Yesterday was the 2018 Greg Noonan Memorial Homebrew Competition. I went pretty big this year, with 12 entries between all my beers and meads, and it paid off with seven medals — including a successful defense of my Mead Maker of the Year title. In addition to competing, I had the privilege of judging and hopefully I will earn some experience points for it after the exam in two weeks.
One of my goals for 2018 was to branch out a little more as a brewer, especially with respect to styles. I have the things that I like to brew, and the things that I like to drink, but I thought it would be good to do… oh I don’t know, make at least four new-to-me styles.
The first style I picked was a German Pils and thought that I’d do a little Vermont take on it. Hence Grünberg Pils:
For our 23rd session, we took on Category 25 — the Strong Belgian Ales.
The story behind this brew is as simple as it gets. I made a clone of Havoc’s Root of All Evil; it was a huge hit here at home, and we were running low. The obvious solution? Make some more of Evil Clone (Mk. II):
It started with an observation that turned into a challenge. Jason noticed you could get 5 lb. of clover honey at CostCo for $11.99 — $2.40 per lb. as opposed to the nationwide average of $7.57 (c. January 2018). Obviously this meant that there was virtually no excuse for any of the club members to try their hand at making a mead. So we started the ExperiMEADal Challenge with the goal of having a bunch club members offer up their first mead entries for the Noonan Competition, and in the meantime… we cross-pollinate and see what different kinds of meads we could manage, all from the same inexpensive source.
I gave mine the descriptive but not terribly creative name: Kirkland Clover Challenge Mead (or just “KC”):
Some beers start with a target style. Others with an imagined flavor profile. Perhaps it’s born of ingredients already on-hand. And sometimes your four year old son gives you a name that just begs to be a beer; that beer is Teddy Bear’s Mind:
Session #22 was for Category 15, Irish Beer — a.k.a., “How many kinds of Guinness would you like to try?”
As of session #21 we have just four 1 categories left to cover. With this session we worked our way through some of the more… interesting beers from the style guide.
I am of course talking about the European Sour Ales.
When I first brewed this beer, I wrote that it “was me trying to play my hand at the IPA game”. I took a less-is-more approach: super-simple grist (just some Briess Pale Ale malt and the golden light DME to make up the difference on my partial mash), all Galaxy everywhere, and a healthy pitch of Wyeast 1332. 1 Needless to say, I was delighted when it brought home a surprise Third Place Ribbon in the 2016 Greg Noonan Memorial Homebrew Competition. With a few ounces of Galaxy “left over” from that Grisette Moderne, it was time to reprise Tilde Galaxy (Mk. II):
For the third installment in my single-hop APA series, I took some of the “left overs” from the Grisette Moderne and applied them toward this project. Time for Prosody (Mosaic): 1
