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A lot has been going on around 2JBC since we won 3rd Place People’s Choice at Craft Beer Long Beach. Mike and I decided to perfect our brewing process. We were so appreciative of the support that we have received from the Brewing Community, especially in the wake of our beloved Jack’s passing. We decided that we wanted to work on brewing to specific BJCP styles and perfect our brew process. In order to focus on our brewing process more, I realized I wasn’t keeping enough data! Well, I LOVE a good list! I get distracted easily and lists help me keep focused, so I created a brew day checklist to help me stay focused during our brews. While Beersmith does have a brew day log, I realized I haven’t been using it as effectively as I should be. How can I perfect a recipe if I don’t remember EXACTLY what I did each brew day? Basically, the process of creating a brew day checklist also led to the realization that we needed to be a bit more organized. So, here’s a blog dedicated to how we stay organized on brew day.  Clearly defined brew rolesThis all started with a hard look at what was and wasn’t working for us on brew day. Mike and I have been happily married for 22 years and rarely argue; however, brew days were starting to have some arguments brewing. Once we started talking about organizing our brew days, we realized we were arguing because we needed to really focus on what our roles were in 2JBC! In the beginning, we did everything together and traded tasks. It was easy to do since we were using simple equipment and someone else’s recipe. However, as we grew our brew process into the more advanced stages, we never fully discussed who was going to do each task and more importantly, who wanted to do each task! I don’t like the mechanical side of brewing…cutting hoses and fixing quick disconnects and tinkering isn’t fun for me. However, Mike LOVES all things tinkering. Mike’s the genius behind our Beer Bots; I had nothing to do with the Beer Bots besides agreeing he had a good idea. On the flip side, I love creating recipes! I love playing with ingredients and experimenting with hop additions. I also love researching…it’s one of my specialties. I can spend hours looking up brewing techniques and water profiles for beer styles. I was (very briefly) a chemistry major, and love experiments. Bring me all of the Easy Dens, pH meters, and beakers. So, we officially gave ourselves tasks. I officially became the head brew mistress in charge of what happens inside the brew kettles, the data from brew days, and fermentation. Mike officially became head of brewery sanitation, keeping all our systems running, naming beers, and assisting in the brewing. Fun fact, Mike also designed our 2JBC logos and webpage format. Since we made the changes, our brew days have been much easier, more efficient, and more fun! Hops storageWhen we start a brew day, I start with pulling hops for the recipes. However, I realized I was constantly having to look for our hops. Enter a new hops system. I took our hops and added them to stackable bins that are labeled. This has made it so much easier to find the hops I need quickly and to know when I need to reorder hops. However, I also realized I have a bit of a hop hoarding issue as we have about 80 varieties of hops in our freezer! In addition to a new hops storage system, I changed how I store and prepare hops for dry hopping. Instead of waiting until it’s time to dry hop to pull hops and leave them open to air, I decided to portion out the dry hops I need on brew day and label them in a vacuum sealed bag. Basically, I portion out the dry hops and label them such as “DH for Judge Hopner” and put those into a bin in the freezer. When I dry hop, I simply have to sanitize the outside of the bag (similar to how you sanitize yeast) and dump them in. I never have to worry if I have enough of the hops for dry hopping or spend time rushing to measure out hops to use. Everything is organized and ready to go. The only thing I have to do is READ the label correctly. An added bonus is that I open the hops/yeast freezer less frequently now. The benefits of brewing checklists and data collectionAfter our brew days were completed, I created a checklist that keeps track of everything from pH levels throughout the brew day, gravity readings throughout the brew day, and any crazy things that happen on that day. I keep notes on every detail of the brew day including fermentation. We started doing the checklist on our first brew back after Craft Beer Long Beach, and I have already found several things we needed to fix. First, our mash pH readings were off on two brews in a row. The good news is I was able to successfully correct the pH on the fly and save the batches! After carefully going through my notes, I realized that I created recipes with starting RO water with a pH of 7; however, I never checked the actual pH of our RO water! Oops! Now, we start each brew day with our water starting at a pH 7 and then continue with the recipe. Since making this little adjustment, we have hit all of our target pH readings. This process also led me to change our Milwaukee pH meter out for a Thermoworks pH meter. The Milwaukee pH meter is highly recommended by many brewers online, but I haven’t ever been