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This is our first year sending our homebrew to competitions out of state. We just sent our beers to the National Homebrew Competition(NHC) and received notice that our beers arrived at the destination in Colorado. We have also shipped our beers to competitions in Ohio and Oregon. Our bottles of beer made it to the competitions, and we shipped the beers in different ways to each. Since this is all new to us, we thought we would share our process with you in the hopes it will give you the confidence to send your brews to competitions. How to find a competitionThe AHA website has a list of all of the AHA sponsored competitions available. We started with picking competitions that fit beers that we had recently brewed. CategoriesOur first competition that required shipping was for British Beers. We mailed in our Basic Bitch Brown Ale and our Mouth Mittens Imperial Red. We were told that Mouth Mittens was "too hoppy" for a red ale, and we moved the category to "Specialty IPA/Red IPA). The second competition we shipped beers to was in Oregon, and we sent our Haleiwa Island Lager and our Pippy Hopstocking IPA. We changed Hailewa's category from Lager to IPA after the competition. We currently entered the NHC and sent 8 beers--4 under each of our names. After the first competitions, we found we needed to change the categories for some of our beers. The best thing to do is to read through the list of categories and then try and match your beers. While creativity is what I like in beers, it isn't what necessarily wins competitions. Make sure you give the judges information you need for them to correctly judge your beers. We made sure that our Tijuana Facelift Lager lists the base beer as a Mexican lager and includes that it is infused with both 5 types of peppers and blood orange. For Haleiwa IPA, we listed it as a Cold IPA that is brewed with jasmine rice and fermented with lager yeast. Last, pay attention to which version of the BJCP they are using for the judging. The categories can sometimes be numbered differently from one year to the next, so you'll want to make sure you follow each competition's category information for submissions. The beers we officially entered into the NHC: 1. Pippy Hopstocking-18a: Specialty IPA (21B) 2. Haleiwa-18a: Specialty IPA (21B) 3. Mouth Mittens-18a: Specialty IPA (21B) 4. Basic Bitch Brown Ale-13b: Brown Brit Beer: Brit Brown Ale (13B) 5. Makani Lager-02a: Pale Euro (2A) 6. Tongue Hug Tropical Stout-14c: British Stout: Trop Stout (16C) 7. Tijuana Facelift-29: Spiced Beer: Spice/Herb/Veg Beer (30A) 8. Salute Italian Pilsner-34e: Spec Beer: Mixed Style (34B) There is a max of 7 beers per entrant. However, we entered the first beer under my name with Mike as a co-brewer and the beers 5-8 under Mike's name with me as a co-brewer. Beers 4-8 are new recipes and the first version of each of the beers. Bottling/CanningMake sure you pay attention to the details related to bottling and canning beer. Some contests specify which color the beer caps must be (typically black); if you do not follow the rules for bottling and canning, your entry may not be judged. Also, many contests do not allow beer bottles with any identifying markings in the glass. The safest method is to buy new bottles specifically for competition. For cans, double check what size of can may be used in the competition. Some only allow 12oz cans. Also, I’d recommend double checking your seaming specs prior to shipping to ensure the tops of the cans are secure. We used bottles for competition this year. While we do have an Oktober canning machine, we had the impression that cans weren't as well accepted at competitions since they are newly allowed in competitions. Because of this, we opted to bottle beers for the competitions we enter. Also, we ordered cans with labels pre-applied and decided to purchase bottles for competition use only. We bottled for our first contest using Northern Brewer’s Last Straw and bottled for the NHC using the Boel iTap Bottle Filler. By far, the Boel iTap was our preferred method and there was minimal beer loss when bottling. The most important aspect for competition is to ensure that you sanitize your cans/bottles and purge as much oxygen out as possible. A bench capper is a great and inexpensive way to make the capping process easier and safer...if you've never had a bottle slip with a bottle capper, you are lucky. It's no fun. We bought some 6 pack bottle holders on Amazon and put each bottle into a labeled holder. The holders are reusable for more competitions. This allowed us to ensure that we did not mislabel any bottles when filling. After filling each bottle, we proceeded to add the labels to each and begin packing them for shipping. We found this method to be an easy and stress free way to bottle up our 8 beers without getting them confused. Also, we could then focus on bottling and shipping on different days so that we weren’t as stressed. BoxesThe best line of defense to ensure your beer arrives safely is to ensure you are using a sturdy box. A double-walled box is best; however, you can double box as well. The trick is to ensure that everything in the box is tightly packed and nothing moves. We have packed our bottles both with bubble wrap and Crafty Shipping containers. We did notice a sloshing liquid sound with the Crafty Shipping. However, it is not illegal to send liquid via UPS, so we weren’t too worried. I preferred shipping with bottles wrapped with bubble wrap to the Crafty Shipping. However, I would try a method of shipping the bottles upright in a special container in the future. Some companies that have special shipping containers for beer:
