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Last week, Mike and I got the results back from our first homebrew contests with BJCP judging. We sent Basic Bitch Brown and Mouth Mittens to the SODZ British Beer Fest in Ohio and Haleiwa Island Lager and Pippy Hopstocking Cold IPA to Cascade Brewers Society 's KLCC Homebrew Competition in Oregon. A few firsts for us:
So here you go. For each beer, you have a bit of the beer's background, the judges' scoresheets, and our thoughts on the judges' feedback. Basic Bitch BRownWhen we brewed BBB, we knew we under attenuated the beer as we kegged the beer after only 7 days of fermentation. What can I say? We had friends coming over who wanted a brown beer, so we rushed it a bit. We knew that was one thing we would change for batch number 2. Also, our first version of BBB was a complete and utter disaster as someone (yep…I’m that someone) accidentally quadrupled the caramel malts and made the beer too sweet; in my defense, it was my first time upping a recipe for our one barrel system, and I completely messed up in every way possible. So, for this version I wanted to go lighter on the sweetness. I was not sure the balance was right on this beer and wanted to change something in the recipe, but I could never figure out what exactly I wanted to change. I did not want a traditional sweet brown beer that most Americans prefer to drink. Instead, I was trying to brew a less sweet and dryer brown like I had the pleasure of drinking in the local pubs we visited while in England.
I was actually pleased with a 30/50 for a beer I was not really 100 percent confident in. I feel 30/50 is a strong score for any beer and especially an incomplete version of a beer. I definitely agree with the judges that the beer is under attenuated. We knew that going into the contest. Mike and I didn’t taste any astringency, so we disagreed with that comment from one of the judges. We were happy that the beer received 3/3 for appearance and good comments on carbonation (always good to hear that as feedback!). The judges suggested balancing the hops and malt. However, I disagree that BBB needs more sweetness. However, BBB has 25 IBUs, so we could try upping the hops a little. Also, it comes in at 6.1%, so we can back off the base malt just a tad to balance things out more. If we back off the base malt, we’ll also get a tad more sweetness without adding in any more caramel malt. Overall, the feedback from the judges has helped Mike and I find a direction for the next version of BBB that we hope will be more balanced. However, we are still turning in this version to the NHC to receive more feedback before we brew this again. I'm super pleased with the score and excited to (fingers crossed) try and make this beer even better! Mouth MIttens Irish Red AleThis was the first time we brewed this version of MM. We were unhappy with the color and profile of the first version, so we overhauled the recipe to focus on the perfect red color. We served this beer at Craft Beer LB Homebrew Invitational and received some great reviews from people. In fact, this was one of our favorite beers as it really is a nice balance between a malty English style beer and a hoppier IPA. It sort of has a little bit of everything for everyone. In fact, when we sent this in, we were hoping it had a shot to medal as we think it is one of our best beers.
When we received the judges' scores of 25/50, we were shocked. I’m not going to lie, that hurt a bit. However, after we read the judges’ score sheets, we actually felt better about the beer. When reading the comments, we had to take a step back and realize that the scores and comments are directly linked to the style and not how tasty the overall beer is. We were happy to see that we received great reviews on the color and carbonation. I worked hard on getting the color correct, so that was awesome to see noted by the judges. Also, the fact that both judges said the beer was a good, flavorful beer helped us to not go down the "we are bad brewers" road. Our ego took a jab versus a haymaker. We kept getting stuck on the fact the judges said MM was “too hoppy” as that wasn’t how we would describe the flavor. So, back to the recipe I went. And, well, guess what? Yup. MM happens to be quite hoppy at 67 IBUs! Huh? How’d that happen? Well, rather than change the beer (we love MM as it is), we decided to change the category! So, Mouth Mittens Red IPA was born. We are entering MM as a Red IPA at the NHC, so we hope to receive better scores. We’re excited to see how MM does in the Red IPA category...we're hoping that is the correct category for her. Haleiwa Island LagerWe came up with the idea for Haleiwa while eating sushi. We were drinking Asahis and said, “What would happen if we made a rice lager that was more heavily hopped?” We decided to make Haleiwa with jasmine rice and add Sorachi Ace and other hops to give the beer a brighter taste. We received a lot of great feedback on Haleiwa at Craft Beer LB, and we find ourselves drinking this beer a lot in the summer. Haleiwa is really refreshing and has such a unique flavor profile. This is the beer I am most proud of as a brewer. I really love the flavor of the jasmine rice and have been so happy to be able to reproduce this beer over and over again. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to duplicate the flavors produced from the rice, but I am! We were sure this would do well in the competition.
