SNAFU Las Vegas Memorial Competition Part Deux

Well the results are in! http://snafu.brewcompetition.com/index.php

And I'm not on them.  I had entered a Saison, a Baltic Porter, an American Pale Ale, a Belgian Wit and a Munich Dunkel.  I won't see my score sheets for two weeks, but I have a fair idea where I went wrong:

Saison - Added anise and I don't think people care much for anise or licorice flavors.

Baltic Porter - added more licorice than prior batches and I'm sure that turned them off, but I'm one of the few black licorice afficiandoes.  If I'd had one of the prior batches, I would have entered that instead as they had a better balance with the malts.

American Pale Ale - not sure what would have turned them off with this; I added some coriander, but it wasn't that prominent.  Dry hopped it with Cascade, but I thought it was pretty well done.  Awful lot of competition in this category. However, if they allowed it to warm up too much, I'm sure it wouldn't be that good. With all the entries in this style, there is a fair chance it was sitting on the judging table for a while waiting its turn.

Munich Dunkel - probably could have been a bit maltier, as I was on the low end of the ABV at 4%.  Was just hoping there wouldn't be much competition, but turns out if you don't make at least a 40/50, you can't even place.

Belgian Wit - orange peels didn't add much flavor, maybe some off-bitterness.  Probably shouldn't have used a navel orange.  But I thought it came out pretty well in spite of it.  Guess I need to raise my standards or use better ingredients.  But will be interested in the comments on this one as well as the APA.

So I went in with low expectations and wasn't disappointed.  Mostly I wanted some good feedback, and it will be interesting to see if my assessment above aligns with the judges.  My assessments aligned pretty well with the certified judges in the styles I judged, so I am not expecting any surprises.  I'll post those comments when I get them.

SNAFU Memorial Competition Part 1

Going to have to post a part II to this once I find out the results of the competition.  Very interesting experience.  Decided to ride my bike to the competition since they started an hour later than originally planned.  Since we had plenty of experienced judges, I was assigned to be a third judge on the categories of smoked ales and meads.  I've never tasted either, but had the BJCP guidelines app on my phone.  We were well set up in the brewhouse of Tenaya Creek Brewery with six tables set up for the judges and a small table with coffee, palate clearing snacks, etc.  Tenaya Creek turned over one of their offices for us to have laptops set up to enter results.

Fortunately I was teamed up with a couple of guys who had judging experience and when we got to meads, we switched out our more experienced judge for one who is certified in mead.  We started off with a bourbon barrelled aged ale. Very dark, almost black, but with a good firm, long lasting dark tan head.  But the smell of bourbon was very prominent.  They didn't tell us what the gravity or ABV of the brews were, but we could tell there was a lot of bourbon in this.  The next one was loaded with bakers chocolate and bourbon and had no head at all.  Very tasty, but you really couldn't tell that it was ale.

Then we had one that was brewed with Jamesons.  I could tell that a mile away.  Tasted like Jamesons and Kahlua - lots of coffee and Irish whiskey coming through.  We were started to get hammered by now, as much whiskey as these brews seemed to have in them.  But still flat with no carbonation.  Fortunately nothing yet with odd or off flavors, just overwhelming whiskey.  No hops or malt coming through.  We couldn't tell what brews they were starting off using as the whiskey just overwhelmed in all the entries we had.  There were two more that were on our list, but were never delivered, so if they show up, they will just be entered into the SNAFU raffle at the next meeting.

This coming raffle will be a real crap shoot with all the left over brews being thrown in without labels.  The end of one table had all the bottles from the judging that had some left in them.  The theory was that if they had more than half left, that the judges didn't like them.  I'm not hopeful for my own entries, especially for my porter which had a strong licorice taste.  I don't know many people besides myself who like strong licorice.  Still looking forward to the criticism to see where I went wrong.

We had to wait awhile for the certified mead judge to be able to join us.  The fellow he changed places with doesn't like wine or mead, so it's good that he switched out.  The other judge said he had brewed a number of bad meads, so at least he knew what they shouldn't taste like.  Turned out that three of the four meads we tried were all from the same brewer and he was just tweaking his recipes to see what was best.

