found drama

Remember homebrew #18? Tilde Galaxy? Well, I entered it in the 2016 (7th Annual) Greg Noonan Memorial Homebrew Competition ¹ and…

…it won Third Place for the IPA category!

I was on the fence about whether to enter it as BJCP category 21A (American IPA) or 22A (Double IPA) ² — and I’d even debated this in the footnotes of my original blog post… it’s an IPA but what kind?

Anyway, I entered it as a Double IPA (22A) and it was (perhaps) that fluke that earned this placement. Looking over the competition results — and reading the tea leaves therein — it seems that there were enough American IPA (21A) entries to constitute their own sub-category for evaluations and awards; all other IPAs (the myriad 21Bs, the 22As, perhaps the 12Cs) got lumped into an “IPA” super-category.

Regardless, it scored well. 38.5 out of 50 on the BJCP rating scale — Excellent:

Beers in this range may have no flaws but may be missing the intangibles for a world class beer.

Not bad for someone who’s been brewing for less than two years!

And the judges’ feedback was good, too:

Aroma was on spot. Melon and tropical with a subtle [bit] of dank hop flavor. Was more dank piney with some melon which was a good contrast. Alcohol warmth was on the threshold, perhaps drop your O.G. 2-4 points to cut down on this.

Nice! ³ And:

Wonderful aromas. Good amount of hop bitterness for the style. Complex hop character.

And I’ll tell you the truth here. I didn’t go to the competition awards because I didn’t expect to win anything. I just wanted to the judges’ feedback; I just wanted to know where I was going wrong, how I could get better. To bring home even a third place ribbon was far beyond my expectations.

Only reason I knew before the package arrived? @vtbeer shouting it out on Twitter:

@founddrama congrats, IPA was ribbon winner

— Vermont Beer (@vtbeer) April 30, 2016

So I celebrated that night, even if I held out on the details until today.

1. Along with Sorry Karl Mk. II, but that’s a whole other story…[↩]
2. If you’re unfamiliar with the 2015 BJCP judging categories, here’s a lengthy (79 page) PDF with all the details.[↩]
3. I’m inferring a [word] or [two]. It was hard to read some of the handwriting but I think I got the gist. Also — I love the actionable feedback about the (minor) flaw! Also regular and astute readers will note the irony here — that this brew was a point or two over the target original gravity.[↩]

About Rob Friesel

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