Hey friends!
Another Monday, another post written at the last minute because I don't plan ahead and work on it throughout the week.
I had a Saturday full of homebrew! How was yours?
The Bay Area Mashers, the Easy Bay homebrew club to which I belong, had their annual Christmas party, and during the party they held a people's choice vote to decide the winner of the Style of the Quarter competition to end 2015. This year they chose to give everyone an award-winning IPA recipe from one of the members and asked the participants to bring in at least a half-gallon of it for the attendees to sample and vote on. To get this done on time I brewed on my half-day Veteran's Day November 11. That gave me exactly one month to get something ready and drinkable, and with an extensive fermentation schedule that involved temperature rests and dry-hopping, I was really pushing it to get the beer packaged and carbonated by December 12. But I did it! I don't think a darker or heavier style would have worked, but a nice light IPA with plenty of dry-hopping was fine for such a quick turn around. I tried the first bottle Friday night with dinner and it was pretty good! A little drier and lighter in body than I like for IPAs, definitely leaning toward West Coast stylings, but it was drinkable and tasty, with a floral, fruity, somewhat sweet hoppiness, but not overly bitter. I was proud to be bringing this to competition, especially after the swill I submitted to the Quarter 3 competition in September.
In the end there were 22 versions of the same IPA to sample and vote on. I found the task nearly impossible, and in a short time I couldn't tell the difference between good entries. Oh, there were not so good entries and they were definitely identifiable, but I could not easily narrow it down to the top three. So I simply matched my wife's votes. She doesn't drink beer, but she accompanied me to the party and wanted to participate, so this is how we did it: I poured some beer into my glass, took a sip, gave it to her, she took a sip, and then I finished off what was in the glass. They provided a bucket for pouring out excess tasting beer, like the canteens at winery tasting rooms, but I neglected to use them, hence my mild inebriation all afternoon. What was fun about the way we sampled the entries was tasting all the same beers with my wife, and seeing how almost exactly diametrically opposite our tastes our. I wish I could remember the exact demarcations, but again, I was inebriated.
When the results came in I was not among the winners, but I did have a score! It's nice to know that I was in some voters' top three. I like this beer and how it turned out. It's not exactly the type of IPA I usually jive with, but I can tweak this recipe into something more like what I like, and play with the hops, grain, and yeast until I get a final product I dig.
In other news, two Bay Area craft breweries have production positions open, and I'm applying! We'll see if I even get interviews, but I feel it's time I make an effort for these positions as I find them, instead of letting them pass by as I have for the past year. It's scary attempting to break into a new industry, and who knows if I could afford the change, but I gotta try!
That's it for today, friends.
How was your beery weekend? Any new brews drunk or made? Following your dreams into beer?
Until next time, happy brewing!
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