wednesday, and back on Sunday. It's just shy of a 12 hour drive, and in years past it was quite a strain to drive down on Friday then back on Sunday. Much nicer to stay a few days in between! And in fact we enjoyed ourselves so much this year that we decided next year we're going down for the whole week! BTW, if you are reading this, and you brew beer, wine or mead, you should consider coming as well. Just let me know.
This year was the best EVAR! Wednesday it was just us and JW. Thursday a few others arrived - from Halifax, more from Ottawa, and of course from Fredericton. That night we stayed up sitting around the fireplace in the lodge. The next day - Friday - is when most of the rest of the brewers arrived. That night the fire was a bonfire in the field up near the lodge.
Saturday was the big day. That's when everyone brews, and when we serve all the awesome food! For breakfast, Daniel cooked bacon, and I was inspired by all the bacon fat he was draining into a pot, so I cubed 5 lbs of potatoes and had someone else cut up 2 lbs of onions, and I made a massive batch of home fries, fried in a good cup or more of bacon fat. Yummy! Nick also whipped up a huge batch of pancakes, and he and a few of the other guys scrambled up 5 dozen eggs. Now that's breakfast!
The brewers were all mashing in by about 10am, except for our host JW who was enacting some repairs on his kettle. There were massive amounts of food cooked this day! A 70 lb pig. Yes, whole. 2 deep fried turkeys. About 30 litres of salad. About 5 litres of potato salad. 3 massive loaves of bread. 30 lbs of organic sausage from a local organic (opera-singing) farmer.
Embarassingly, this was the first year that we actually ran out of beer! I know, I know, I can't believe it either. One might be inclined to blame it on the stag party - but actually we only had about 20 kegs of beer this year, whereas last year we had just over 30. So we've become complacent or lazy or something! Fortunately when the word went out that we were probably going to run out of beer, the boys from the stag party rallied together and took up a collection. Luckily, one of them does not drink, so while the rest of us were pretty tipsy by this point, he was stone cold sober and was able to run to the beer store. Which BTW is about 90 minutes there and back - on the other side of the ferry. They got back from the beer run with over 10 dozen beer - most of it from Picaroons a local microbrewery. The rest was Tankhouse - a micro in Toronto. Excellent choice, guys!
Saturday morning was the traditional breakfast of home made Belgian waffles. We cleaned the place up, and about noon time Melissa and I headed back to Ottawa. Not fun on about 3 hours sleep, but we got here safely.
I also packed our cooler with the pig and turkey carcasses, and in the meantime picked them clean and boiled them. I got :
- 4 x 1lb pig. 3 of which got vacuum sealed and went into the freezer
- 4 x 1 litre jars of turkey broth, each about 2/3 full of meat
- 6 x 1 litre jars of pig broth, each about 2/3 full of meat
There was also about 3 litres of turkey meat which I could not fit into my cooler, so had to leave behind.
All-in-all, quite an incredible weekend I have to say! You can seem some of my photos here on google. And a lot more are here on the club site. Oh, and I forgot to mention the pyrotechnics. Our former host is a bit of a fire bug - but he's also an engineer so he really knows how to make huge, impressive fires! Like with his home made flame thrower. He's always got something special in store for us, and this year he did not disappoint. See the video in my profile. I'll post more videos as they become available to me.
|
