This week the Winnipeg - Charleswood Rotary Club  had an off-site meeting. The meeting location was the Fort Garry Brewery at 130 Lowson Cres. in Winnipeg. The location proved to be popular as we had a very good showing of member Rotarians and guests. President Bob Antymniuk and Sarg Lyle Miller were present to keep all in line.    

 

Guests were John Towle (Rotarian from Dauphin) and his wife Elizabeth, Maureen Johnson (wife of Magnus Johnson), Kelly Clements (wife of Jeff Kulikowsky).

 

The evening was arranged by Ed Gramiak and hosted by Orest Horechko (G.M. Fort Garry Brewing) and Dan Geddes (Brewmaster, F.G.B.). Refreshments were provided by F.G.B. as well as a stack of pizza. Bone in/bone out chicken wings provided by David Thompson, Smitty’s at 580 Pembina @Grant.  Due to all food and beverage being donated to us tonight, a $10 donation from each attendee was made to Polio Plus.

 

 

Jim Forestell advised that he is building a committee for the 2019 Rotary District 5550 Conference. Please consider helping when called upon. Most of the club will be required to assist for this event in one capacity or another. The event will take place at Canad Inns Polo Park.

 

Orest Horechko advised that Fort Garry Brewery can supply product for the 2019 Conference.

 

 

Sept 18, 2017,  Speaker will be Maureen Fitzhenry , Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Location will be our usual meeting location at Breezy Bend C.C.  Fellowship is at 5:30 pm followed by the regular meeting at 5:45.

1930 • Fort Garry Brewing Company was established by B.W. Hoeschen. At that time, the company produced two brands which included: Frontier Beer and Frontier Stout. Frontier Beer gained recognition and it won ‘best in its class’ in a competition in England against other Commonwealth breweries.

1960 • Fort Garry Brewing was sold to Molson and in June of 1961 the name of the brewery was incorporated as Molson’s Fort Garry Brewery Ltd.

1990 • Molson merged with Carling-Okeefe and then closed the facility that was once called Fort Garry Brewing.

1994 • Richard Hoeschen, great-great grandson of the original owner and president, John Hoeschen Sr., resurrected the brewery under the original Fort Garry name. In addition to resurrecting the “Frontier Pilsner” brand, he introduced a family of full-flavoured beers into the market and people loved them. To keep up with growing demand, Hoeschen moved the brewery to a new 25,000 square foot facility to house new equipment and poise the brewery for future growth.

2002 • Sadly, Richard Hoeschen passed away in September. Under his leadership, Fort Garry had become a popular household brand name in Manitoba.

2006 • while in Winnipeg, Andrew Harris, President of Russell Brewing in BC, sampled his first taste of Fort Garry Dark and fell in love with the beer. Captivated by the quality of the product and the enormous pride that Manitobans had in this beer, Andrew saw a similarity between Fort Garry in MB and Russell Brewing in BC.

2007 • Fort Garry Brewing amalgamated with Russell Brewing Company with the goal of building on the legacy of original Fort Garry brewery by instilling the passion originally brought to the brewery by the Hoeschen family.

2011 • Fort Garry Brewing launches the Brewmaster Series; a group of limited edition small-batch beers released in large 650ml bottles. Beers and ales that explore the boundaries of craft beer making. The first of the series is Munich Eisbock a full, creamy Munich malt that instantly captures the attention of the Canadian Craft brewing community.

2012 • A big year for the brewery that sees further additions to the Fort Garry Brewmaster Series with the launch of Kona Imperial Stout, Happy Jack Pumpkin Ale and St. Nick’s Porter. Kona Imperial Stout captures a silver medal in the Canadian Brewing Awards.

2013 • Fort Garry Portage and Main IPA is released. A unique IPA on the Canadian Craft Beer landscape: it’s the first of its kind to feature the use of Manitoba flower hops. Portage and Main IPA is a tribute to Canada’s most famous intersection and Winnipeg’s streetcar commuter rail era. Portage and Main IPA gets strong positive reactions from both reviewers and Fort Garry Brewing customers.

2014 • Fort Garry Brewing rolls out updated branding to its core lineup of beers. To celebrate the holidays there’s a specialty release of Frontier Pilsner with glassware.

2015 • Fort Garry Brewing is a co-sponsor of the 103rd Grey Cup Craft Beer Festival. Fort Garry Brewing collaborate with Half Pints Brewing Co to release the “Manitoba Social Pack” 12 pack. Fort Garry Dark wins #1 UK ale at the Calgary Beer Festival.