Additional shipping supplies-rubber bands -trash bag -ziploc bag (if requested for beer label) -bubble wrap -cardboard box -fragile/this side up stickers -packing tape -UPS/FedEx label (we use a Munbyn thermal printer) Note: DO NOT SHIP VIA USPS!! It is illegal to ship alcohol in the mail via USPS! Pro tip: Save the air space that are included in Amazon packages for use when shipping bottles! These are great cushioning for your beer and will save you some money on packing materials. Mailing
Note: When you pay online for shipping, you will be asked what are the contents of your box. Typically, I say “glassware” since that is not lying. When sending cans, I will probably say “yeast samples” or “soda care package.” TrackingMake sure you get a tracking number for each box you send. When we shipped to the NHC location in Colorado, we shipped 48 total beers (8 entries at 6 beers a piece). We had smaller boxes and filled each box with 4 beers; we shipped out a total of 12 boxes. The total cost for shipping was $201.60 ($16.80 per box)! I’m not sure, but it may be cheaper to ship cans due to the weight of the glass. When we shipped our entries, I paid for all 12 entries at once and each label was under one main tracking number. This made keeping up to date on each entry easy. I’m not going to lie…the time from when we first ship our boxes until I receive a notice that the packages arrived safely is stressful! I’m a worry wort, so I am constantly sketching that something bad will happen in transit. As of today, I am happy to say all 12 of our boxes made it to the NHC for judging!
Now that we are done shipping, we wait to hear from the judges! We are excited to be attending Homebrew Con in Pittsburgh to hear the results! We wish everyone luck and hope that our entries are successful! Hopefully, we will get to meet some of the brewers we interact with online while we are there! Cheers! 2JBC
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Mike and I decided this year to send 8 beers to the National Homebrew Competition (NHC). This is our first year sending beers into competition, so we decided we’d just go all in. So far, we decided to send the following beers: Basic Bitch Brown Ale, Haleiwa (Specialty IPA), Mouth Mittens (Specialty IPA), Pippy Hopstocking (Specialty IPA), Makani Lager, Tongue Hug (Tropical Stout), Salute (Euro Pilsner), and Tijuana Facelift (Fruit & Spice Beer). We were able to brew and lager our beers in time for the competition; however, we did not have enough time to carb them as we normally do. For 99.9% of our beers, we slow carb them over the course of a week before serving. Unfortunately, we need to send out our beers to the NHC judges and did not give ourselves enough time to slow carbonate our beers. Before our anxiety level hit mach 10, Mike reminded me that he had purchased a Blichmann Quick Carb to help us if we were ever in this exact situation. While that lowered my anxiety a bit, we had never used the Quick Carb before. I’m not going to lie, I was skeptical; especially since we use floating dip tubes. I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to sufficiently carb the entire keg if the liquid was just being recirculated from the top of the keg for 40 minutes. However, to our surprise, it worked! UnboxingWhen the Blichmann Quick Carb arrived, we almost returned it. I had watched unboxing videos online that showed the Quick Carb being unboxed. The videos showed it boxed and delivered with a plastic case. However, our Quick Carb came in a boring white box without a case. The literature provided seemed thrown in the box. I thought we may have received a returned item, so I emailed Blichmann. They told me the Quick Carb no longer comes with a plastic case due to "supply chain issues." We decided to keep the Blichmann, but I will say the way the device is packaged leaves much to be desired.  