National Homebrewing Competitions - AHA and Samuel Adams

Six packs of the 2010 Samuel Adams Longshot winners should be hitting KC shelves pretty soon, coinciding with a call for submissions for the 2011 contest. Last year’s competition appealed to the creativity in homebrewers, limiting entries only to BJCP category 23, “Specialty.” This category specifically targets those beers that fit into no other BJCP styles (such as American Pale Ale, Witbier, or German Pilsner).

The three winning styles were Friar Hop (Belgian IPA), Blackened Hops (Black IPA, American Black Ale, Cascadian Ale, or whatever you want to call it), and Honey B’s Lavender Wheat (Wheat ale with lavender, vanilla, and honey). You can read more about the winners and their beers on the Samuel Adams website. Or, see below if you don’t want to sign in with your birthdate information – twice.

This year’s entries are open to all 23 beer categories again, and the deadline for receipt is in early May. It’s free to enter, so why not? All the rules & regulations are posted on their website. 

Speaking of competitions, this coming Wednesday (March 30^th) is the last day to register your beers with your National Homebrewing Competition site of choice . If you haven’t registered your beers online already, you’d better do it now; nearly 2/3 of the regional sites have been filled, you're too late. With nine sites accepting 750 entries, all of them now full, we’re looking at a giant competition this year.

Even if you’re not entering any beers,the AHA National Homebrewers Conference itself is like nothing I’ve ever seen. Homebrew from dozens of clubs all over the country (mostly from the hosting region) show off brewing creativity, techniques like decoction mashing, and – as shown by the “everything is iced” booth last year – a bit of insanity. I wrote about our fun at NHC it last year. This year is in San Diego and promises to be yet another good time. 

Evening events aside, the sessions during the day are more than worth the trip. Last year we learned about cask conditioning, finally understood keeving, and gained some invaluable tips about meadmaking. We even got to taste honey & mead side-by-side to evaluate which honeys we preferred and how the final outcomes compared to their original sources. One of the most popular sessions, probably to no one’s surprise, was a discussion hosted by the Weasel Boy Brewing's owners about Going Pro. The room was absolutely packed with serious homebrewers learning what it takes to turn a hobby into a full-blown job. 

And no, we didn't attend that session.

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ABOUT THE [Longshot] WINNERS AND 2011 AMERCIAN HOMEBREW CONTEST

Richard Roper’s Friar Hop Ale combines his love of hops with his affinity for spicy Belgian ales.  To develop his recipe, Roper created a hybrid of two styles, uniting the big hoppy taste of an IPA with the spicy, fruity flavor of a Belgian. The toasty caramel sweetness from the malt and Belgian candi sugar mimics a Belgian ale, while the big citrus hop notes of an IPA balance the style. A spicy yeast fermentation and hints of orange and coriander round out the brew. Richard’s Friar Hop Ale is a refreshing beer that can be enjoyed any time of year.

Rodney Kibzey’s Blackened Hops is a perfect combination of deep roasted malt character and citrusy hop bitterness. Harnessing eight years of homebrewing knowledge, Rodney found that combining debittered dark malts and citrusy hops yielded a surprising and unique flavor for this brew. Its black color hints at roasted malt and coffee flavors, but it is the big hop character really steals the show.  Packed with citrusy and piney American hops, this beer has a big flavor and clean bitterness. This is Rodney’s second LongShot American Homebrew Contest win; he won in 2007 with a Weizenbock and his beer was included in the 2008 LongShot Variety Pack.

Caitlin DeClercq has worked as a member of the Samuel Adams sales team since 2006. She created her Honey B’s Lavender Wheat with dried lavender petals, giving it a fragrant but soft aroma.  A citrus tartness and slight sweetness from the honey and vanilla balance out the finish in this California resident’s brew; perfect to sip while kicking back and relaxing.

(copied directly from the link above)

All Work and No Play

... makes for a very boring blog. Except for when Mr Wort Hog posts.

In the past 2 months, I've been to Seattle, Detroit, Portland, Fort Worth, central Illinois, and now Miami - nearly all work-related. I don't normally travel this much and it's significantly affecting my blogging frequency as you can probably tell. I've cut back on my beer drinking as well - partly due to the amount of stress & travel, but also because I was pushing my body's ability to stay within my current clothing size. Time to scale back.

However, tonight I was in the mood for a beer (after what's already been a long week - and it's only Tuesday) but I wasn't in the mood for something heavy. I'm not typically a fan of hotel lounges, but I had to get out of my hotel room for a while (but not travel far) and figured I'd suck it up and spend ten bucks on a well gin & tonic. Or maybe just a Diet Coke.

Not this time!