truly happy with it. The cables are incredibly long and tangle easily and my temperature probe connection broke off during a brew day. Well, enter the Thermoworks pH meter which I have been incredibly happy with. Another change is the purchase of several digital timers. I ended up off on boil times because I was using my phone timer and unfortunately, sometimes the timer would shut off without me knowing. Now, we have multiple digital timers to monitor the process. On the fermentation side, I now monitor fermentation temp and visible signs of fermentation on a daily basis. One downside to our Beer Bots is that they do not have a sample port. I have a TC sample valve; however, it wastes quite a bit of liquid. In the future, I hope to add Tilt hydrometers to our setup to monitor fermentation in the vessels and not waste liquid on SG readings. Further, we spoke to SS Brewtech and were able to get their FTSS chilling coils for the Brew Bots. This has allowed us to have more control over our fermentation temperature than with the previous glycol wraps we used. SS Brewtech also helped us to update our Brew Buckets with the FTSS internal chiller coils. Now we have internal coils in all of our fermenters. Note to any other brewers: SS Brewtech doesn’t have everything in their catalog available online for purchase. However, if you email them what you are looking for, they will send you a direct purchase link. I had to do this to order the internal coils and newly updated Chronical racking arm. What I track on the brew sheetsI opted not to post my actual brew sheets because I feel every brewer has their own process based on their system. I have two checklists for brewing--brew day and fermentation. Below is what data I collect on each brew day. brew day checklist
Fermentation checklist
Our brew sheets may not work for everyone, but I highly recommend that every brewer start to create data logs of their brew days and fermentations, especially if you chose to enter a beer into a contest. Being able to reproduce beer that tastes the same each batch requires detailed notes of the process. After 12 years of brewing (8 years as Two Jacks), we are able to use these brew sheets to improve upon our process. I’m excited to see what the next year brings as we are beginning to branch out to new styles of beer and new hops. So far, focusing on being more organized and detailed has already improved our brewing. I've managed to change some mash and sparge practices and fix our pH on the fly. Based on our data, I'm focusing now on improving our fermentation process. Our brewhouse efficiency averages 85-90% (depending on the style of beer we are brewing and batch size). I consistently hit our target pH and SG readings. The best part is that I no longer stress about brew days. If a beer doesn't come out the way I want or expected, it is usually down to two factors now--equipment failure or the recipe. Feeling confident when I brew is everything. Knowing I can find what went wrong in the brew day and correct it is what builds that confidence. The best part, Mike and I enjoy brewing more. We no longer bump into each other or argue over things that distract from our brew day. Our brew days are fun and a great way for us to spend time together. If you have a brewing partner, I highly recommend discussing brew day tasks whether a whole system or tasks for each individual brew day, you'll find the day will be more efficient. Cheers and happy brewing!
2JBC
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 Where have we been… Well, it has been about 10 months since our last blog entry. No,we didn’t have a baby…we are both too old for that! But, we did have a major home remodel that sent us back quite a bit along with the death of our beloved brew dog, Jack. To say that life has gone in a thousand different unexpected directions is an understatement. But, we are officially BACK and BREWING!!!! So, after a long hiatus, you may wonder….how do you get back into it? Well, we decided to start with reorganizing and restructuring our brewing space. While remodeling our 1951 house, we decided to also renovate our garage which is our brewery. The biggest change was a newly poured garage floor as our old garage floor leaked terribly. The other big change was changing our traditional garage door with two new roll up style doors. This allowed us to gain more headroom in our brewery and allows us to only open one side of the garage at a time. Now we have no more water pooling up in our brewery and the ability to utilize our space more efficiently. During the remodel, we also said goodbye to our original keezer. We like to repair and reuse as much as possible; unfortunately, repairing the motor would have cost more than building a new keezer. Sadly, our keezer had to go. The good news is losing the keezer gave us the idea to designate the back of our garage solely for our keezer, freezer, and fridge space. We decided to turn our large keg storage freezer into a new serving/storage keezer. We installed 8 taps and new spring loaded taps. We also kept one of our other keezers at home with 4 taps for water dispensing (still and sparkling) and seltzer/gluten free beer taps (coming soon). By restructuring our taps a bit, we were able to keep our last 4 tap keezer in storage as a back up.