Using the quick carbSetup and sanitization was easy. We found that we needed to trim the short tubing that goes to the pump to ensure proper installation of the carb stone and tubing. You will need to make up a small bucket of Star San for sanitizing. The pump that is included is a self priming pump which makes sanitation and using the Quick Carb very easy. In fact, the hardest part of the setup was cutting the rubber band and feeding the power supply connection to the outside of the device (our device came with the connection pushed back to behind the pump). Once the device was sanitized, we followed the instructions and set our regulator per the included carbonation chart. When you first begin the pump, the Carb stone fills the beer with bubbles which you can see in the photos makes the beer look whiter than the other line. When the beer is carbonated, both lines look the same. For our four beers we Quick Carbed, this took approximately 40 mins for each beer. Including purging the lines and sanitizing between kegs, this process took about 4 hours or an hour a keg. When finished, we cleaned the device with PBW, rinsed, and sanitized. I airdried the device and then used one of the cases we had from our Dost e-bike battery to store the dry device. ResultsWe were impressed with the Quick Carb. We have a carbonation stone we can use with corny kegs, but our Carb stone requires us to open the corny keg and replace the cap. This exposes the beer to oxygen and defeats the purpose of closed transferring the beer. The Quick Carb allows us to keep a closed system during the carbonation process. The beer was sufficiently carbonated. However, we wanted a bit more carbonation than we got with the Quick Carb for a competition beer. We decided to put the carbonated kegs on C02 overnight to ensure sufficient bubbles before bottling. However, this isn't really necessary. Would we use the Quick Carb on every keg we make? No. Absolutely not. However, is this an excellent way to get a keg of beer carbonated well enough to enjoy beers when you are on a time crunch? Absolutely. In fact, this allows us piece of mind that we can brew beers and send them to competition in a very short time frame. For the NHC, we made 4 kegs of each beer and Quick Carbed only one of the kegs. The Quick Carb keg is for competitions while the other 3 kegs are for the keezer and canning. The ability to Quick Carb means we can brew beers and quickly Carb them for Tastings or competitions. We no longer have to stress about timeliness and have a bit more flexibility on when we can and cannot brew. While every career is different, this is a game changer for us. As teachers, we often find our brew schedules shift a bit based on our energy levels from work. In fact, we would have had to send under-carbonated beer to the NHC competition without the Blichmann. Final ThoughtsIs the Blichmann Quick Carb an essential brewery component? As with most homebrew gadgets, that depends. If you are brewing 5 gallons at a time and only a beer every few months, you will probably want to pass on this. However, if you are brewing frequently for competitions or larger batches, you might find the Blichmann a perfect addition to your brewery. For us, the Blichmann is a worthwhile purchase and worth the $199 we spent on it. We have used other quick carbonation methods--carb bursting, shaking/rolling a keg--and the Quick Carb inline carbonation is by far the best and most reliable. The four beers we Quick Carbed were approximately 80-90% carbonated; however, they were fully carbonated after being placed on C02 for serving in our keezer for 24-48 hours (depending on the beer style). Overall, we recommend the Blichmann Quick Carb and find it a useful tool for our brewery needs.
Cheers!
2JBC Note: We purchased the Blichmann Quick Carb for use in our brewery. This review is solely based on our use of the unit; we have not received any monetary or products from Blichmann for our review. PS. We wouldn't be opposed to receiving free Blichmann gear for future honest reviews. ;) When Mike and I decided to brew larger and more frequent batches, we looked for ways to save money. When you make 5 gallon batches, you don't really appreciate how much of a difference buying in bulk can make. Besides, storing Costco sized amounts of grain and hops takes quite a bit of room. Fortunately, we were given a stand up freezer by my parents a few years ago and had the storage space. So when we couldn't find several varieties of hops we liked, we decided to buy large quantities of our favorite hops (1 or 5 pounds) to ensure we didn't have to worry about finding the right substitute hops. One problem emerged: how to keep the hops and yeast fresh when we store it? Enter the vacuum sealer! VACUUM SEALER I purchased the Aicok Vacuum Sealer in 2017 from Amazon for under $50. However, they currently do not stock the item. When I checked, there are lots of options for vacuum sealers under $100.  BAGS I tend to use food bags for both hops, yeast, and meal preparation, but I do know that many people prefer to use mylar bags. While mylar bags will keep light and oxygen out of the bags, the bags themselves are more expensive. Also, not all vacuum sealers will work with mylar bags. I tried to use small mylar bags with my vacuum sealer and did not have success. To me, I’m fine with the cost of the food bags and the convenience of them, but I did not want to purchase another vacuum sealer that works with mylar bags. In the future, I can always explore that option if and when my vacuum sealer needs replacing. BAG SIZES I LIKE:
