This coming Saturday is Brew Camp at Sawdust City Brewery and I’ll be there!

I’m sure our small group of beer campers will be a bunch of passionate beer lovers, so I am quite looking forward to brewing my first beer with them. As someone who has never done any home brewing, this is the perfect opportunity for me to get a bit more hands-on by seeing, and helping with, an actual brewing process. I realize home brewing and brewing on a large commercial scale are different beasts, but I’m kind of more interested in seeing how beer is brewed by one of my favourite Ontario breweries anyways!

It has been 3+ years since the current Sawdust City Brewery facility opened, and I fondly remember my first visit shortly after they opened. The first beer I tried in their Saloon was Gourd Downie Pumpkin Ale. I tend to hate pumpkin beers (my least favourite style), but I did enjoy that one. I visited a number of times on trips up north and liked that they always had a couple of odd, “fun-off” type of experimental brews on tap in the Brewery Saloon like Pink Pajamas and The Salty Brine. They may not always have experimental beers on tap now, as they are more likely to have a guest tap or two, plus they’ve created too many solid beers the past few years that are often on tap!

Nowadays I have a few Sawdust City beers that are in my regular rotation. Lone Pine IPA still stands up to any other Ontario IPAs out there, which I can enjoy any time of year (and Juicin’ appeals to the soft, fluffy IPA drinkers now). The Blood of Cthulhu is a treat on any cold, winter day, and one of my go-to simple summer softball beers is Little Norway, which I always bring with me when playing a game at Little Norway park in Toronto. The beer name itself is tied to some pretty cool Canadian history too, which is something Sawdust City does with some of their beer names.

It is going to be a fun day on Saturday. I’m not sure what type of beer we’ll be making, nor am I sure how hard they’ll work us! I’m sure I’ll gain a new level of respect for all the brewery workers who spend their days working hard to create delicious drink treats for us beer consumers! I’m looking at this day as an amped up Brewery Tour, with some nice perks that I’ll have to work for!

We’ll be learning all day long, and enjoying some food and brews along the way. Aside from lunch and a beer, we’ll get our very own Brew Camp shirts. Plus, of course we get to bottle and take home the beer we brew when it is ready in a few weeks! Will our beer turn out to be a winner? Will anyone fall into some tanks? Will I be the only one with zero brewing knowledge? I’ll find out in a few days – wish me luck!

As for Brew Camp, this isn’t the first time Sawdust City has put together the concept, and I’m sure it won’t be the last either. Check their website events list and social media channels for news on any future Brew Camps if it sounds like something you’d like to do!