 



The first one we tried was made from green grapes and was very grapey.  Couldn't really sense the honey much, because the grapes were very strong.  The next three entries were made with 5 berries and honey.  We were guessing at least cranberry, raspberry, and strawberry.  As we went through the three entries, the berries got stronger in the second entry, but with the additon of oak chips in the last entry, were well balanced with the honey. There was no question that the addition of the oak chips helped to moderate the other flavors - sweet, dry, grapey, berry, honey.  The second entry was a bit thick like a muscatel or sherry.  The alcohol was pretty high in these entries too.  The stewards and  judges at the other end of our table were laughing at the aroma of alchohol in the oak aged brews and meads that we were judging.

 

 

We stuck around and sampled some of the leftovers of the brews that had been judged.  There was a pretty broad spectrum in the other classifications in terms of blah versus yum.  I didn't taste any that were really off with astringent or skunky flavors.  I didn't stick around for the second round, as some of the tables/categories had a lot of entries and were still slogging through their initial reviews.  We will see how the results come out in a few weeks at the SNAFU meeting. 

Brewing recipe platforms

A friend of mine was just asking me about gluten-free beers that might be available for sale since he thinks he might have a problem with consuming wheat.  That got me looking for recipes that might fit his needs, as gluten-free beers off the shelf aren't easy to find and don't have a great variety.  However; the recipes I found were very varied, although all were partial extract.  Nothing wrong with that, just thought it odd.

Anyway, that got me thinking about our local homebrew club's competition this weekend and recipes in general....pretty much a long stream of consciousness and none of this really has much to do with where I'm going with this.

So I started thinking about the recipes I've build recently and the experimentation I've done with various spices, herbs, fruit and other ingredients.  I was wondering if I might be better served by going back to basics.  Build some base recipes with no additives, just sticking to the basic grains, yeast and hops, then just tweak those volumes and processes until I'm satisfied that they are the best representation of the style that I can create.  Like building a sturdy beer recipe platform that I can use to launch different variations.

Next, recreate them with one new ingredient, perhaps several times with varying amounts to determine the impact and optimum amount.  Then leave that one ingredient out and try a different one, then maybe both together.  Then maybe start over with the base and some different spices altogether.

Obviously, this is a lot of batches, a lot of time, and experimentation effort.  I'm just wondering to what degree other craft or home brewers go through a similar process, and whether it is worth doing. Alternatively, should I just try to work it from the design side, figuring out what flavor profile I am seeking and select the necessary ingredients and work out the calculations to get me there?

I'm hoping some of my readers will comment.

S.N.A.F.U. meeting

I had to go to the SNAFU (Southern Nevada Ale Fermenters Union) meeting tonight.  Our SNAFU Memorial Competition is next weekend and I wanted to hear if there was any late breaking news.  Turns out that since I registered my Belgian Wit the week before last, the number of entries has doubled.  My entry was #72 and now there are 145 entries.  There are so many that they are going to start judging on Friday night, instead of waiting until the main event at Tenaya Creek Brewery.

This is my first competition, so I'm mostly in it for the feedback, without much illusion of coming in first in any of my categories - Baltic Porter, Saison, Belgian Wit, Munich Dunkel and American Pale Ale. 

Tonight pretty much confirmed my suspicions.  Our meetings are a mini-festival of sharing brews with a few garbled announcements and a raffle thrown in for formality's sake.  The first one I tried was Dogfish Head's Noble Rot.  Rot it was.  After reading the description on DH's website, http://www.dogfish.com/brews-spirits/the-brews/occasional-rarities/noble-rot.htm, it is a pretty complex combination of brewing and vinting.  It really tasted like the grapes went to vinegar. It is possible that this brew was too far past its prime.  I can't imagine they would have sent it out that way. 

During the raffle, my LBHS proprietor, Steve, won a bunch of bottles.  He popped open a Duck Rabbit schwartzbier which did not disappoint - very roast, smokey flavor.  Then our home brewers started popping open their brews.  One of our members is a former brewer at Joseph James Brewery and he poured a reddish-amber ale that was both hoppy and malty with a perfect color.  It must be a seasonal that they brew, because it's not on their website. http://www.duckrabbitbrewery.com/beers.html

Another fellow who used to work at the LBHS and has several refrigerators full of home brew, poured his dry stout that was fairly thick and with an absolutely amazing toffee flavor.

Then came a raspberry mead that had been aged for 14 months.  Could not taste the honey at all, as I imagine it had all fermented from the champagne yeast that brewer used.

