My go at a Home Brew Competition - What is my beer really like?

This was the thought I had had for some time now – what is my beer really like? I had some batches that I personally liked and some that I knew could be improved. Feedback from friends and family usually varies from great to ok, with the vast majority being clearly polite, but not very constructive. Fortunately, I am starting to build a group of a few ‘testers’ who are not afraid of telling me what they really think. More so, some of them appear to have a really good palate. But… I wanted to know how my beer would be received by someone who does not know me. Also part of my competitive side was drawn towards the idea of comparing my beers against other home brewed beers.

 

This is where the idea of submitting to a home brew competition was born. Hours of surfing the internet then followed to find the right one. To my surprise there wasn’t a whole lot of them available to home brewers. Considering it was mid 2014 I decided to go for the National Home Brewing Competition. It had good reviews amongst the home brewers and the thing that appealed to me the most was that each and every contestant was guaranteed to receive a feedback form from a judge, often with ideas on how to improve your beer. And this was a very exciting thought for me.

 

The submission date for 2014 was August 2014.

 

I allowed myself 6 weeks to condition the beer, as I wanted to make sure the judges got something decent, especially since my choice of style was a stout. A Dry Stout to be precise (BJCP category 13A).

 

All my previous beers were from extract, and although you can brew an award winning beer this way, I believe that for home brew competitions the extract beers should not be compared against the all grain (AG) beers. This may be controversial but this is what I think. I am not saying that AG beers are better, I am saying that AG beers should be judged separately. There is so much effort, care and attention going into the process of achieving a good quality wort, that it should be recognised when someone decides to make it themselves, rather than reconstituting a commercially produced wort. That is all I am saying, and this is the reason I decided to make my first all grain beer (and maybe foolishly submit it for a competition).

 

The first hurdle I encountered was the lack of equipment to do a full all grain. Or at least this is what I thought. The Internet came to the rescue again and a few days later I decided I would stick to the equipment I have, and do a small 7 litres batch using a Brew In A Bag (BIAB) method. This is all my equipment allowed for.

 

Both the all grain and the BIAB were things I haven’t done before. Just to put even more pressure on myself I decided I would come up with my own recipe. If you are going to fail, do it in style!

 

Saying that, the recipe I put together is a fairly basic and typical dry stout recipe. It is based on a Guinness clone, but with chocolate malt replacing some portion of roast barley. As I am still learning the meaning of each component I did not want to overcomplicate it. Keeping it simple, I was hoping, would allow me to understand what each ingredient is doing and how I could improve the beer (unless it turns out perfect, which it did not).

Dry Irish Stout  (OG: IBU:33)

Pale Malt: 66% - to make a base beer;
Flaked Barley: 25% - to add body and for head retention;
Roasted Barley: 4.5% - for roasted flavours and aroma, and for colour;
Chocolate Malt: 4.5% - to ease the harsh roast flavours from roast barley and hoping to achieve chocolaty flavours / aromas.

Magnum Hops: 7g for 60min- clean bittering hops. I wanted the malt to play the main role here.

Safale 05 yeast – it ferments quite dry so it will be perfect for Dry stout, won’t it?

My idea was to mash it in the kettle (as per BIAB) but stick the pot into the warmed up oven for 90min hoping to sustain the 67deg for the whole period. I did test this with water only the night before and it dropped 3deg in 2 hours, so I was… hopeful. Well, it didn’t work that well this time. The grains went in, the temp was 67deg, the pot into the oven, and wait. I got overly busy with my son and when he finally decided it was bedtime, the pot was in the oven for 2 hours. A quick temp check and it was 62deg. I am however not able to say how quickly the temp dropped so low and how long it remained at 67deg. Learn and carry on.

The gravity reading at this point: 1.037

The boil and hopping went well. I took a hydrometer sample at end of boil and put it aside to cool down. Cooling down the main wort took only 20min as it was only 7 litres (kettle in the sink). Then transferred to two 5 litre demijohns, add the yeast starter made of ¾ dry yeast pack and sorted. Cleaned up the kitchen to keep the other half happy, stuck the demijohns into a cupboard and got to bed.

