I was pleasantly surprised Saturday evening to discover that my Tripel took the gold medal in Category 18 at the National Homebrew Competition. I certainly wasn't expecting such a favorable result considering the fact it was going up against the best home-brewed beers in the country, and that it placed 3rd in the NW Region 1st round. I guess the two months of aging between the 1st and 2nd rounds helped a lot. I can't wait to receive my score sheets and see the judges comments.

Since I can't leave well enough alone, I plan to brew it again soon with some minor modifications. I think I'll use table sugar instead of corn sugar this time around, and ferment half of it with that mysterious beast known as Wyeast 3787. I'll use 1214 again on the other half as a control. I was pretty disappointed with the performance I got out of 3787 when I used it for the Bourbon Barrel Big Belgian Beer. I think it petered out at about 69% attenuation that time. One mistake I made is I didn't allow the temperature to rise during fermentation. Also, Wyeast says it benefits from incremental feeding of sugar, which I didn't do last time either. Oh, and I'll probably use Weyermann Pilsner malt instead of Castle, since Castle has become very hard to come by of late, locally at least.

My tripel placed 3rd in Category 18 in the 1st round (NW Region) of the National Homebrew Competition. Placing in the top 3 makes it eligible for the 2nd round. For the first round, the country (plus Canada) is split up into 10 regions. Each region judges beers separately and the top 3 beers from each region in each category advance to the 2nd round. There were 5,643 entries total in the 1st round with a possibility for around 840 beers, meads, and ciders to advance to the 2nd round. My beer was up against 28 other entries in Category 18 in the 1st round and assuming everyone eligible sends their beers in for the 2nd round there should be a total of 30 entries in that category. I'm curious to see how well it stacks up against the best home brewers in the country. 2nd round judging will take place June 19 during the National Homebrew Conference.

Whatever happens in the 2nd round, I'm pretty happy with the results so far considering this is the first Tripel I've ever brewed and the first time I've entered a beer in the NHC.

I wasn't the only club member to place in the 1st round. Matt's Lil Jib Saison took 2nd in Category 16. Maybe one of these days he'll get around to posting something about it.

Saturday was Big Brew. The club gathered at Steve & Frances Shaw's again this year. The setting is beautiful, but the weather wasn't as cooperative as it has been in recent years. It rained the entire day. Undaunted, we set up tents and our gear and six of us brewed a total of 45 gallons of beer. The pic at left is my rig trying to stay dry during the boil. More pics can be found in the gallery on the main club page.

I brewed a Blonde Ale again this year, and again it is destined for a family get-together. My wife's sister is turning 40 this summer and I've been tasked with bringing the beer. Last time I brought beer to one of her gatherings a lot of her friends showed up with their fizzy yellow Mexican beer or industrial American light lagers. My hope is that this Blonde Ale will be a gateway to honest beer for Corona and Bud Light drinkers who might be at the party, but at the same time be something that a real beer lover can appreciate. Am I a beer snob? Yes. And not to worry, I'll also be bringing a hearty Scotch Ale (which I brewed a few weeks ago but haven't posted about yet) and maybe a stout or a nice hoppy IPA.

Anyway, for this beer I wanted to go as light colored as possible and to focus on one hop. To that end, I used German pilsner malt as the base and just 1 lb of CaraPils for a little body. I hopped with Styrian Goldings, which is a hop I've used in the past but never as the focal point of the beer. I mashed at 150° for one hour with a mashout at 170°. I also decided to use a yeast I haven't used in primary before, Wyeast 1007 (German Ale).

Here's the recipe: Promash | HTML

Chris Devlin, who blogs about beer as the Seattle Beer Examiner, ferried over to Kitsap to see what Big Brew is all about and to brew his first batch. Matt brought the ingredients for a Pale ale and I brought some of my old gear from my extract days and we walked Chris through the process. Chris doesn't drive, and he couldn't easily carry a carboy full of fermenting beer home with him on the ferry and bus, so his beer is fermenting in my bathroom. He'll trek back over when it's time to bottle and then he'll have to figure out how to get two cases of beer back to Seattle.

You wouldn't know it from reading this blog, but I have been brewing this year.

Besides the ESB I brewed on MLK Day, I brewed a Bock in February and an Oktoberfest in March.

Bock: 2/23/2008
I wanted to try out Wyeasts Hella-Bock VSS, and I also wanted to get a head start on brewing at least 4 lagers this year, so I decided to brew a Bock in February and then an Oktoberfest in March using the yeast from the Bock primary. Looking back I should have switched the beers around since the bock is higher gravity and darker, but I was fixated on brewing the Oktoberfest in March. Oh well. Without going into details, I did a protein/saccharification/mashout step mash and ended up with about 11 gallons of 1.076 wort in the fermenters. I started fermentation at 49° and after some initially vigorous fermentation things got really sluggish after a couple weeks. I raised the temp to 58° to try to get things going, which worked with only marginal success. I transferred to secondary after a total of 5 weeks and the gravity was only down to 1.029. I kept it warm in the secondary for a few more days and the gravity didn't drop much, so I decided to pitch some German Ale yeast (1007) to ferment it down a few more points so it wouldn't taste like syrup. As I type this it's down to about 1.020, which is right about where I want it, and I'll probably crash cool it to drop the yeast then keg it for extended lagering soon.

Here's the recipe: Promash | HTML

---

Oktoberfest: 3/30/2008 (phew! just in time)
I went with a pretty basic recipe based on Bob Allen's award winning Cure of the Mouth Maerzen. On brew day I got a late start and had a commitment in the evening, so in the interest of speed I decided to just do a single step infusion mash at 152°. Then I sparged at 170°, boiled, and ended up with about 11 gallons of 1.051 wort in the fermenters. After just 2 weeks in the primary the gravity is down to 1.020 and I decided to kick the temp up to 65° for a diacetyl rest (as recommended by Wyeast). After a couple days I'll crash it and transfer to secondary after I keg the Bock.

Here's the recipe: Promash | HTML

I bottled the other half of the batch of Tripel today. Netted nineteen corked 750ml bottles and thirteen 12 ozers. I primed with table sugar and shot for 3 volumes of CO2. John's corker worked great. I may have pushed the corks in a little too far, but I'm hoping that the pressure will push them back out against the top of the cages. There's about 3-4 mm of space between the top of the corks and the top of the cages. I can't wait for this stuff to carbonate, but I do have a keg of it to tide me over.