Competition Time

And the Winner is....

...Me! I entered three of my beers into the annual Stockport Beer Festival Bar Nouveau homebrew competition, where the winning beer in each of the five categories is brewed at a local brewery and launched at Stockport Beer & Cider Festival. I entered my Kolsch in the speciality category, Another Porter into Stout/Porter and Red Rye Ale into the Bitter category, all three beers made it through to the finals and my Red Rye Ale won the bitter category. Of the three I thought the bitter was the weakest entry which shows what I know. This means I receive the fantastic prize of getting to brew my beer at a local micro (this usually means digging out the mash tun but never mind). The only problem I have is thinking of a suitable name for my beer. 

Manchester Beer Week Homebrew Expo

Free Beer!

Manchester Beer Week finished on Sunday 2nd July with the now regular Homebrew Expo organised by Manchester Homebrew and held at Beer Nouveau in Ardwick. 16 homebrewers presented free samples of 50+ beers, covering all styles, to discerning drinkers. There were two competitions; "A Beer For Manchester", judged by a distinguished group of drunks experts and a Best in Show award voted for by expo visitors.

A piss up in a brewery

I brought along an exciting range of traditional bottled beers but there was also loads of keg and even one cask beer. A few highlights for me were a Banoffee Wheat Beer (it actually tasted like banoffee!), a Rye IPA (I must use some rye malt soon) and the beer judged to be winner of the Beer for Manchester competition, "Cosmetically Challenged" a New England IPA brewed by Tom, which would stand up to anything made by a commercial brewer. The Best In Show beer was another great example of a NEIPA, "Lazaretto" brewed by my fellow Chorlton Homebrewer Simon. There were loads of other great beers as well, too many to mention. The overwhelming impression I got from the expo was the sheer high quality and vast range of homebrewed beer and it has definitely inspired me to try a few new things.

Winner!

I took samples of five beers and even made the effort to label them using Beer Labelizer once I had thought of names for all five.

Four of my five beers (the Alt bier is missing)

The beers I took to the Expo were:

• Altbier "Alles Klar"
• Porter "3rd Prize"
• Another Pale Ale "Muddy Waters"
• Best Bitter "Boring Brown Beer"
• Strong Bitter "Strong & Stable"

I'm pleased to say that all five were well received and I was really thrilled with all the positive feedback I got from visitors and judges alike. My highest scoring beer in the Best in Show award was my most recent brew, the strong bitter "Strong & Stable" which achieved an average score of 7.8/10. If I had been able to give it a bit longer to condition it may have scored even higher.

Special thanks have to go to Connor and Jai for organising Manchester Beer Week, Steve at Beer Nouveau for the use of his brewery and Craig and Rich from the Manchester Homebrew group for arranging the expo.

Bottling - Strong Bitter

No Caps!

Time to bottle the Strong Bitter brewed on the 9th of July. Fortunately I realised just before starting that I only had silver caps which I'd already used on my Best Bitter previously. Since I normally can't be arsed with labels I tend to use different coloured caps to distinguish between beers, especially important for two beers similar in colour. So after a quick trip to the local homebrew shop I was ready. The final gravity was 1.010 (exactly as forecast) - giving me 5.1% abv. I filled 28 x 330ml , 21 x 500ml and one 750ml swing top as I almost ran out of bottles.

Brewday - 09/06/2017 Strong Bitter

Leftover Beer

I had sufficient spare ingredients left for one more brew, so I decided to make a strong bitter.

Recipe (BIAB):

• Mash for 1 hr at 67°C
• Boil for 60 mins
• Mash water volume 30lt
• Maris Otter 4.4kg
• Crystal Malt 150g
• Carapils 140g
• Chocolate malt 12g 
• Saaz 50g (60 mins)
• Saaz 25g (15 mins)
• Goldings 20g (15 mins)
• Cluster 20g (15 mins)
• Irish Moss 1 tsp (15 mins)
• Goldings 22g (at turn off)
• Gervin GV12 English Ale Yeast 11g pack
• Cluster 22g (dry hopped 4 days)
• Recipe in Brewers Friend

Results:

I got 23lt in the fermenter, the OG was 1.050 (slightly higher than expected!) and hopefully it should finish around 1.010 (5.1% abv) with 35 IBU's.

 Fermentation is going well!