HOPS: We love hops at 2JBC, and we had a difficult time during COVID finding some of the hops we needed. Now that we are back to brewing regularly, we don’t want to postpone the brewing of a beer based on the availability of hops at our local homebrew shops. Also, some substitutions are not really viable. For example, we had a very hard time finding two hops we use in our beers--Phoenix hops and Sorachi Ace hops. Since vacuum sealing and buying hops in bulk, we no longer worry about the availability of hops. Instead, we stock up, vacuum seal the bags, and buy the hops we regularly use when they go on sale. Our local homebrew shops do not seem to carry Sorachi Ace (either due to difficulty finding it or lack of sales); however, we purchased a 5 pound bag of Sorachi Ace hops from Hops Direct for $5 plus shipping! The savings alone is worth the extra time and effort it takes to package the hops in smaller quantities. Since moving to buying hops in large quantities, we have a large selection of hops (currently over 40 different hops) in our freezer ready for use. We mix and match where we buy hops from based on cost, availability, and shipping. Here are a few of the places we purchase hops from:
I keep track of our hops in a Google Sheets spreadsheet that lists the name, year, AA, amount purchased, farm purchased from, uses, and flavor/aroma profile. I keep my eye on sales and make sure to always have our favorite hops on hand--centennial, citra, cascade, Saaz, etc. When a particular hop runs low, I purchase more of that hop. When I want to try a new hop variety, I typically buy a one pound bag. Since doing this, I have found a few hops we do not like (here’s looking at you East Kent Golding and Northern Brewer) and a few hops we were surprised to find we did like (Medusa, Arianna, Sonnet, Phoenix). How to get started building a hops inventory:
Vacuum Sealing Hops: Keeping hops fresh doesn’t have to be difficult, but it does require some space in your freezer. However, if you have a keezer, you can store hops on the side wall if you do not have the storage space. I was fortunate to have a standup freezer that my parents gave to me when they moved. I use the freezer exclusively for hops and yeast storage (I also store large bags of 00 pizza flour from Italy). Since we brew 30 gallon batches frequently, storing large amounts of hops makes sense. You go through a lot of hops making 30 gallon batches of IPAs! Not having to buy them in 1oz packages is a huge bonus! Here’s my process:
YEAST: Mike and I used to make yeast starters and buy expensive White Labs yeast strains. Inevitably, one of two things would happen. One, something would come up after making a starter that would prevent us from brewing, or we would forget to make the starter and not have enough viable yeast for our wort. Both issues were really bothering us. We finally did a cost analysis if you will of time to taste on yeast and decided that the amount of work needed for liquid yeast vs. the end product wasn’t worth it for us. In fact, we actually prefer the taste of Safale yeast. Yep. We like dry yeast packets. In fact, we use S-04, S-05, and 34/70 in 99% of our beers! Since switching to dry yeast, we have found that we actually get better results--better yeast attenuation, cleaner/crisper beers, and less stressful brew days. We do not use oxygenation wands, we simply drop in dry yeast and get good results. Easy peasy. So, why do we vacuum seal yeast you ask? Well, we decided that we would rather have yeast on hand to use whenever we needed. I am not sure you save a ton of money on yeast bricks, but you can definitely keep tabs on yeast and never worry about not having enough yeast on a brew day. In fact, if your yeast doesn’t produce, you can just grab another packet and drop that in. Currently, we buy 500g bricks of Safale yeast on amazon for about $80 a brick. The 34/70 brick, however, is about $125. Each Safale yeast packet you buy at the homebrew shop has 11.5g of yeast. We package our yeast bags as 12 g packets. However, we package 34/70 lager yeast in 24g packets as we use double the yeast on our lagers. Basically, we put our yeast in packets for what we would pitch for 5 gallons. Making a 15 gallon batch? Grab three packets. Keeps things simple for us. Each 500 gram brick makes approximately 41 packets (12g packets) or 21 packets (24g). We recently made 4 new recipes that used 34/70 yeast; we made 14 corny kegs worth of beer and used 14 packets of 24/70 which is close to a brick of yeast. I simply purchased a second brick and am ready to brew again. Currently, we have S-04, S-05, 34/70, and WB-06 yeast on hand. If we make a specialty beer or feel the yeast we have didn’t work well in a beer, then we will explore other options. The process:
Cheers!