When he saw the score of 25/50, we both thought something must have happened when we bottled our beer. After all, we had never bottled or shipped beer before. We thought that maybe there was some oxidation that happened during travel. However, we were surprised to find that, once again, our beer was too hoppy for the category. One judge stated he tasted DMS and astringency, but we disagree. However, we realized the “pepper” flavor the judges initially tasted comes from the jasmine rice. We didn’t state in our tasting notes that this was brewed with jasmine rice, so that could be a little bit surprising for judges. We love the comments that the beer is clear; let's be honest, all homebrewers strive for a super clear beer! Both judges thought the beer was overall a good beer. I was surprised to read that one judge would have scored this in the mid 30s if it was in the cold IPA category. As a cold IPA never crossed my mind, I went back to the recipe and well, wouldn’t ya know? Yup. It’s an IPA with 76 IBUs! Since we love the beer as is, we are not going to be making any changes to this beer. Instead, Haleiwa is now officially Haleiwa IPA and entered into the NHC under the specialty IPA category. In the notes, I did state that this is a jasmine rice beer that is lager fermented to make sure the judges are aware of the flavors in our beer. We will see how she does in the competition in a new category. Pippy Hopstocking Cold IPAMike and I had no idea what a cold IPA was when we brewed Pippy. We brewed Pippy to be a hoppy lager (Who knew that a hoppy lager was actually another name for a cold IPA? We thought we started a new trend!). We also wanted to push the limits of IBUs while still maintaining a drinkable beer. This is by far Mike’s favorite beer that we make and one of the most requested beers from our IPA loving friends. We were sure this would be a medal winning beer.
The judges scored Pippy a 34/50 and a 35/50. When I entered this beer, I specifically said that Pippy is heavily hopped and has 130 IBUs. I was surprised to see comments about Pippy being too hoppy and out of style for a Specialty IPA. I mean, the category is literally for beers that don't fit into any set style. Pippy is too low ABV for a double; she's not an IPA; she is a cold IPA; but, she is what she is described as...a heavily hopped power punch of IBUs cold IPA. I guess she doesn’t really fit into a category….she’s like the unicorn of beer. She is hopped and tastes like a double IPA, but she has lower alcohol at only 6.9%. Pippy is sort of a session Double IPA (I just made that up!), a regular IPA, with the IBUs of a DIPA, and fermented with lager yeast. One judge said Pippy is “out of balance” while the other said “nice hops to malt balance.” However, I don’t know where the “yeasty” flavor one judge tasted comes from as neither of us or any of our friends have noticed a “yeasty” character to the beer. We decided to throw that comment out. We were most impressed with how tasty the judges thought the beer was. We actually think that Pippy would win most contests, but we were told this particular contest had 4 IPAs that scored over 40 points. Overall, we are super happy to have a beer earn 34 points on it's first beer contest. We decided to put Pippy into the NHC under Cold IPA and see what happens. We are hoping it scores a bit better there. Our TakewawaysThe biggest thing we took from the competitions is that the category your beer is in makes a huge difference. Since we didn’t brew these beers specifically for a competition, we were happy to receive feedback that helps us place these beers into better categories. So what did we take away from the experience?
2JBC
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You may or may not have noticed that Mike and I have taken a bit of a break from brewing. As a full time special education teacher, the month of April into the beginning of May is an incredibly busy time for me at work. We put a lot of effort and time into preparing for the March 19 Craft Beer LB event, so we needed a little R&R! Also, we wanted to properly spend some time together celebrating our twenty year wedding anniversary! Now that things are slowing back down to normal at work, Mike and I are ready to begin brewing. Well, what to brew? What to brew? That seems to be the inevitable question that brewers are constantly asking themselves. We are retiring Judge Hopner IPA for a bit to concentrate on some new recipes. Honestly, I have been researching and writing new ideas for recipes constantly. Some of the recipes may never come to fruition, but I have about 50-60 beer recipes ready to go. I’m currently reading up kettle souring because it is an area I don’t know about and a way to try something new. The theme of this for us to get out of our comfort zone and nothing is more outside my comfort zone than sour beer! But, we have the sour beer on the shelf for a bit as we want to read up on equipment contamination and best practices. So, what to brew now? Well….drum roll please…we decided to enter 8 beers (yes, 8…four under my name and 4 under Mike’s name) into the National Homebrew Competition! Yikes! Why? Well, because we decided to attend Homebrew Con that is held in June in Pittsburgh, PA. If by the off chance one of our beers wins a medal, how cool would it be to pick up a medal at Homebrew Con? A girl can dream, right? Our 8 NHC Beers:
Preparing for the NHCWe are super happy that the NHC accepts canned beer! We bought an Oktober canning machine and have a box of cans already, so that’s a huge plus. We also have to submit in six bottles/cans of each beer (that’s 32 total beers!) for judging. Being able to ship the beers in cans versus bottles should, I hope, cost a little bit less. We signed up for two competitions and had to mail in bottles for those competitions. Shipping to those locations first helped us to not stress as much for this competition. The fact that we were able to ship bottles to competitions in Oregon and Ohio without any bottles being broken, makes us feel confident that we can get our cans to Pittsburgh without any beer mishaps. Of course, beer can always be stopped en route, but we decided not to stress about what we cannot control. Our competition entries are paid for, labels are printed out on Avery labels, and we have all of our shipping supplies in order. In a future blog post, I’ll go over our steps for shipping the beers to competition. I’ll wait until after the beers successfully make it to competition before I post that blog. We don’t need any jinxing! :) Brew PlanI f you had asked me in January if we would be sending 8 beers to the National Homebrew Competition, I would have thought you were crazy. Now, it seems kind of normal. Yes, eight beers is a lot, but we really want the feedback and experience of competition. However, since April is such a busy month, brewing eight beers to send fresh batches of every beer seems daunting. Instead, we plan to send our current versions of Mouth Mittens, Basic Bitch Brown, Pippy Hopstocking, and Haleiwa. If for some reason we don't have enough of one of these beers or the beers have developed off flavors for some reason, we will rebrew that one beer. Instead, we are focusing on the other four beers we have yet to brew. We planned ahead for each of these beers. We have the hops and yeast available for everything. The only hiccup is whether or not our homebrew shop has the grains. We have backup plans for the grains. I even have the blood orange puree ready to go for Tijuana Facelift. We did not want to get stuck having the beers ready to brew and miss out on an ingredient. Now, all we can do is hope our recipes are on point and our brew days go well. But, we figure it is a win win. If a brew day goes poorly, we are going to ship the beer anyway and see if how we evaluate the beers matches how the judges view the beers.
While a win would be nice, we really do hope to get amazing feedback and to learn a lot. We are excited to attend Homebrew Con and hopefully meet many of the brewers we follow on Instagram. We want to perfect the homebrewing craft as much as possible. But, I’m not going to lie. I didn’t play Division I Volleyball and Mike didn’t play minor league baseball because we aren’t competitive. Winning a medal would be amazing and the bragging rights would be awesome. However, we want to make the best beers we can make. We want to expand our brewing processes, try new styles of brewing, and keep pushing the boundaries of what we can do with our brew system. In the process, we want to continually celebrate those brewers that win competitions and learn from those who we have the pleasure of meeting along our journey. So, what are you brewing next and why? Cheers! 2JBC I know this is a blog about brewing beer, but I wanted to take a moment to discuss…gardening! Yes, gardening. Specifically, gardening for citrus trees. Mike and I have been fortunate to live in one of the best areas in the world to grow fruits and vegetables. Due to a long laundry list of hobbies, we have downsized our former orchard filled with 19 fruit trees to 7 citrus trees. When we planned a remodel of our small house and expanded our brewery, we decided to downsize our backyard orchard. Instead of devoting weekends to the garden, we wanted to spend less time in the garden while gaining more time for brewing. Citrus was the answer. We use citrus trees in cooking and brewing. The trees are easy to maintain and only need a little trimming for maintenance. We find that vermin stay out of the yard and the diseases they get are easy to manage and control. However, they do require a bit of planning to keep them in prime fruiting conditions. Our Citrus Trees
 Our leaning Meyer lemon. You can see the white paint on the trunk needs to be repainted before summer. It also needs some fertilizer as the leaves are yellow and thin. However, it is starting to fruit! Meyer Lemon: This is our fourth Meyer lemon tree. I am determined to get one to grow! For whatever reason, I find lemon trees the most finicky and susceptible to weather. My parents had a Meyer Lemon tree in the house I grew up in, and the lemon juice made the most incredible lemonade and desserts. The fruit is tart and sweet. They lend themselves to desserts and are prized by bakers. I have a thousand recipes I want to make with Meyer lemons, so I really need this tree to get going! I have a couple of small lemons on our tree. It looks a bit sad, but I am determined to get one to grow in my yard!  Our Lisbon lemon has fruit in different stages...almost ripe lemons and green lemons. I need to even out the branch height, but I decided to let the tree keep fruiting. This was planted at the same time as the Meyer lemon in the same part of our yard. Lisbon Lemon: Lisbon lemons are the lemons you buy in the grocery store. However, I find the grocery store lemons have a weird wax coating and flavor. There is something very pesticide tasting on them that I don’t like which is why I never have lemon in my water at restaurants. However, from our tree, the flavor from our Lisbon is great. It is a perfect workhorse lemon and perfect for adding to drinks and water. The only downside so far is that the tree has thorns…lots of thorns…lots of LARGE THORNS! Be careful when you pick the fruit off of the tree. So far, this is a heavy fruit bearer. I’m excited for the tree to get going!