Boston Beer Company to the rescue - I spotted a Sam Adams Light on the menu and thought it would hit the spot. I'm not a big fan of light beers, but there are a couple that stand out. New Belgium's Skinny Dip is pretty decent, but it's seasonal - and sometimes I want a light beer in winter to counterbalance, say, a Chocolate Oak-Aged YETI (mmm....) Sam Adams Light it is, then. For 119 calories, you actually get a really good beer. It has a nice, dry flavor that has a little bit of an orange essence on the finish from the Noble hops. There's also a prominent but light caramel flavor from the malt and none of that funky sweet adjunct taste you get from other light beers.

Does it taste like a 300ish calorie bottle of Hopslam? Well, no. Do I care? Not really. It's refreshing, flavorful, and a nice change from the winter beers I've been nursing this season. The body is still decent, head retention is quite good, aroma is pleasing. There is nothing offensive about this beer.

Of course, most 4-5% ABV beers hover around 150 calories per bottle anyway, so you could always just go for a Boston Lager, Anchor Steam, Schlafly Pale Ale, and so on; 30 calories less really isn't that much. That's half a Girl Scout cookie. 3 minutes of running. 1.5 ounces of Hopslam. Not much. But if you're looking for a good beer low in calories, Sam Adams Light is one worth your hard-earned money.

Like a Kid in a Candy Store

It's been a long week. I left work early to get a head start on the weekend, and thought I'd stop at Royal on my way home to pick up a little treat. I was thinking maybe a little bottle of something Belgian.

That'll teach me.

Yeah, yeah, you're thinking, "WTF is that Bud Ice doing in there??" Well, as it turns out, ice beers are not just about higher alcohol content (and in fact, some "ice" beers have water added back after the ice is removed). When ice crystals form, they also trap impurities in the beer. The idea is that when the ice is removed, any impurities in the beer are removed along with it. My guess is that this makes for a "smoother" beer, although I'm not sure how much smoother Budweiser is supposed to be. For a couple bucks, I figured it was worth finding out.

I picked up a good mix of 12oz bottles as well; a little something for every mood: Southern Tier phin & matt's extraordinary ale, Schlafly Helles, Sam Adams LongShot Weizenbock, New Holland Full Circle Kölsch, Schlitz Gusto, and Tommyknocker Maple Nut Brown. I'll try to remember to come back and post about my thoughts on each. They're all new for me, except for the Tommyknocker which I already know is delicious.


The story about the Schlitz Gusto comeback is somewhat interesting. You can read a pretty long story about it here, or check out the website or Bull E Vard's blog post about it... I'm drinking it right now and it's not bad. It definitely has a nice bitter aftertaste without being too adjunct-sour. I only recently tried PBR (despite living in Portland during the PBR revival, where you can't go anywhere without seeing a bunch of hipsters clinging to their PBR tallboys) and thought it was pretty damn good - great summer or session beer. Schlitz has more flavor, more bitterness, and is a bit more complex. Aside from the hop bitterness, there's some light malt flavor and roasted corn. Pretty good - try it!

And finally - Boulevard Saison-Brett. Yes, this is the 2009 batch. $12.99 at Royal Liquor on State Line - they have quite a bit of this in stock at the moment.

Really, with a ton of beer already at home, the last thing we needed was more beer. Everything just looked so good....

New Stuff - Been there, not-yet done that

First, what's been in our fridge lately.

As Liquid Diets recently posted, Caldera Brewing out of my home state of Oregon has started to distribute to the KCMO area - with cans! They're sending their IPA and Pale Ale out our way, and boy is it tasty. Deliciously hoppy as west coast APAs and IPAs should be, these two beers deliver. We've spotted them at Gomer's Midtown and Royal on State Line.

Here's a video of Caldera Brewing Company's canning line:




Hey look! They're on 'can'did camera!

...


anyway. I picked up a bottle of Schmaltz brewing's He'Brew Jewbilation 12, which is an anniversary ale using the same number of grains, hops, and hop additions as years - and %ABV (yes, 12%!). If you're so inclined, you can read about the ingredients on their website or in pdf. This beer is amazing and not to be taken lightly. It pours a rich dark brown with a tan & quickly dissipating head. It smells sweet and rich and boozy, almost like port. Mouthfeel is smooth and creamy, tasting heavily of raisins and dark chocolate. Aftertaste is definitely bitter chocolate. This is one rich and complex beer!

This beer would go lovely with a giant plate of brownies (yes, giant) or maybe a black forest cake. Better yet, a plate of hearty cheese (3-year cave-aged gouda, for instance) with crackers, dried apricots, prunes and hazelnuts. Decadent!


