First State Brewers Blog

… of the Worts XII on Feb 17th. I have been looking at my bottled beer inventory (as well as those that I could quickly put into bottles with my counter-pressure filler) and trying to decide what to send into this Feb 17th competition. I have a couple that I know will be dogged by the judges, but I think the $5 entry fee is probably worth it to get feedback. Here are my considerations:

I entered My Wife’s Nutty in the 2006 Buzz-Off competition and got comments that it didn’t have enough hop character to balance it in the Northern category, and would be better as a Southern Brown - However this is a new batch and I feel that it *IS* hoppier, so I am torn between putting it in the same category where it only got 31/50 last time or trying a different one entirely - namely the American Brown. It doesn’t have American hops, so that is probably a bad idea (used Bullion and Kent Golding, I think) which probably means I should stick to English Northern or Southern.

I am entering my dad’s bourbon porter in two categories, both the wood aged and robust porter, because I don’t know how best to categorize it. The oak and bourbon flavors only come through in the aftertaste, and it grows slowly as you sip your way through the beer - so the judges are likely not to get much of it with only 2oz. It may end up having too much oak & bourbon for just robust porter, but not enough for the wood-aged category - that would suck.

So if I enter things as listed above, I am looking at losing basically 16 beers and $41 to entry fees, but that’s cool with me. Hopefully I’ll walk away with a ribbon or two for it, and I’ll definitely get lots of good feedback… hopefully constructive and informative, although that isn’t always the case.

I think the next competition that has a firm date on the schedule is this year’s Buzz-Off in summer, so I’ll have several months to build my bottle inventory back up… and I’ll have a whole new batch of beers to try out in that competition.