Rio Red grapefruit: We love pink grapefruits and were excited that we could find one that grew in our climate! We don’t get the freeze that Florida does, so grapefruits don’t often get enough cold for them to sweeten. Our tree is about 4 years old and this year we had 10 grapefruits. We are hoping to get a large crop in the next few years. I’m most excited to make a beer with these grapefruits once they get going. **I forgot to take a picture before it got dark today. Oops. TREE CAREWatering: Our citrus trees are established and have solid roots, so I don’t water them frequently. However, I have found the need to supplement watering during the hot summer months as we are in a drought. When citrus tree leaves curl, they need water. They do well with deep water and then let the soil dry out before watering again. Some citrus trees have taproots, but the majority of citrus tree roots are thin, woody horizontal roots that have hairy feeder roots off them. Their roots tend to lay close to the surface of the soil and overwatering can lead to root rot. Allow the soil to dry out between watering. I typically only water when the trees start flowering and only water on a regular schedule in the hottest times of the summer. Pruning: Citrus trees do need to be pruned to keep branches from crossing and causing damage. Keep the center of the tree open if you can to allow for air to flow through the trunk. Check regularly for dead branches and prune those back. Keep the trees small and encourage them to grow shorter rather than taller. Keeping the trees short allows you to pick the fruit from the ground vs having to use a ladder. Being that both Mike and I are over 6 feet tall, we typically stand next to the trees and extend our arms up…as tall as we can reach is the maximum height we allow the tree to reach. I cut back our citrus trees when they get taller than the maximum height. I actually believe keeping the trees shorter has helped them to produce such amazing fruit as the tree can devote more energy to fruiting rather than growing taller. Fertilizer: Citrus trees are heavy feeders, very heavy feeders. I tried to fertilize using only organic means, but I found that to be an ineffective and costly way to fertilize the trees. Typically, the trees require a pound of fertilizer for each year it has been planted. For example, a 5 year old tree needs approximately 5 pounds of fertilizer a year, a 6 year old tree needs approximately 6 pounds of fertilizer a year, and so on. A good schedule is to split the feedings over 3 times that are easy to remember and beneficial to fruit trees–Valentine’s Day, Memorial Day, and Labor Day. I use the following to fertilize my trees:
Dealing with bugs: I find that most issues that arise on citrus trees can be dealt with by spraying them with water. Black sooty mold is common in Southern California and develops when aphids or other bugs feed on the leaves. Aphids are also very common. You can control aphids by spraying them with a strong stream of water or spraying them with neem. Honestly, that’s about all I ever have to do is spray for aphids and sooty mold. Citrus trees that are healthy and dark green don’t tend to get many issues. Also, if you see ants in your tree, it is typically an indication that aphids have been feeding on the leaves. Painting trunks: Citrus trees that are in sunny locations will thrive, but they will also benefit from an application of whitewashed latex paint to their trunks. Citrus bark is thin and easily sunburns. A bonus is that the paint also protects the trees from bugs that feed on the bark such as beetles. They make specific tree paint, but you can just dilute regular white latex paint with water to paint the trees. I reapply the paint yearly or whenever the tree has extensive new growth that is not covered by leaves from the sun. Weeds: Be careful weeding around citrus trees since the roots are so close to the surface. I try to leave the soil as undisturbed as possible. I do, however, pull weeds when they appear. As much as possible, try not to disturb the soil unless you have to. ResourcesMost cities offer gardening courses and actually have some great money saving deals. Socal Water Smart has rebates on rain barrels. Mike and I were able to purchase four rain barrels with rebates. We water our backyard plants using the water we collect. After our last rain, we now have 4 full barrels of water again. Los Angeles County also has multiple Smartgardening workshops. The classes also give you the opportunity to learn about composting and vermicomposting. At the workshops, you can buy composters and worm bins at a discount price. I attended several gardening workshops through Los Angeles County and found them all extremely beneficial. They were well worth the money and time. Our trash is collected by Edco that now has green waste recycling. Through their program, you can request a free countertop composting bin. However, I will give you one bit of advice. Be careful with the County provided free mulch. The mulch is not sifted through and often has bottle caps and glass. Also, my neighbor as used the free mulch and ended up bringing in grubs and nutsedge. If you don't know what nutsedge is, you are incredibly lucky! I'm not sure napalm could get rid of it! Be sure to sift the mulch if you use the city mulch...you will be thankful!
If you are interested in growing citrus or other trees in a small garden, I highly recommend researching backyard orchards. The suggestion is to plant trees 6’ on center. I have done this with our trees and find that we get plenty of variety of fruit in a small area. Also, keeping the fruit trees smaller allows the trees to produce better fruit and for us to utilize the fruit we have instead of having tons of fruit that spoils. For more information, this article from Dave Wilson Nursery has a lot of information. Happy gardening! We’d love to hear what you are growing in your yard and how you plan on using it in your beer! Cheers! 2JBC |
AuthorTwo Jacks Brewers Archives
May 2024
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