Gearing Up for Competition Season

I have been brewing at the fastest sustained clip over the last few months since I started brewing.  The main reasons have been two-fold – 1. I literally only had about three bottles of homebrew that were ready for everyday drinking 2. Competition season is very rapidly approaching.  Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been brewing beers just for the sake of competitions – in fact, I have brewed a lot of beers that have meant a lot to me.  However, I love to have as many beers ready for competition as I can.  Competitions are fantastic opportunities to gain valuable feedback on your beers from trained judges.  They really are a great way to push yourself as a brewer and improve.  And, hey, competitions are good way to use my favorite hobby to satisfy my competitive streak. :-) 

That being said, it seems like a crazy amount of homebrewing competitions take place in my area in the first half of the year, culminating in June, during Philly Beer Week.  I already have several competitions in my sights for the next few months. 

War of the Worts

This February will be my first year competing in the War of the Worts, hosted by Keystone Hops.  I have heard that it is one of the largest competitions in the area, making it a great place to really see how my brews stack up against the rest of the pack.  I ended up entering six beers in the competition – Bulldog Brew (rye amber), Chipotle Ale, my Ruination clone, and all three of the Streetlight beers.  I am hoping they all do well, but I have the highest hopes for the three Streetlight beers.  The final judging for this competition is this weekend and should be a really fun time.  This will also be the first time that Theresa will be able to make it to one of my competitions, so it will be a lot fun to have her along with me and show her what homebrew competitions are all about!  Theresa’s cousin Stacy, and her husband Jeremy, will also be going to the competition since Jeremy is a homebrewer too and has entered the competition.  It will be will great to see them and hang out!

NHC

The National Homebrew Competition is the big one for American homebrewers.  The registration for this is coming up quick, and I am thinking I may enter all of the beers that I enter in the War of the Worts (depending on how they score at War of the Worts), plus my hefeweizen, Theresa’s Ale.  This competition is so big that they have the first round judged at ten regional judging locations, where the top beers for each category from each location move on to the final round at the AHA National Homebrewers Conference in June.  To say that this is the big leagues of homebrewing, is kind of an understatement.  I’ll be pretty ecstatic if any of beers even make it past the first round.

Battle of the Homebrew Shops

New this year, the Battle of the Homebrew Shops is a competition that is being sponsored by Philly Beer Scene, and is planned to be an annual competition.  This one sounds like it is going to be a lot of fun.  Basically, each brewer enters a beer with their respective local homebrew shop, and the best two beers from each shop from the first round move on to the final round, where they will be judged in June, during Philly Beer Week.  The first round is pretty open – the only rule is that it has to be 4.5% ABV or lower (in other words, a session beer).  The entries from each shop will be traded with another shop, where the beers will be judged.  The top two brewers from each shop will move on to the second round, where the brewers will be given a pound of coffee from a local supplier to brew a beer with the coffee.  Here’s the twist – no stouts or porters (the two most logical styles to do with coffee) will be allowed.  The judges will basically be looking to see who can pull off the most creative beer they can, while still producing a great beer.  In other words, a good blonde ale brewed with coffee would have a better chance at winning than an amazing brown ale.  The winning brewer wins a bunch of prizes, plus the homebrew shop that the brewer represents wins the trophy for the year and gets the shop name engraved on it.  It should be a lot of fun to see the friendly rivalry develop between the different homebrew shops in the area.  I am planning on entering Theresa’s Ale in the first round.

BUZZ Off

I am planning on entering the BUZZ Off competition (Hosted by BUZZ Homebrew Club) again this year.  This is another BJCP open competitions, similar to the War of the Worts.  Last year’s competition was the first competition that I entered, and I even managed to walk away with First Place in the English Pale Ales category for a beer that I brewed with my friend Keith.  I am not sure what I am going to enter in this competition yet (this one will probably be in May sometime I am guessing) – I’ll have to see what I have that’s ready when we get closer to competition.