Once we put together our keezers, the first step was to organize and inventory our hops and yeast followed by deep cleaning and sanitizing our brewing equipment. We decided to keep our house more organized by keeping a small storage unit nearby for brewing equipment we don’t need as frequently—jockey boxes, jockey box cover, keg coolers, extra kegs, signage, aluminum cans, packing material, and so on. Utilizing our storage unit has allowed us to have more space in our home shed to store brewing equipment we don’t use all the time—Duofiller, Oktober Canning Machine, Beer Bot Fermenters, pub games, etc.--along with finding a place outside the brewery to store our e-bikes. Keeping things organized and tidy meant we also said goodbye to our beer cart. We find it is pretty easy to store the brewing pots on a rack (our 20 gallon pots are stored inside our 50 gallon pots) and move out the propane burners for each boil. Our RO water storage we house outside the garage. We fill the 50 gallon storage tank quickly with 2 RO water filters running concurrently (we use the RO water for brewing and to fill our kegs of water for dispensing). After taking inventory, organizing, and cleaning the brew space, we found we had a bit of maintenance to take care of. We purchased some new small items--gaskets, O rings, keg lube--and began the process of making sure everything was still working. Then, finally after a few weeks of working on the brewery, we got to brewing! So, what did we decide to brew first….an IPA of course! IPAs are our favorites and what we wanted to drink. So, we decided to make a double IPA, full of hops and even a hop shot! At the time we started brewing, we didn’t know it would be the last brew day with Jack. His death was devastating. Truthfully, we initially were so heartbroken, we didn’t want to brew anymore and almost dropped out of the Craft Beer Long Beach Homebrew Invitational. After taking a step back and taking some time to grieve, we realized we have brewed long before Jack (he’s our second brew dog…our long time friends remember our amazing boy Frankie!). However, our contest brew of Majestic Jack was not our original beer choice for the invitational, but it seemed like a great way to celebrate Jack’s amazing life with us while enjoying one of our favorite brews. For inquiring minds, our plan was to brew what is now Majestic Jack for our Spring Break consumption and have a few of our other beers on tap--a Pilsner, Tropical Stout, Bourbon Barrel Porter, and a new iteration of Basic Bitch Brown (maybe call it The Bitch is Back?). But, those will wait. So, what is on tap for us this year at 2JBC. Well, full disclosure, 2024 has sucked so far! We lost Jack and Mike’s Grandma Beth, and we’ve been sick! We are hoping the rest of the year goes much better and brings about more happiness. We joined Long Beach Homebrewers with the hope of perfecting our brew process and entering more contests. Mike and I have always brewed for us and not categories, so we are hoping to learn how to make more stylized beers. Don’t fret, though, we aren’t abandoning our flavor bomb approach, we are just going to be mixing in specific beers brewed for contests and not just for our own drinking pleasure. We are also diving into the world of gluten free brewing a bit. Our hope is that at next year’s Craft Beer Long Beach Competition we will be able to showcase two beers side by side, one a regular beer and one gluten free, to show that homebrewers really can brew everything. In the meantime, we are excited to attend this Saturday’s Craft Beer Long Beach Homebrew Invitational. We fell in love with greyhounds and beer, so we love the opportunity to showcase both. We are excited to see friends and fellow brewers at the contest and see what creative endeavors everyone has come up with. We have a renewed excitement for the craft of brewing and a new desire to move away from negativity. Unfortunately, we have recently had to say goodbye to my grandfather Jack, Mike’s Aunt Pat, Mike’s Grandmother Beth, and our Greyhound Jack. As my Scottish grandfather would say, “May the wind be always at your back, May the sun shine warm upon your face, May the rain fall softly upon your fields until we meet again, And may God hold you in the hollow of His hand.” Until we meet again, we will smile at your memories and raise a glass in your honor. Here’s to making new memories and meeting new friends in 2024! 2JBC We have been MIA for a bit and are FINALLY getting back to brewing. However, we thought a little explanation of what is going on in our lives would be cathartic for me and helpful for anyone else going through a difficult time.