Half way through the night I realised I did not check the hydrometer reading at end of boil, with sample still sitting on the worktop. I did it the first thing in the morning only to find out that I was 0.006 off the OG target. Following the investigation and review of notes I now know that I started with 1 litre too much water (worked out recipe for 6 litres at flame out, rather than 7 litres that I actually ended up with). Have I checked the OG instantly, I could have boiled a bit more to reduce the gravity. Again, learn and carry on.

 

The fermentation was done very quickly. It was the first time I had actually missed it. When I got back from work the next day it was over, with the remains of a high krausen all-over the sides of my demijohns. All in slightly less than 24 hours. I am sure that it still dropped a few gravity points in the next few days, but the visual part was sorted. Now, I am not sure if such a quick fermentation affects the flavour, and it may be completely unsubstantiated, but in my head too much yeast leads to quick fermentation and dry mouthfeel. Any opinions about this?

 

I left the beer in the primary fermenter for 14 days, then transferred to a bottling bucked with  enough priming sugar added (cane sugar solution) to achieve 2.2 volume of CO2, and bottled into 330ml bottles. The bottles sat in a cupboard at approximately 20deg for 6 weeks before I cracked the first one open.

 

I had certain expectations with regards to the flavour of this beer. Knowing I made a few mistakes I was pretty confident it would have a dry finish (due to the low mash temperature) and would be a bit watery (too much water added resulted in a lower OG).

 

The beer was pitch black. It exhibited nice roasted aromas and flavours, but as expected a bit watery mouthfeel with a dry finish. The flavour did not stay for very long. Carbonation was maybe ever so slightly too high for me. Overall, not bad with clear scope for improvement. Some of my family members noticed a clear sour taste, whereas others did not.

Considering the beer was not perfect, I though it will be even more interesting to subject it to the scrutiny of the judges. So I packed two bottles, and off they went. Now I could only wait and see.

There was no surprise waiting for me when the winners of the competition were announced. I won nothing, but to be honest it wouldn’t have indicated high standards if I won with my first all grain beer. I was positively surprised however to see that the overall winner of the competition was a Munich Helles (a pale Lager). Considering the lagers got slightly swamped by the stronger flavoured styles recently, and often are considered too mainstream to be worth attention, it does show a professionalism and knowledge amongst the judges to be able to say it is the best brew of all.

Back to my story. All I got was an information that I was awarded 30 points, but what it actually means? Following a long wait I got the Beer Scoresheets back from judges. Two judges looked at, and tasted, my beer rating it at 30 and 33 points out of 50. This puts it at the bottom of the Very Good (Generally within style parameters, minnow flaws) category in accordance to BJCP.

Aroma got me 7 & 8 points out of 12 possible. Judges picked out roast, coffee and chocolate aromas. One judge picked esters (apple/pear and dried fruit);

Appearance got me 3 out of 3. This is clarity, head size and head retention;

Flavour got me 12 out of possible 20. One judge said it is evenly balanced but light on the palate. Other said that it is almost too acidic, borderline for style.

Mouthfeel got me 2 and 3 out of 5. All ok but high astringency and low creaminess from one judge. Low astringency from the other but low creaminess too. Dry finish.

Overall impression got me 6 points out of 10 possible. Both judges chose “I would drink a pint of this beer” option, and one said it needs a bit more malt to balance out the harsh roastiness and acidity.

 

 

Well I myself would be probably slightly more critical and describe the beer as Good, but I do agree with all the comments and the final score. Furthermore, I think the whole process was incredibly valuable for me. It forced me to focus on one beer, to think about the ingredients and processes, they contribution to the flavour, aroma and mouthfeel.

Let me end this post stating with high confidence that I will be submitting beers for the 2015 competition, and so should any home brewer, but this time with more care and preparation… which has already started.

 

At the end I would like to thank PhilB for making this text readable. Thanks Phil.