And now for the not-yet:

We've been keeping an eye (or four) out for the 2009 Samuel Adams Longshot releases, but no luck so far. In case you're not familiar with Longshot, this is Jim Koch's nod to the art of homebrewing. Sam Adams invites homebrewers to submit samples of their homebrew, then picks four finalists from the submissions. The finalists then get flown to the GABF, where the two champions will be announced. The Samuel Adams brewery will brew the two winning recipes and bottle them as the Longshot series for the year.

This run is special, as there's a 2007 winner in the line-up - a Double IPA. This is, according to some, a clone of Russian River Brewing's highly-praised Pliny the Elder. In other words, west coast hop splendor.

Due to the hop shortage in the past couple of years, Samuel Adams was unable to source the ingredients necessary to stay true to the recipe. They gave the homebrewer, Mike "Tasty" McDole, the option to have his recipe brewed with alternate ingredients in 2008 or brewed with the proper ingredients in 2009. Clearly, he chose the latter and it's only a matter of time before we get the pleasure of tasting it! It'll be accompanied by a Traditional Bock and a Cranberry Wit.

Cheers!

What do an IPA, Pils, Brown, Dubbel, and Tripel all have in common?

They're all in today's blog post.

I have a lot to talk about today... let's start with an overview.

1. Doodle Brewing continues to move forward!
   
2. Free State's birthday celebration is crazy, but their C3 IPA is crazy-good
3. Sam Adams' Hallertau Imperial Pilsner is wonderful
4. John made a tripel recently that seems like it's going to come out fantastically. Beautiful beer.
5. Homebrewing book recommendations
   

Okay... so let's look at the details.

Doodle Brewing.
This is an up & coming brewery in Liberty that looks & sounds promising. Nick, the owner, has a degree in Chemical Engineering AND has brewery experience - he has worked at Harpoon Brewing in Boston as well as 75th Street here in KC. He'll have a tasting room on the premises and I'm looking forward to trying his first brew, a Belgian dubbel. Nick's got a blog in addition to the brewery's formal website.

Free State Brewing
We trekked on over to Free State Brewing last night, primarily to sample anything we'd never had before. This place was busy. No, it was CRAZY BUSY. Despite that, we were able to get 2 seats at the bar. And, much to my delight, they had their C3 IPA on tap. Deliciously hoppy and bitter, this baby comes in around 95 theoretical IBUs.

In total, they had 14 beers on tap, 2 of which blew out while we were there. (Let's see if I can remember... they had the Wheat State, Winter Wheat, Crimsonberry, Ad Astra, Copperhead, Oatmeal Stout, Imperial Pils, Santa's Helper (blown), Eccentricity (blown), C3, Owd Mac, ESB, Old Backus Barleywine... descriptions of each are available here.)

They also have new branded 12oz Willi Becher (or willibecher) glasses that will be available for purchase next week. They're quite nice and I know we'll be picking up a couple for our collection.

Sam Adams Hallertau Imperial Pilsner
James at K-7 recommended this to me a while back, and we picked up a 4-pack last weekend. This is a really nice beer, and the Hallertau hops are well-demonstrated. It is hoppy, but not astringent or bitter. I am quickly becoming a fan of the German Pilsner (or "Pils") style for this reason. It is a nice hoppy beer, but still light and very easy to drink. If you like the citrusy taste of hops but aren't a fan of the bitterness you get with IPAs, you would probably enjoy this beer.

Homebrewing
I haven't posted much about our homebrewing efforts lately, but we've made a couple of batches so far this year. John's latest is a Belgian Tripel and is coming along quite nicely. He made up a large yeast starter for this batch, which led to pretty messy blowout during the initial 24 hours of fermentation. It smelled delicious, though. Here's a picture of the yeast starter on the stir plate:

I think the most impressive picture from this round of homebrewing, though, was the clarity of the wort.



Amazing! It's a beautiful wort sample and was quite tasty as well. The tripel's still in primary fermentation, but I'm anxious to try it when it's all done... unfortunately I'll be waiting for quite some time as this baby takes a while.

Homebrewing Book Recommendations
We also bottled an American Brown Ale, the recipe for which was taken from Jamil Zainasheff's Brewing Classic Styles book. Everything we've made from this book has turned out well, and I don't think this will be any exception. We dry-hopped this baby with Centennial hops for a couple of weeks prior to bottling and will be tasting it this afternoon.

If you're looking at getting into homebrewing, Jamil's book (and webinars on The Brewing Network) is just fantastic. I'd also buy John Palmer's How to Brew at the same time. Read that one first, then read Jamil's. Those are pretty much all you'd need to read to make some excellent home brew that will impress your friends and stun your neighbors.