COVID hit me pretty hard. I have a history of depression and COVID amplified my condition. I am very good at hiding my feelings and looking “fine” on the outside. Most people will see me and think I’m happy or doing great; however, when I am at home I’m falling apart and struggling to get out of bed and make it through a day. When the world shutdown for COVID, I was fine for a short period of time. However, Mike and I suffered huge personal losses when Mike’s aunt and my grandfather died. As a teacher during COVID, I put on a brave face and pretended I was doing well. I tried to make sure my students were supported and cared for, but I was not monitoring how I was doing. During this time, we started our Instagram and built up our brewing system. I smiled as I poured beers in competitions, but inside, I was a wreck. Fast forward to this school year, and I realized that I was not okay. I was struggling to make it to work every day. I was struggling to find any joy in activities I normally found fun. I had stopped working out because my gym was closed; I stopped golfing because the courses were too crowded; I stopped paddeboarding and surfing because EVERYONE started trying out new sports; I stopped playing music because I didn't feel "good enough"; I stopped reading because my eyes hurt from starting at computer screens; and I stopped brewing because Mike found out he had a gluten allergy. Basically, everything that I loved doing to keep my depression at bay went away. We entered a local homebrew competition and decided to try something new…we brewed a hazy. I hate hazy IPAs. Why did I brew one? I don’t know. I guess I felt I had to try to brew every type of beer. My heart wasn’t in it. In fact, I was dealing with such bad depression on the day of the competition, I didn’t even want to pour beer that day. I put on a fake smile and made it to the competition and submitted a beer I didn’t like and hadn’t tried. Note to anyone reading...never submit a beer to a competition that you haven't at least tried, I don't recommend it! I’m normally not one to complain about people in an open forum, but I feel compelled to do so today. I’m not sure if anyone reads this blog or not, but I wanted to get these emotions out to deal with them. So, here goes. There is a person at the competition that really kicked me when I was down. I don't know if this person knows or cares how I feel, but if he’s reading this, I hope he takes this to heart. This person is a fellow teacher and has even been in my home. This person made it a point to stand in front of me while pouring beer at a festival and point out EVERYTHING wrong with my beer. He even went so far as to delight in asking other people sampling our beers if they could taste the flaws as well. Mind you, this “man” didn’t have a beer in the competition. He represented his “friends” from a local homebrew club and decided it would be a fun day for him to make someone feel bad. To this person, I say “Fuck you!” I was in a place where I needed a friendly place and was hoping our local beer scene and seeing people enjoy themselves drinking our brews would help me dig out of the depressive state I was in. Instead, you took all the joy out of the day for me...and smiled the entire time you were doing it. You asked every person who came by our booth what they thought was "wrong" with our beer. Who does that? Well, an asshole does. The worst part is you made it a point to try and make my day terrible. While I normally don’t give a shit about a guy being an asshole, I did that day. The fact that you had been in my house before and wouldn’t leave our booth even when asked, really irks me. But, I’ve moved on. That day, your actions really sucked. I know that you never know what others are going through, and maybe you had your own stuff you were dealing with. However, finding pleasure in offending or trying to hurt someone else is a huge character flaw. I’m glad I saw this in you so that now I know to keep my distance in the future. Life's too short to hold grudges, but I hope our paths don't cross again. If they do, I'll put on a fake smile and be kind to you. That's how I roll. Inside, I'll hope our meeting is swift. After that festival, I needed a break to reset and re-evaluate. I needed to find a way to reset my brain into a positive state and not go down a rabbit hole of depression. That’s the thing with depression. If you don’t dig deep and find a way out, the results can be catastrophic. I started with work. I restructured my work day. I reorganized my classroom. I set boundaries. I started to become a little less angry and anxious. I then started working out again. I moved into mace bell training. There’s something about swinging that mace that gets all my angst out! I've been consistently working out daily. I have a terrible knee injury (in truth, I'm disabled) that hurts every day. But, I am focusing on what I can do. My workouts focus on upper body and core strength. I started traveling again and attending comedy shows. I'm starting to laugh more and see the good in people again. I feel like I am slowly getting out of the fog that has had a hold of me for over a year. The final step in all of this…getting back to brewing. What I realized is I love brewing. I love the beers I make. But, I love the beers I make and the recipes I create for myself. I don’t want to make a hazy to make a hazy. If I want to drink a delicious Belgian beer, I’m not going to brew one. I’m going to call up my friend who makes delicious Belgian brews and ask for a sample. I am excited to rebrew some of our favorites. I am excited to try some brews other brewers make. I loved our time at the NHC last year. We met some amazing people that I hope we can reconnect with as I get back to feeling like myself. I have no desire to join a homebrew club. I hated clicky groups in high school that revel in talking shit and trying to bring other people down. I love meeting cool people from any and all walks of life. I love learning from others and sharing knowledge. I don’t need a club or want a club for that. I’ll enter my beers in competitions. I don’t want to win because I am a part of the “right” club that has the “right” members that are voting. I’d rather not win if it means compromising being me. I want to do what I always do…brew on my own terms. If I win, awesome. If I don’t, I hope that people had a great time and enjoyed what