Commercial Breweries’ Competitions

There are also a couple competitions a little further out that are being sponsored by local breweries.  Triumph Brewery (in Old City) is going to be bringing back their homebrew competition that they did last year in conjunction with the Preston and Steve Show.  This competition was a blast last year and turned out to be a fun networking opportunity with other brewers.  The winner of the competition gets to brew a beer with Triumph on their system.  I’m not quite sure what I am going to enter in this competition, but I am leaning towards entering a re-vamped version of Angry Rhino (a Black IPA), which I entered in this competition last year. 

Boxcar Brewing Company is planning on hosting their first annual homebrew competition this year.  The details haven’t been fully released yet, but it sounds like the winning brewer will be brewing a beer with Boxcar to be served during Philly Beer Week (see what I mean when I say that competition season culminates with Philly Beer Week?), which would lead me to believe that the competition would be sometime in the next 2 -3 months.

As you can see, I’ll have my hands full with a bunch of competitions coming up.  I just brewed up an imperial stout that will be fermenting for the next couple months before it is bottled and conditioned (more on the imperial stout in a future post).  This will probably be my last beer that I do on my own for a bit.  I’ve been brewing at a pretty fast clip for my time and capacity constraints, so I need to take a little bit of break from brewing on my own.  In the mean time, my hands will be full with competitions and brewing and planning a couple collaborations with a couple of my buddies.  Now that I have several different beers ready for competition, and my homebrew stock is more than caught up, it will be nice to experiment around a little.  Until next time, cheers!

Song of the Day: “Wrong Company” by Flogging Molly

Beer of the Day: Victory Brewing Company’s Headwaters Pale Ale

Liquid Music Series Vol. I, II, and III: Moment of Silence and Moment of Violence

Taking a cue from Dogfish Head’s playbook, I have had this idea to create a series of beers that have are dedicated to, and themed after, musicians and bands that have been influential to me throughout my life.  Each beer will be themed after a specific (one of my favorite) song(s) from the band.  I started developing the first few recipes for the series (which will be brewed intermittently – probably around two or three releases per year) in the summer and fall, but just haven’t had the time and energy to put into these beers that are very meaningful to me.  Well, the time finally came that I had the opportunity to the do the first installment (I guess more accurately, three installments).

Streetlight Manifesto, a Jersey based ska-punk band, is one of my favorite bands of all time.  (Side note: in my opinion, they also have the best horn section for a modern ska band, aside from maybe the Mighty Mighty Bosstones - so if you’re into ska, check them out.)  Their album Everything Goes Numb is certainly not your run-of-the-mill ska album, dealing with much more serious and heavy subject matter than your average light-hearted ska album.  This album is also my favorite from the band, and one of my favorite overall albums of all time. 

So why does Streetlight Manifesto get three volumes in the series?  Well, one of my favorite songs from them, is actually two tracks – one a faster continuation of the first.  “Moment of Silence” is a mellow, moody, slow paced track that transitions into the much faster, harder, and more energetic “Moment of Violence”.  What’s the third beer for?  Since the beers transition into each other, I decided to do a 50/50 blend the two beers.

Volume I: Moment of Silence

For the first track, I wanted to do something dark and rich to match the moody tone of “Moment of Silence”, so I went with a smoked porter – a style I have been wanting to do for quite some time.  Rich malt character is definitely meant to be the main source of the character of this beer.  This beer tastes somewhat akin to a slightly smoked dark chocolate, in liquid form – one of my favorite malt bills that I have brewed to date.  Here’s the recipe:

Batch size: 5.2 gal

Boil volume: 3.5 gal

OG: 1.069

FG: 1.017

Bitterness (IBU): 35.8

Color (SRM): 34.9

ABV: 6.8%

[Grains]

NB Gold LME    6.000lb    Extract    50.0%

Smoked Malt    2.000lb    Grain    16.7%

Maris Otter Malt    2.000lb    Grain    16.7%

Chocolate Malt (US)    1.000lb    Grain    8.3%

Crystal 120L    1.000lb    Grain    8.3%

[Hops]