2016 • An eventful year! In January Dan Geddes becomes Fort Garry Brewing’s Head Brewer. The brewery expands by adding 2 fermenters and 2 bright tanks to the capacity. A growler program at the brewery is started featuring the brewer’s unique recipes. In October Fort Garry starts a barrel aging program. Then the biggest news! On December 1, 2016 Fort Garry Brewing again becomes a Manitoba owned and operated company.

 

The group was so large tonight that we split into two groups for separate tours. Dan Geddes, Brewmaster F.G.B., was a busy tour guide tonight! The tour started in the control room for the brewhouse. At F.G.B. this process is automated and controlled at a keyboard.  Each brew is 7,000litres. Each large fermenter can hold 15,000litres, so two brews for each fermenter downstairs.  The brew starts with locally sourced barley malt - that has been previously milled to break open the grain and expose the starches -  and water (carbon filtered and brewer’s salts added). The temperature of the water that is added to the barley malt is important, 68 to 69 C for an ale and 64 to 65 C for a lager.  The lager will have simple sugars that are easy to break down by the yeast later in the fermenting phase. This will leave the lager less sweet than an ale. The ale has more complex sugars present and therefore not all the sugar is able to be broken down by the yeast in the fermentation phase, into alcohol and CO2. The ale remains sweeter with more flavour than a lager.

 

The first brew phase results in a ‘mash’ that is left to sit for one hour to convert the starches into sugar. The amount of sugar present is the test for when the mash is ready. The liquid portion is then fed through a screen to advance while the solids are removed and given away by the truck load for animal feed. The next stage happens in the ‘boil’ tank. Pelletized hops are added to the sugar liquid from the first vessel. The hops are sourced from the Seattle, Washington area (best in the world) and only an ice-cream bucket sized amount is needed for each regular brew of 7,000litres. Hops can be added at any time during the boil in order to alter the final taste of the beer. The boil tank draws the natural oils out of the hops. The actual boil time can vary from one to two hours.  The next transfer of the liquid is into a ‘whirl’ tank. This forces any solids to accumulate into the centre of the tank and the liquid is drawn out at the side of the whirl tank. The liquid is now pumped through a heat exchanger to cool it on the way to the fermentation tank. Yeast will be added at this point so that the sugar in the liquid will be fermented into alcohol and CO2.

 

Fort Garry makes two main types of beer and uses two types of yeast. The yeast can actually be used up to 12 to 13 generations / fermentations before being discarded. The time needed for a brew is 8 hours, usually there are two brews/day. The design of the brewhouse allows for 3 brews to occur at the same time, in rotation.

 

The main floor holds the ‘Cellar’. These are the 15,000Litre tanks you can see the top of as you drive by on Kenaston Blvd. They are the ‘fermentation’ and ‘bright’ tanks. The liquid will remain in the fermentation tank for 2 weeks to a month (sugar level is monitored). When the sugar level is constant, the liquid is transferred to the ‘bright’ tank with a cold crash to -2C.  CO2 is used to push the fluid (forced carbonation) as any exposure to oxygen would ruin the beer. There is a safety blow off valve that will open above 20 PSI just in case the operator forgets to open the pressure relief valve on the bright tank. The longer the beer remains in the bright tank, the better the beer will be.

 

The final stage of production would be filtration just prior to packaging. Filters can be used, but they tend to strip out flavour at the same time that they filter the beer.  F.G.B. has a new $250K centrifuge that spins any particulate matter left in the beer at this stage.  Filters will result in a loss of 8 /9/ 10 hectolitres (hectoliter =100 litres) per bright tank (15,000 litres). Use of the centrifuge results in the loss of 1 or 2 hectolitres per bright tank. The rate of flow through the centrifuge is determined by the type of beer you are producing. For a pilsner beer it would take ~ 15 hours to spin one bright tank volume (15,000L). A dark beer would only require ~ 2 hours for the same volume tank to spin through.

 

Packaging varies at F.G.B. from kegs of 50L (commercial only) & 19L (public), cans, glass bottles (recycled), plastic bottles. For recycled glass bottles, the line starts at the bottle sterilizer, fill machine (20 head unit), inspection station machine and human eyes, label application, drop load into cases. The beer cases would then be placed onto a pallet and stored or shipped. The machines in the packaging line are manufactured by Krones, Germany. The line is actually 20 years old and still remains state of the art to this day.

           

The volume seller for F.G.B. is Stone Cold in plastic bottles. This is the F.G.B.’s economy beer and is currently the largest volume of beer for the least amount of money in the local market. The beer quality remains the same as any other beer that comes from F.G.B., ie 100% barley in the brew. It is the packaging in plastic bottles that causes a loss in quality over time. Cans are definitely trending in the market, however, according to Dan “glass is sexy”. The best way to serve a beer in a glass is with a ‘two finger head’. This allows the beer consumer to enjoy the aroma while drinking the beer.