they drank. I'm proud of what we have accomplished at Two Jacks and excited for where we are going. We have several weeks of cleaning and then we will be brewing. Our brew schedule starts off with our personal favorites–Judge Hopner IPA, Haleiwa, Makani, and Salute. We have several gluten free beers in the works and hope to develop gluten free and gluten reduced versions of our favorite brews. Life is a journey. It has its ups and downs. I’m happy that I can say I am making my way out of a terrible depression one day at a time. Hopefully, we’ll be able to share some of our beers with everyone soon. Until then, cheers! Enjoy life! Do something you want to do today. Hug your loved ones. Smile and know that you matter. Know that everyone deals with problems. Social media may make it seem like everyone has a perfect life, they don’t. The “perfect” life is one where you experience hardships so that you can embrace the beauty and joys of life around you. Happy Brewing, Friends! Cheers! 2JBC Mike and I get asked a lot about our BrewBots. The idea for the BrewBots rests solely with Mike. He was tired of cleaning 5 gallon carboys and our 7.5 gallon SS Brewtech Brew Buckets were too small for the larger batches we wanted to begin brewing, so he decided to look for something that could fit larger batches, be portable, and easy to clean. The BrewBots have had a few stages of development which has allowed us to upgrade them as our budget allowed. This was important to us as we were able to purchase 6 BrewBots for less than the price of one SS Brewtech 1 barrel Chronical. Before I go over the BrewBot transformation, I wanted to give an overview of our current fermenters and why we have a variety of them. OUR FERMENTERS and Cold Side Equipment:
Why so many fermenters?We love options! With our current configuration, we have the ability to brew large batches and play around with yeast strains, hop additions, and adjuncts during fermentation. We can make 20 gallon batches of a Mexican lager and ferment 10 gallons to be a traditional Mexican lager and 10 gallons can turn into our Tijuana Facelift version with the addition of blood orange puree and a blend of 5 peppers. We can brew 30 gallons of Judge Hopner IPA and leave 15 gallons as the regular Judge Hopner and then the remaining 15 gallons can have different dry hops or fruit additions for a twist. Also, we have the capacity to make split boils due to having 2 sizes of boil pots in addition to our fermenters. We can mash 30 gallons of Judge Hopner wort and split the wort into 2 different boil kettles to play with new hop additions. This frees up time to experiment with our recipes while not having to brew multiple batches. We can get a variety of beers from a single wort and split the batches (either during the boil or fermentation). We love having this variety and the options to experiment while still getting the traditional beer we enjoy. What is a BrewBot?The premise for our BrewBots are similar to what a professional brewery uses for a yeast brink. Basically, our BrewBots are simply half barrel Sankey kegs that we use as fermenters. Mike came up with the idea to use the kegs to ferment in when he found brand new Sankey kegs on sale. If you are looking to create your own, the Sanke kegs are around $200 a piece. We had the Sanke post removed and a hole cut in the top with a 6 inch ferrule welded on. The 6 inch opening was just enough for us to squeeze our forearms into the keg to clean it after fermentation. BREWbot PhasesWe built our BrewBots in stages over many years. These were the 3 phases of our BrewBot construction: Stage 1: The first version of our BrewBot was simply the 6 inch ferrule that had a 6 inch to 2 inch reducer on top. The reducer fit a 2” tri clover blow off tube from NorCal Brewing Solutions. Because the kegs full of liquid are heavy, we placed each keg on a dolly purchased from Harbor Freight Tools to make it easier to move around. To push the liquid from the fermenter to 5 gallon corny kegs, we purchased a fermenter keg tee transfer kit from Norcal Brewing Solutions to push the liquid out of the fermenter. Finally, we purchased cooling jackets from Gotta Brew to keep the Sanke kegs cold and control fermentation temperatures. Note: you will need the expansion link for the Sanke kegs, but you can use the cooling jacket without the expansion link with the SS Brewbucket. Stage 2: After using the fermenters for years, we recently added three 2 inch ferrules to each fermenter--one on the very bottom, and two in the front. These allowed us to push the C02 to the bottom and trub dump. We also purchased a 6 inch to 3 inch reducer so that we could use our 3 inch CIP ball when cleaning. We added legs and casters to each BrewBot so that each fermenter took up less floor space than with with Harbor Freight dolly. Butterfly valves were added. We also built a 3 inch dry hopper that can be used with all of our brew bots and our SS Chronicals. Stage 3: In order to use the dry hopper with the BrewBots and limit oxygen exposure, Mike drilled holes into the side of the BrewBots and added thermowells. We used SS Brewtech weldless thermowells since neither of us know how to weld. Fortunately, we had an old keg lying around that was too damaged to fix, so we used that to practice our drilling. It worked out perfectly! We also added self-closing quick disconnects to our glycol hose lines to prevent leaking glychol and make moving the BrewBots easier when cleaning. Now we have 6 fully finished BrewBots that allow us to have completely closed fermentation and transfer to kegs. The process of building our brewery is an ongoing one. We constantly tinker with our setup and try to perfect our system for our needs. The BrewBots are our favorite fermenters. We do like the convenience of our SS Brewtech Chronicals, but we find the BrewBots seem to be a bit more consistent, provide more flexibility, get colder, and hold more pressure. We can also repurpose these as yeast brinks if we ever expand our brewery into something more professional (our dream scenario!).
Cheers! 2JBC 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 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 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 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 |
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May 2024
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