Competitions

I entered two beers in the National Homebrew Competition this year; an Imperial IPA I brewed on New Year's Day this year (New Years D'Ale), and a barleywine I brewed on MLK day 2007 (I.H.A.D. Barleywine). The IIPA was thoroughly panned (hey, I thought it was good), but the barleywine advanced to the final round by placing 2nd in the Northwest Region in Category 19. I entered it as an English Barleywine (even though I formulated it as an American BW).

Category 19 Strong Ale Sponsored by Northern Brewer
1   19b   Michael Boos of Seattle, WA, Mountain Top Mashers [AZ]
2   19b   Robert Ginn of Poulsbo, WA, West Sound Brewers
3   19c   Mark Beck, Joe Germani of Walla Walla, WA, Blue Mountain Brewers Club

And here are a few stats from Cat 19 in the NW Region:

Max Score: 39 Min Score: 17 Avg Score: 31.3 # of Entries: 19

I scored 39, but since they use a mini-BOS to determine the winners the first place beer isn't necessarily the highest scoring entry. The barleywine had an OG right around 1.100 and didn't attenuate as well as I'd have liked. I think it stopped around 1.028. I bottled it and it never really carbonated to the level I wanted. Due to the higher than desired residual sugar the beer is a little more malt-forward than I was shooting for. That and the lower than desired carbonation level explain why it fits in the English category better than the American. In any event, it is aging well and was good enough to get past the first round. I don't expect much out of it in the finals, but I was surprised last year by how well my Tripel did, so who knows. Anything can happen. Here's the recipe, in both Promash .rec format and HTML: Promash | HTML

I know, I know, you thought this blog was dead. It's been a busy summer, and when I have had time I haven't had motivation to update you on my brewing adventures. I've brewed several beers that I haven't posted about, and other beer & brewing related stuff has been going on as well. I've been meaning to post for some time about the schwag I got for the gold medal my Tripel won at NHC. Here's a picture of the haul. I got the 5 Star cleaning kit (big bottle of Star San and a big tub of PBW), an AHA glass, a Sam Adams chilling bucket, the book "The Best of American Beer & Food," a bottle of The Sixth Glass Quad from Boulevard Brewing Company, and the gold medal. Pretty cool. Also, recipes and mugshots for all the gold medal winners were published in the Sept/Oct issue of Zymurgy. You'll find my recipe on page 46. Here are a few more pics:

I was pleasantly surprised Saturday evening to discover that my Tripel took the gold medal in Category 18 at the National Homebrew Competition. I certainly wasn't expecting such a favorable result considering the fact it was going up against the best home-brewed beers in the country, and that it placed 3rd in the NW Region 1st round. I guess the two months of aging between the 1st and 2nd rounds helped a lot. I can't wait to receive my score sheets and see the judges comments. Since I can't leave well enough alone, I plan to brew it again soon with some minor modifications. I think I'll use table sugar instead of corn sugar this time around, and ferment half of it with that mysterious beast known as Wyeast 3787. I'll use 1214 again on the other half as a control. I was pretty disappointed with the performance I got out of 3787 when I used it for the Bourbon Barrel Big Belgian Beer. I think it petered out at about 69% attenuation that time. One mistake I made is I didn't allow the temperature to rise during fermentation. Also, Wyeast says it benefits from incremental feeding of sugar, which I didn't do last time either. Oh, and I'll probably use Weyermann Pilsner malt instead of Castle, since Castle has become very hard to come by of late, locally at least.

My tripel placed 3rd in Category 18 in the 1st round (NW Region) of the National Homebrew Competition. Placing in the top 3 makes it eligible for the 2nd round. For the first round, the country (plus Canada) is split up into 10 regions. Each region judges beers separately and the top 3 beers from each region in each category advance to the 2nd round. There were 5,643 entries total in the 1st round with a possibility for around 840 beers, meads, and ciders to advance to the 2nd round. My beer was up against 28 other entries in Category 18 in the 1st round and assuming everyone eligible sends their beers in for the 2nd round there should be a total of 30 entries in that category. I'm curious to see how well it stacks up against the best home brewers in the country. 2nd round judging will take place June 19 during the National Homebrew Conference. Whatever happens in the 2nd round, I'm pretty happy with the results so far considering this is the first Tripel I've ever brewed and the first time I've entered a beer in the NHC. I wasn't the only club member to place in the 1st round. Matt's Lil Jib Saison took 2nd in Category 16. Maybe one of these days he'll get around to posting something about it.