Well lately I've been busy sending beers out to Competitions and keeping a watchful eye on my sour creations I brewed over a year ago now. I've also brewed a few other wild brews since then. Some of the competitions that I have entered over the past few months are the Michigan Brew Festival (Richmond Worthogs), Great Northern Brew Ha Ha (Northern Alestars), Babble Leap Beer Brew-Off (Babble Homebrewers), Drunk Monk Challenge (Urban Knaves of Grain). I am entering as many competitions as possible that are on the Midwest Homebrewer of the Year circuit. I have set that as my annual brewing goal. Here have been my results so far:
Homebrew at the W.E.B. (World Expo of Beer)
*3rd Place -- Biere Bella (Belgian Golden Strong Ale)
Titletown Open:
*1st Place -- Biere Bella (Belgian Golden Strong Ale)
BOSS Chicago Beer Cup:
*Best of Show/1st place -- Biere Bella (Belgian Golden Strong Ale)
Michigan Brew Fest:
*Best of Show/1st place -- Chai Spiced Brown Ale
Great Northern Brew Ha Ha:
*3rd place -- Junk in the Trunkelweizen
*Best Beer Name -- Junk in the Trunkelweizen
Babble Leap Beer Brew-Off
*2nd Winter Survival Weizenbock
*3rd Biere Bella Belgian Strong Golden Ale
Drunk Monk Challenge -- Menace of the Monestary Category
*2nd place -- Biere Bella Belgian Strong Golden Ale
(Damnit, one place away from being able to brew this recipe
at Walter Payton's Restaurant near Chicago)
As for brewing I recently brewed and extract version of a Berliner Weisse.
This is coming along great. It needs to sour up for a few more months but
it should be ready for summer time.
I just brewed Jamil Zanisheff's Belgian Strong Dark Ale and also did a partigyle
brew off of that that I pitched a big slurry of Brett Claussennii into. (100% Brett)
I'm really looking forward to these two beers. I can tell you right now that I am
going to be on a Belgian kick for a while. This happens to me every year. And why not? The temperature will soon be rising so brewing belgians in the summer time is
perfect. The yeast can handle it so there is no sense in trying brew something that needs to be cooler and have the results suffer when I can do something that likes the higher temps and benefit from it......right?
Oh yeah, the biggest update of all. We finally have a frickin' homebrew club. Yeah thats right, and not a little group of people either. The last meeting we had like 30 people show up. We'll have our website up and running soon thanks to Josh Meringer who is handy with that type of thing. We are planning on growing a bunch of hops on an acre of land that was generously handed over for club use by Mike Sattem who is the head brewer at Hereford & Hops in Escanaba. I am really excited to get going on that. So much so that I just ordered a bunch of rhizomes for my own yard. I also have been looking into getting a compost bin so I can dump all my spent grains in there and use them to feed my hops. What came from the earth must return, mine as well be into my hops. That's all for now. Later.
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