i won my first homebrew competition!

deepsouth

1st in style and 3rd in best of show!

http://mosquitobytes.com/Den/Beer/Events/ETB2009/ETB2009.html

my brewing mentor and i entered the et barnette homebrew competition and we each won our respective categories. he finished first of ten stouts and i finished first of six ipa's. he took second overall and i took third overall best of show out of fifty-four entries!


here is my recipe....

Recipe Type: Extract
Yeast: wyeast 1187 ringwood ale
Yeast Starter: recommended
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: 1.071
Final Gravity: forgot to take (doh)
IBU: 72.2
Boiling Time (Minutes): 75
Color: 9.4 SRM
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 12
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 10
Tasting Notes: this turned out well balanced with a sharp resiny bitterness.

primary fermentation temperature 68 degrees
secondary fermentation temperature 72 degrees

Ingredients

5.00 lb Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 59.52% (at 75 minutes)
3.00 lb Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 35.71% (at flameout)

0.40 lb British Amber Malt (22.0 SRM) Grain 4.76% (steeping grains)

0.25 oz Simcoe [12.90 %] (60 min) Hops
0.25 oz Warrior [16.10 %] (60 min) Hops
0.25 oz Amarillo Gold [9.30 %] (60 min) Hops

0.25 oz Simcoe [12.90 %] (45 min) Hops
0.25 oz Warrior [16.10 %] (45 min) Hops
0.25 oz Amarillo Gold [9.30 %] (45 min) Hops

0.25 oz Amarillo Gold [9.30 %] (30 min) Hops
0.25 oz Simcoe [12.90 %] (30 min) Hops
0.25 oz Warrior [16.10 %] (30 min) Hops

0.25 oz Warrior [16.10 %] (15 min) Hops
0.25 oz Amarillo Gold [9.30 %] (15 min) Hops
0.25 oz Simcoe [12.90 %] (15 min) Hops

0.50 oz Amarillo Gold [9.30 %] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep)

0.50 oz Simcoe [12.90 %] (Dry Hop 10 days)
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [9.30 %] (Dry Hop 10 days)

1 Pkgs Ringwood Ale (Wyeast Labs #1187) Yeast-Ale

stike

do you harden the water at all? when i did IPA i used to fuss with the chemistry in the hopes of replicating the water in Burton-on-Trent. hahaah man. those were the days.

how about oak? some dudes add oak chips to the stuff to "replicate" the time spent in barrels going around the horn.

i never tried that....

IPA is wonderful stuff.

deepsouth

i buy kentwood spring water from winn dixie and don't futz with it at all.

i've drank a couple oak aged ipa's recently. i think i'm going to invest in a small oak fermenter (2 gallon or so) and try some oak aged next time. the one i had from southern tier was great stuff.

stike

here's another question about IPA...

the older recipes call for a lot of hops, and so the IPAs today are exceedingly hopped on all counts (bitterness flavor aroma), but some people that are reverse engineering the stuff have said that it might be the stuff wasn't as aggressive as it is these days. the idea is that stale hops were added (dry hopping) for the preservative value, and didn't really contribute much of anything towards taste and bitterness, or aroma. interesting, eh?

kinda nice we have the luxury of just doing whatever the heck we want in the interests of making a great beer.

one bit of evidence that the less-aggressive proponents point to is that Bass is an IPA, and has been using the same recipe since 1777, and it's not very aggressive at all.

anyway. that's all stuff to be discussed while drinking it. congrats again. i never entered any contests.

deepsouth

that's very interesting stuff about the stale hops.

i didn't know bass was an ipa! where are the hops!?

stike

well. that's the point.

there are no (overly strong) hops because (the thinking goes) the amounts of hops added in the older written recipes look huge by today's standards. but stale hops offer little or no aroma, so dry-hopping with them doesn't yield the strong aroma.

there WAS more hops used in the boil (for bitterness), because they'd have more sugar in there (to yield higher alcohol levels) and to cut the sweetness they added the extra bitterness. even then, it wasn't as aggressive as today. today the hop flavor and bitterness are on their own as flavor/tasting notes, and have nothing to do with shipping ale around the horn of africa.

IPA developed as a style so that by the time the beer got there it'd still be good to drink with the high hops and high alcohol for the antimicrobial benefit.

if you are reading an old recipe that calls for huge amounts of hops, and you use fresh hops, you'll get that hop-head-favored beer we all appreciate. but there's a school of thought saying that it is not at all like "true" IPA. see?

sometimes i like to ponder that kinda cr^p, and other times i liked to just get shnat-farkling drunk

fishlessman

way to go :woohoo: im pretty familar with simco and warrior hops but dont think ive tried any thing with ammarillo gold. allagash brewing up in maine uses those two in a few of theirs. i never left their booth during last years october fest :laugh: they had some really unique aged sruff with corks, used the oak barrels stike mentioned, even merlot kegs if i remember right.

deepsouth

fishlessman wrote:

way to go :woohoo: im pretty familar with simco and warrior hops but dont think ive tried any thing with ammarillo gold. allagash brewing up in maine uses those two in a few of theirs. i never left their booth during last years october fest :laugh: they had some really unique aged sruff with corks, used the oak barrels stike mentioned, even merlot kegs if i remember right.

allagash makes some very nice and out of the box beers. i'm a huge fan, i just wish i could get some of their offerings down here.