Finally, one other fellow produced his cherry saison, and all I can say is thank goodness it didn't carbonate well.  I sure wouldn't want my saison going up against it in the competiton.  He flash boiled and froze 4 lbs of cherries, then put them in his 5 gallon carboy with the wort.  It could have passed for a lambic, it was that good. 

Absolutely overall the best brews passed around at a meeting, notwithstanding the Noble Rot.

There's no beer brewed in France, is there?

Last we saw my ancestor, James Poniard, he'd already left Brittany, France and set up his homestead in Galway, Ireland.  But did he leave behind a place that we associate with wine and certainly not beer and ale?  Let's take a look at the brewing scene in Brittany.  It's not that far across the channel to England, and obviously there was contact with the British and Irish.  My ancestor was able to secure employment in Ireland, although whether he found employment before he went or after is a mystery.  But it does appear that the Lamberts requested him to come over.  Anyway, back to Brittany:

When you search on Brewing in Brittany (Bretagne), the first thing that comes up is:
http://www.frenchcraftbrewers.com/brewers-bretagne

Which has links to the Brasserie de Bretange and their individual brews.
www.brasseriedebretagne.com


Among the primary brewers of Brittany are:

Saint Erwann - The patron saint of Brittany and lawyers (maybe we shouldn't hold that against him) produce an abbey ale at 7.7% made with seven grains: barley, wheat, buckwheat, oats, rye, spelt, millet and floral hops.

Celtika - One of their main brews is a Belgian Style Ale at 8.8% made with strong barley malt and a triple fermentation process which brings a touch of honey, green apple and violet to the taste and a lightly toasted after-taste. On BrewAdvocate a number of reviewers report very high carbonation. They also brew a 4.8% cranberry ale, a Belgian Wit and a blonde ale reported to be spicy and fruity with very good reviews.

Dremmwel - They produce a very unique 6% ABV English type of red ale with tastes of caramel, peach and apple. Their golden abbey is a robust 7.7%, brewed with noble hops and a slight acidic taste and not quite the mouthfeel expected of an abbey.  Their blonde ale at 5%ABV is brewed with malted barley and wheat and has a spicy. fruity and malty flavor, but reported to have high carbonation.  They also have a Belgian dark stout which is at 4%ABV that is fairly mild tasting.














Brasserie Britt de Bretagne has three different lines:

Gwiniz Du - Their specialty of Brittany is an ale made with buckwheat, very mild, slightly roasted, but with no perceptible acidity or bitterness tastes.  This is in an American dark wheat ale style and on BeerAdvocate gets very good marks.

Britt - Britt has three brews - a 6% blonde pilsner with a fairly hoppy aroma and dry finish, a 4.8% white belgian wit ale which for the one reviewer on BeerAdvocate was very pleasurable, and a 5.4% Belgian dark red ale brewed with peat smoked malt and the taste of whiskey barrels.  Britt doesn't pasteurize their beers, but does ferment them twice.



AR-MEN - Ar-Men has a golden ale that is like a Belgian Wit - spiced with coriander, orange peel and other spices at a moderate 4.8%.  They also have a 6% red ale, an amber wheat, a Belgian abbey.

It is very unexpected and exciting to see the variety and quality of the brews in Brittany.  I only hope my ancestor had access to such variety.

Breweries in Galway - another of my ancestor's hometown

Around 1820, my great great great grandfather, James Poniard, a Frenchman, left Brittany and went to Galway to work for the Lambert family collecting tithes from their tenants.  He married Sarah Monaghan and had a good sized family and left behind a stone sundial with the family name.  Many of his descendants still live there and hopefully enjoying the fine beer brewed locally in that city.

One of those is the Galway Bay Brewery, who you can find here : https://www.facebook.com/GalwayBayBrewery?ref=stream&filter=1
They also have a tab on the website http://www.winefoodbeer.com/brewery/ that provides minimal information, although the brewery appears to be relatively new and shipping only kegs to local restaurants.  They do note that there are 14 (now 20 according to http://www.beoir.org/) microbreweries in all of Ireland; I would have expected one in every town and village.

