We’ll be entering beers into the 2012 Boston Homebrew Competition again this year.  I think I have at least four I want to submit, plus I can send in a bottle of cider and/or mead.

I don’t think I am going to subject the judges to the Belgian Wit I brewed in the summer.  I poured the contents of the remaining bottles down the sink this weekend and redemption for the sins of the recent past will be the subject of my next brew log.

There is a couple of updates to this year’s competition.  All entries must be submitted online and only entries with the official labels attached to them will be accepted.

Entries must be received by February 17th, 2012.  Good luck to all who enter.

I came to the decision that I need to submit my mead to the Mazer Cup to get some helpful feedback about the raspberry melomel I made.  I haven’t had many meads to know if I made a good one or not.

This competition is the one for meadmakers.  If I want to get someone who knows what a good mead taste like, then I need to send some bottles to Colorado.

Right now, I am not sure if I want to make more meads in the future.  If I get some good feedback and enough information to make a better one, then maybe I will try again.

Entries need to be received by February 17th.  I think I have a box that can be used to deliver 3 bottles of mead.

I don’t use a secondary very often as I tend to ferment in primary for at least two weeks then I cold crash and rack to a keg. Mainly I just like not taking the time to clean a secondary and then rack the beer. I prefer to just let it ferment out in primary and the next move is to the serving vessel. However, a secondary does have a practical applications occasionally, one being the addition of fruit.

AAAAAnd you won’t see that here. The few times I’ve done fruit beer in the past I have added fruit to secondary, then racked the beer on top of the fruit. This time I wanted to experiment with something different and keep with my simple one fermentor process I outlined above. In the case of my Cherry Wheat brew, I chose pureed cherry from a can. This cherry source is pasteurized at canning, so the fruit is ready to go. All I needed to do was sanitize the can, and pour it in the fermentor. Of course, I used a sanitized funnel to help get the red cherry goodness into the glass carboy I was using.

Going along with my easy as possible steps, I left a bucket of sanitizer next to the fermentor with my small funnel in it after the last brew session. All I did was to pull the airlock and bung out of the carboy, add the puree and replace the airlock.

No worries right?

Well, I did add the fruit 5 days into the ferment as I had planned. Thinking that the majority of fermentation should have been passed I hoped that by adding fruit to the primary would prevent a vicious blow-off. Well that part of the experiment was a failure. I ended up coming home the next day to an airlock dislodged from the carboy and it was full of fermentation goo. Not a problem though because I still had a bucket of sanitizer and an airlock already in there ready to go. The fermentation had already gone through its blow off phase apparently, because the fresh airlock hasn’t gotten gummed up yet.

I’ll have to edit this post with a link to tasting notes after the beer is done (in another week) to decide if the fruiting in the primary is as good as doing it in secondary.

BREW ON!

With 2011 coming to a close, I revisited the goals I set for the year:

Brew my APA again and see if I can replicate it. It’s been a while since I brewed it so I may need to brew it twice this year to see if I have consistency.
Make a mead and a cider – I think I can do those both this year.
Figure out fermentation. I am going to leave that open ended, but there are learnings about the fermentation process that I need to gain this year.
This short list should be easy to accomplish in 2011.

So I didn’t brew my APA again but I did brew a Harvest Ale that was similar to the one I brewed before. Maybe I can pass that along to next year.

I did make a mead and a cider. Done and done.

As for fermentation, I applied two things to my process that I think have helped my brewing over all. The first thing was making good healthy starters before the brew day and the second thing was getting the aeration process down. I have seen a big difference in my beers since I have done that. Fermentation temperature is the next challenge I have to lock in. When making lagers, it is easy since I can put the fermentor in the fridge and lock in the temperature. For ales, it varies wildly based on the air temperatures each season brings. Winter is too cold and summer is too hot. Spring and Fall are hard to predict.

For 2012, here are my resolutions:

• Brew 3 lagers as a part of the Masters of Lagers project.  As a part of it, I will upgrade my wort chilling equipment.
• Brew some recipe twice to see if my process can replicate beers.
• Get a system to maintain fermentation temperatures for all beer types and for any season.

Brew On Brew Dudes, Brew On!   See you in 2012.

With November coming to a close, I thought I would put up a quick post about the homebrewing competition scoresheets I got back from the NERHBC.

Pretty middle of the road scores as you can see from the photo above. The Oktoberfest did place but it is always interesting to see what scores and comments you get back.

Beers that did well in a previous competition got lower marks this time around.

Beer that I thought weren’t that great received some positive remarks.

Beers with a higher scores than the Oktoberfest didn’t place at all. It comes down to competition in the category, I guess.

Anyway, next year it’s all about brewing more and submitting more.

Last night, my wife and I were drinking some fine Brown Ale from a previous brew session.  The beer was from an experimental batch where I split the batch between two different yeasts, as you can see in the previous brewlog post. I discovered I had a beer contamination in the keg even at cold temps.

We were drinking off the WLP001 American Ale yeast keg.  The beer had aged into something fairly pleasant as it sat in the kegorator for several months.  Admittedly, the beer sat that long because I didn’t really like how either yeast had come out. I poured two pints before dinner.  As dinner was about to hit the table (hand-made Parkerhouse Rolls with Mushroom and Lentil stew) I went to the garage to pour another quick pint…. All foam!

The keg was kicked on those last two pints.  I guess that beer was better than I thought as we had worked through it over the summer.

So I hooked up the second keg from the WLP002 English Ale yeast.   I could tell something was different right off the bat with the head.  There was a lack of creaminess to it, it was more of a consistent foam.  I tasted it and there was a clear clove-phenol taste and aroma in it.  I noticed that flavor in it about a month ago and didn’t think much of it.  Back in May, that flavor wasn’t there but it slowly grew and grew as I have sampled the keg over the summer.

Interestingly, the keg has been cold since it went into the fridge in April so what ever contaminant I picked up in the keg is still active even at cold temps.  I did bottle a couple from that keg and sent it to a competition last month.  I am still waiting for the score sheets.  I would not be surprised to find out if that beer was over carbed and really phenol-ly once it warmed up to room temp and sat waiting a week or so before judging.  I hope when they opened it, it didn’t make a mess!

The WLP001 keg has no hint of that beer contamination in the keg.  When coming out of the brew kettle post chill, I filled a single carboy up with the wort.  THEN I split it in half into another carboy.  And seeing how the flavor wasn’t present post ferment, I must have picked up the contamination in the keg I racked into post ferment.  Live and learn, I guess it’s just a reminder to not slack on sanitation.  Even when you are careful, you never know.

Anyhow, I had to eat my rolls and stew with Oktoberfest.  I know it’s a tough life but as a brew dude I make sacrifices for you – the reader.

BREW ON!

Mike and I have started talking about our brewing plans for the upcoming year.   One of these plans is to become masters of lagers.

We will complete our apprenticeship by:

1. Brewing at least 6 lagers during the year.
2. Choosing one lager yeast strain and using it for all the lagers.   After starting the first brew with a mighty starter, the following lager worts will be racked on top of the yeast cake that is left over from the preceding lager.
3. Get a better handle on our water chemistry.