2JBC I took a week off of blogging because I needed a little break. Work has been challenging, and I needed a little downtown to decompress and just relax a bit. However, outside of the blog we were able to brew 4 new beer recipes--a tropical stout, an Italian Pilsner, a lager, and a Mexican lager. Throughout our brew process, there are several products we have purchased that have really helped us make our brewing very consistent. So, I thought this blog would be a perfect time to share a few products we have purchased and how we use them. All of these products are products that we have purchased ourselves for our own use; we have not received any compensation for these products. While these are not necessary to brew successfully, we enjoy cool gadgets and find these worth the splurge. Easy DEns I don’t know about anyone else, but I HATE hydrometers. Prior to the Easy Dens, we used a refractometer to check the brix (after the mash) and the OG. However, in order to ensure fermentation has ended and to determine FG, we always used a hydrometer. Hydrometers are not easy for me to read. Most of the time, Mike and I would disagree with the reading and split the difference between the two readings. The real problem, however, is that hydrometers waste a lot of beer when taking the reading. Enter the Easy Dens. While pricey at $349, it was a gift I decided to buy for myself. The Easy Dens uses a 2ml sample and stores the readings in an app. For each beer we brew, I save readings for the beer under BATCHES in the app. I can save each gravity read I take and compare the readings with a nice chart provided. Also, the app helps me to see when fermentation has ended and the samples used are very small. In fact, the samples I take for the Easy Dens I also use with our pH meter, so I really am not using any extra wort when I take them pre-fermentation. For the 3 batches we brewed last week, I took Easy Dens readings as follows: during the mash, preboil, postboil (OG), and end of fermentation (at least 2 readings depending on if the readings are identical or not). Basically, a 10ml sample is all I need for all of the readings while one hydrometer reading uses over 100ml sample to fill the tube. My favorite part of the Easy Dens is the ability to have accurate readings to compare against each other for one batch and subsequent brewings. Also, when you set the OG and FG, the app will automatically calculate the ABV for you. I love that I no longer have to go to an external calculator to figure out the information. Because everything is in one place, I find the process very easy. To clean the Easy Dens, I just flush the tube with distilled water until the SG is 1.0. I find this little device super helpful and well worth $350 if you have that to spend. Obviously, this is a luxury item and not necessary. But, if you have the money to splurge, I think you will really like it. I was able to find a coupon when I purchased mine, so you can look for that as well.  Milwaukee pH meter Early this year, our pH meter went kaput. When brewing new recipes that require new water profiles, a pH meter is a must have! For several brew sessions, we did not have a pH meter because the Milwaukee pH meter I ordered was on backorder. However, I have been super excited to have access to a quality pH meter for testing pH throughout the brew process. In fact, two of the three recipes I brewed required me to adjust the pH of the sparge water. The fact that the pH was correct after the adjustment was amazing! I take my pH readings 15 minutes into our mash. You do need to cool the wort to room temperature for the readings. My only issues with this pH meter is that the temperature probe only reads in Celsius and the sensor wires are incredibly long. I would have loved the ability to change the temp readings to Fahrenheit. However, it wasn't too hard to Google that room temp in Celsius is 20-22 degrees. While some people might find the long wires useful, I find they aren't helpful for my readings. They actually tend to get in the way and annoy me. However, these are both minor nuisances for such a useful tool. With all probe based pH meters, they need to be stored in fluid. Also, you do need to keep the probes clean. The maintenance, however, is minimal and the accuracy and ease of use makes this a wonderful brewing tool. Also, should the pH probe stop working, the probe can be replaced instead of replacing the entire unit. This is a big bonus and hopefully will lead to a lot of use out of the device. Product Links We have enjoyed using these tools and find they help our brew process. We hope you find these useful as well!
Happy Brewing! 2JBC |
AuthorTwo Jacks Brewers Archives
May 2024
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