They have a Full Sail Pale Ale coming out on the heels of their Amber Ale Strangebrew that was just sold out.   They also brew Stormy Port Irish Porter and their red Bay Ale.  The Strangebrew is just a class of experiments that the brewmaster wants to try, so last month it was the Amber Ale, next month???  The brewery is in Lower Salthill in the southern part of Galway near the coast.  Fortunately we have some folks who tried and reviewed their brews on: http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/22861 and the scores are very good and mention a Bay Lager that they also brew.  The Bay Ale is described as having cream, toffee, caramel and barley flavors - all my favorites.  The lager is has a hint of fruitiness, light hopping and good malty taste.  The porter sounds delicious with chocolate, vanilla and roasted malts.  Seems that all the brews suffer from short lasting heads.


The other older brewery (founded just in 2006) that's not in town but close (it's in Roscommon to the northwest) is the Galway Hooker Brewery: http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/16414  http://www.galwayhooker.ie/flash/site/intro/


It appears they primarily brew Galway Hooker Irish Pale Ale and only distribute in Galway, Dublin, Roscommon, Limmerick and Cork.  BTW, the hooker is the local type of fishing boat depicted on the label...not what you were thinking.  Ireland had it's first Irish Craft Brew Week this summer and Galway Hooker did well.  According to beoir.org, Hooker also has a pilsner and per BeerAdvocate a Dark Wheat that're not on Hooker's website. The dart wheat received a very  good review as did the pale ale on BeerAdvocate.  The Dark Wheat has a complex flavor profile with some plum, wheat, spicy and chocolate flavors.  The Pale Ale is fairly hoppy, though not quite as much as America Pale Ales.

Galway Bay Brewery will be offering tours in the near future, but Hooker offers personal tours by appointment.  The brewmaster's contact info is on their site.

Hosbach...some my ancestors' hometown

Hoesbach, Germany - my great-great grandfather came over to the U.S. from there in the mid 1800s.  I've connected with a number of other people with the same surname (Heeg) as there are really very few of us in the grand scheme of things...maybe 200 tops in the U.S. (and some of those are from Friesland).  I have a drawing of a coat of arms with the date 1570 and our family name on it that another Heeg brought back from there.  It is a small village, about 35 miles east of Frankfurt.  There is dairy farming in the area and my ancestors brought that with them and raised cattle and ran dairies in Elmhurst, Queens.  My grandfather used to deliver the milk via horse and wagon.



 So thinking about where to focus my brewing attention next, obviously all of Germany or even Bavaria has way too much going on to cover in one little blog post.  So the thought of Hosbach came to mind and I decided to see what was going on there.  On http://www.mygermancity.com/hoesbach
they mention Brauerei-Gasthof Weyberbräu, a brewery restaurant just east of downtown Hoesbach. http://www.weyberbraeu.de/ 

They have only been open since 2006. They describe a number of blonde, weizen and red ales that they create regularly, plus a number of seasonals, such as wheat beer in summer. They will fill your 5L bottle or provide a bottle for 11.90 Euros, or a single liter for 2.50 liters. 

Their copper colored red ale is called Weyberbräu Qupfer.  They describe it as moderately hopped, slightly resinous and acetic, some coffee aroma, with a creamy mouthfeel.  Their Weyberbräu Weizen isn't described on their website.  The next beer they highlight is their Rauchbier.  It is described with a beige head, with some smoky, earthy roasted malt, bready, orange flavors, dry and bitter from the hopping, good lacing, anda similar to those brewed in Bamberger's beer school.

The food menu has typical German fare, plus a few American bar favorites thrown in - fries, spaghetti...  They have a sauerbraten made in a dunkel sauce.

In the bigger city nearby, Aschaufenberg is the Schwind brewery (http://www.schwindbraeu.de/sorten_00.html) which has been in existance since 1761, and brewing in the founding Staudt family goes back further. In their lineup they include a blonde ale, pilsner, red ale, dunkel, a strong reddish-brown ale at 7.2%ABV, a bock of similar fortitude, something like a shandy that's 2.5%ABV, light and dark weissbiers, and a beer brandy that's 42%ABV.

In looking for other breweries in the surrounding area, I ran across the strange bit of trivia that Snow White was purported to have been born in Lohr, not very far from Hoesbach.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohr  The Brauerei Stumpf  is also located there and has a sizeable capacity and great reviews for its wiezen and dunkel.  They also have several pilsners, an export and a bock.  The Keiler Dunkel Weisbier got very good reviews in BeerAdvocate, as did the Helles.