News

February 2006 Newsletter

Posted on March 01, 2006 at 12:56 PM

If you were there on New Years Eve, you’ll know that the Clash of the Titans was a great success. The show was sold out. In fact the tickets we still had at the brewery were sold before we got them to the door ½ hour before the show started. There was a great crowd, the battle for top prize was between Drifting and Death in Venice, with the top honours going to Death in Venice. We are looking forward to those guys finishing up with Lori at Rainbow Studios and hearing what they put down. You can count on that being up on our newsletter for you to give a listen to as soon as we get our hands on it. In the meat time, you can have a listen to something from Friend Called Five through our music link to the left. After a success like that plans are already in motion to do this again next year. Sweet Moira Sauer, one of our judges, has already said that the lack of a “chick band” wasn’t something she was going to let happen again next year, so we just might get to see Moira on stage next year. Based on the job she did on Aerosmith at Karaoke last Wednesday, that should be a rare treat. Moira, we look forward to hearing from the band you are putting together. Did we hear correctly, you are going to be called “Chickleback”? Guess we’ll all find out next year.

Growl at your Valentine!

Looking for some interesting ideas on what to give for Valentines Day presents? This year there is more than one good way to growl at your valentine. This year you can growl with a variety of flavours. We’ve got growlers, or ½ gallon jugs, you can buy here at the brewery. Then you, or your Valentine, can fill or refill them with any one of the 6 brands we have on tap. Cranberry Wheat, Grizzly Wheat, Yukon Gold, Chilkoot and our new IPA are all on tap, but in keeping with the season, it might be a good time for the Arctic Red. Happy Valentines Day everyone. Here’s to finding some time to spend with that special someone and sharing your favourite brew, fresh from the brewery.

Arctic Red Replicator

The Edmonton Homebrewers Guild “Arctic Red Replicator” competition was held on Monday night. Members were competing to see who could make the closest clone of our Arctic Red. Dave Gardner, our man in Edmonton, had the opportunity to sit in on the competition, sample the efforts of the club, and even collect some samples for us to try from here. We haven’t received our samples yet, but by all accounts some great beers were made, though none managed to replicate the flavour of the Arctic Red (was there a secret ingredient left out of the recipe provided? Could it be Yukon water?). Dave tells me he enjoyed himself at the event, and intends to spend more time with the group. Sitting with them and listening to them talk beer was an interesting experience. He’s used to being more knowledgeable about beer that most but tells me “my education has just started”. Dave wanted to be sure we thanked Neil, from Alley Kat brewing, for providing the space for this event, as well as most of the groups meetings through the year. We would like to extend our own invitation to host a meeting here at our brewery. It’s a little further away, but our friends at Air North can help you get here. On to the winners of the competition… Greg Wondgas took 1st place, congratulations Greg. Barry Hunt and Kevin Zaycuk, the club president, took 2nd and 3rd place respectively. We are looking forward to the samples that are on their way. And from all of us here at the brewery…a toast

Where are we?

We have been getting more and more active in the bars in Whitehorse, and you may have noticed. Let’s take a moment to run down some of the events we are involved in and new draft we’ve made available. The Capital Hotel has ongoing Chilkoot features going on Friday nights and Monday nights. We’ve recently added Yukon Gold and Chilkoot Lager to the draft system over at the roadhouse. We’ve added 3 blue spikes to Ed’s Kareoke nights at the Discovery bar on Wednesday nights. Paddy’s Place is hosting both the Triple J’s Music presentations on Tuesday nights as well as a monthly Comedy Jam hosted by Chris McNutt the first Thursday of every month. Arctic Red has been added on draft at the Casa Loma. Yukonner nights are Thursdays at the Airport Chalet. Lead Dog is making its way into the bars and is available at the Discovery Bar, Paddy’s Place and Shenanigans. The Yukon Gold has been on tap at the Edgewater for a few months now. We have everything we know of listed here, but have certainly missed some. If there are any Yukon Brewing features that we’ve missed, please be sure to let us know. Over the next month I’ll be working on a calendar for the next newsletter to summarize everything for you.

Beer gas, it’s more than blowing hot air.

How much do you know about what is being put into your draft beer after it leaves the brewery? How important can this really be anyway? This was a question we started to ask ourselves after setting up our own draft system here at the brewery. As we had suspected, it is critically important! The difference between foamy and flat, stale and fresh, infected or clean, all of this depends a lot on the gas the bar chooses to push its beer with. We looked into the 3 gasses typically used in the bar industry (after our research we decided there would only be 2 if we had our way). The most commonly used gas is CO2. CO2 is a naturally occurring part of the fermentation process, readily available and fairly inexpensive. It’s what causes the bubbles in your beer. It’s Perfect, we’ll use it… except we are pushing our beer 80 feet from our cooler in the back of the brewery. To make a long story short, that can’t be done. Those other 2 gasses are beer gas (a blend of CO2 and inert gasses) or a compressor that pushes air. Well, air is free. That made it look great at the beginning. But knowing that there is no such thing as a free lunch, we thought about this a little more. Air is actually a whole lot of things. There is oxygen in the air, oxygen causes beer to go stale. There’s dust and germs and bacteria in the air, which can cause infections, we don’t want any of those things in our beer. Picture, if you will, opening a bottle of beer at home, not finishing it (if you can imagine that). Then picture yourself putting the cap back on it and putting it back in the fridge. Would you drink that beer a day or 2 later? We wouldn’t either, and we certainly wouldn’t serve it to anyone we cared for at all. That’s what you are doing when you push your beer with air, unless you choose to dump the beer left in a keg at the end of every night and start a fresh keg in the morning. Then you are only getting up to 12 hours of staling, instead of days. We had also heard from bars in town that are pushing with air (and there are more than you might think) that when you push with air you lose about 10 – 15% of a keg on every keg. So we convinced ourselves we weren’t going to do that. That left beer gas. Specifically designed and blended for use on draft systems that require a higher pressure to push beer farther. It ensures the quality of the beer in that keg from the first glass to the last. Armed with our new knowledge about beer and beer gas, we have talked to all of the bars in town that serve our beer and worked to convince them of the benefits of beer gas over air, and more and more are switching off of air in favour of beer gas. This is a good thing for all of us; you because you are getting a better glass of beer, the bar because they get to serve you a better glass of beer and all of the beer in the keg, and us because you get served a better glass of beer. Do you know what your bar is using to push your beer with? CO2 is fine; beer gas is great, if they are pushing the beer for a long distance; but if they are serving you stale beer pushed with air, you might want to think about that ½ empty bottle of beer in your fridge and if you would really want to drink that.