Calypso 1.00oz 12.0% AA Pellet @ 60 min, 24.3 IBU

Willamette 1.00oz 4.5% AA Pellet @ 30 min, 7.0 IBU

Willamette 1.00oz 4.5% AA Pellet @ 15 min, 4.5 IBU

[Yeast/Other]

Irish Moss    1.0 unit(s), Fining 1 tsp at 15 min

English Ale yeast (White Labs 002)   1.0 unit(s), Yeast

Volume II: Moment of Violence

The first drum line in the song quickly morphs the more mellow “Moment of Silence” into the fast, energetic track “Moment of Violence”, taking the same musical patterns and speeding them up substantially into a heavy punk-ska beat.  For this one, I wanted a bright, somewhat bitter, very hoppy ale.  I decided to do a hop-bursted American Pale Ale with lots of Amarillo and Cascade hops.  Hop-bursting is a technique where a substantial amount of the bitterness comes from late additions of hops, rather than the traditional large bittering charge in the beginning of the boil.  The result is that you get heavier amounts of hop flavor and aroma for the same amount of bitterness.  You also use a whole lot more hops in the process.  So far, this one seems to be about what I expected – a tasty pale ale with lots of hop flavor and aroma, without being overpoweringly bitter.  The bottles aren’t fully carbonated and conditioned yet, so I am guessing the hop aroma will increase a bit as the carbonation goes up.  Here’s the recipe:

Batch size: 5.2 gal

Boil volume: 3.5 gal

OG: 1.065

FG: 1.016

Bitterness (IBU): 49.4

Color (SRM): 8.9

ABV: 6.4%

[Grains]

NB Gold LME    6.000lb    Extract    54.5%

Two-row (US)    4.000lb    Grain    36.4%

Crystal 40L    1.000lb    Grain    9.1%

[Hops]

Cluster 1.00oz 7.7% AA Pellet @ 60 min, 16.4 IBU

Cascade 1.00oz 6.6% AA Pellet @ 15 min, 7.0 IBU

Amarillo 1.00oz 8.0% AA Pellet @ 15 min, 8.5 IBU

Amarillo 1.00oz 8.0% AA Pellet @ 10 min, 6.2 IBU

Cascade 1.00oz 6.6% AA Pellet @ 10 min, 5.1 IBU

Cascade 1.00oz 6.6% AA Pellet @ 5 min, 2.8 IBU

Amarillo 1.00oz 8.0% AA Pellet @ 5 min, 3.4 IBU

Cascade 1.00oz 6.6% AA Pellet @ 0 min, 0.0 IBU

Amarillo 1.00oz 8.0% AA Pellet @ 0 min, 0.0 IBU

[Yeast/Other]

Irish Moss    1.0 unit(s), Fining 1 tsp at 15 min

American Ale yeast (White Labs 001 yeast cake from my latest batch of Ruination)    1.0 unit(s), Yeast

Volume III: Moment of Silence / Moment of Violence Blend

After both beers went through their primary fermentation, I racked half of each beer into the same carboy and let the beers play with each other for a couple weeks before bottling.  The result so far is a nice, complex beer with smoky chocolate notes, with a nice hop character.  The smoked porter seems to be the slightly more dominant of the two beers, but overall, this beer came out like a delicious, pre-blended black and tan.  I am very interested to see how this bad boy turns out when it is fully carbonated and conditioned. 

Left to right: Moment of Violence, Moment of Silence / Moment of Violence Blend, and Moment of Silence.

This project was probably my most ambitious project to date, and one of the most fun!  Most of the future installments of my Liquid Music series, will most likely be individual beers, but this project was definitely a fun way to kick of the series.  It is still a little early to completely judge these beers, but so far, so good.  I can’t wait until they are fully conditioned! 

Alright folks, less typing, more brewing.  Cheers!

Song of the Day: “Point/Counterpoint” by Streetlight Manifesto

Beer of the Day: Fire Rock Pale from Kona Brewing Co.