NZ National Homebrew Competition 2011 RESULT

NHC result

I was so stoked on Saturday night having my result in my hand.

My beer did very well in the competition.

I got 4 golds, 5 silvers and 9 bronzes.

The champion brewer won 4 golds and 2 bronzes, and I didn't become champion brewer in the competition because of his gold winning beers were better than my gold winning beers. I had a chance to become a champion brewer and get 30L stainless conical fermenter. Sucks.

Anyway, the following is the detail.

American Wheat Ale - Gold

Black IPA 2nd - Gold

Sweet Stout - Gold

Pumpkin Amber Ale - Gold

Lagunitas IPA clone 2nd - Silver

Vanilla Scotch Ale - Silver

Motueka Golden Ale - Silver

Snake Dog IPA clone - Silver

Black Saison - Silver

NZ IPA - Bronze

Black IPA 1st - Bronze

NZ IIPA - Bronze

Schvale - Bronze

Hefeweissen - Bronze

Lagunitas IPA clone 1st - Bronze

Sauvin Oatmeal Stout - Bronze

American Brown Ale - Bronze

Rye Red Ale - Bronze

Hoppy Wit - No Medal

Smoked Porter - No Medal

Dunkel Wit - No Medal

ESB - No Medal

Strawberry Wheat - No Medal

Brown Ale - No Medal


I have been asked to send another bottle of Pumpkin Amber Ale and Sweet Stout for the NHC organiser to be judged again to choose the best beer. I'm guessing that the champion brewer, Zane Smith who started 6 months ago had better Spiced beer and Sweet Stout.


Well, result is the result. I'm starting my contract brew business next year. Now I know which beer I can brew commercially. I'm going to rebrew the gold winning beer first and Sauvin Oatmeal Stout, which I thought was the best beer I entered, but entered to wrong category...


Wheat Ale, Sweet Stout, Pumpkin Amber Ale, Black IPA....
Which one should I brew first?

NZ National Homebrew Competition 2011

Finally, the time of the year.

National Homebrew Competition 2011.

By the way, I have been busy with my work even more after the rugby games started... (with watching them as well)


Anyway.
I remember getting bronze for my IPA for first time and that was actually my first homebrew ever. (what a luck)
I brewed at my friends' place who are now selling their beer as ParrotDog. They released their first beer this year that is known as Bitter Bitch IPA. (selling at my work and many other beer pubs in Wellington)

This year, I am entering 24 different beers. (A beer case!)
Yes, indeed. Carpet Bomb.


I had beer tasting of my homebrew with my friend and workmate on Sunday.

It was a good night. They liked my beers and I was surprised with some of them how my beer matured well.

Rye IPA, Brown Ale, ESB, Sauvin Oatmeal Stout, 

American Wheat, Hoppy Wit, Motueka Golden

from the top.

We didn't taste all the 24 beers, but some of them. I kept 2, 3 bottles of each brews for entering competition and tasting before the competition. 

Hoppy Wit, if you can remember, was a cool beer. My E.S.B tasted pretty good too. 

I was happy about my Sauvin Oatmeal Stout the most. It lost that grassy character and now more, smooth, chocolaty, passion fruity -  like chocolate smoothie with some fruits on the rim. 

I can not wait to get the result back from NHC. 

The entering time is during October and the judges will taste the beer in early November.

Before that I have Pacific Beer Expo coming up and will be busy for that.

I hope I can brew some beer more this month though.

...after the tasting

Saison!

So, I finally brewed Saison.

This year's craft beer trend in New Zealand has been Saison. (and also over in U.S.A)

I tried many Saison style beers this year and some of they were good and some of were not.


I had black Saison during Beervana. Oh yeah, it was a great beer festival and I had many great beers. I can't wait for the next one in 2012.

This time I brewed black Saison and black IPA as I said I will do in the past post.

I modified the black IPA recipe a lot. I added more caramel malt.
I also got Wyeast Laboratories. French Saison 3711 for my black Saison.

This is how I syphoned the beer.

This way I get to taste the difference between the different yeasts and get 2 beers out of 1 brew!

1 stone 2 birds.

Black Saison finished its fermentation last night, after 1.5 weeks. It took a lot of time! 

Here's the recipe for 30L batch size.

7.40kg Pale Malt (Maris Otter) 

0.95kg Caramel Crystal Medium (150EBC)

0.40kg Carafa II (800EBC)

0.25kg Roasted Barley (600EBC)

40g Pacific Gem [15.00%] - Boil 90.0 min 

30g NZ Cascade [8.00%] - Boil 20.0 min

30g NZ Cascade [8.00%] - Boil 10.0 min

10g Riwaka [5.25%] - Boil 5.0 min

100g NZ Cascade [8.00%] - Dry Hop 7 days.

And syphone into 2 different fermenters at the SAME TIME. 

Beer for chocolate lovers

Chocolate beer has been pretty popular recently.

I tried Renaissance Craftsman Chocolate Oatmeal Stout many times and it is an awesome beer.

It has full-on chocolate flavour and a hint of vanilla and coffee. I know many girls fell in love with the beer. (and guys)

Why can't I attract some of those girls?

So, I brewed chocolate beer with my friend, Dylan.

The base beer I picked was Imperial Porter.

Imagine the rich roasty, coffee, caramel flavour with the chocolate you love. It will be great.

Renaissance Brewery and many other people use the cacao nibs so I followed the trend.

I got the cacao nibs from Madagascar. The shop owner was telling me that Madagascan one would the best quality cacao I can get in Wellington. (The shop imports wine and other food stuff from France and Italy. Nice shop.)

I will add the most of these in the secondary, but to get the flavour in the beer I threw 100gram of cacao nibs in the boil (10 minutes).

I pitched the 3rd generation US-05 yeast and fermenting nicely at the moment.

By the way, this "3rd generation yeast", brewed 200IBU IIPA 9.5%, gone to my friend's brew and came back to mine. It was bit of fun, passing the yeast around. 

Here's the recipe for the brew.

27L Batch

7.50kg Pale Malt (Maris Otter)

1.36kg Munich Malt

1.54kg Crystal Malt (250EBC)

0.61kg Crystal Malt (120EBC)

0.61kg Crystal Malt (60EBC)

0.31kg Chocolate Malt

0.15kg Black Malt

14 g Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Boil 90.0 min Hop 

14 g Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 

14 g Southern Cross [13.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 

14 g Southern Cross [13.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 

14 g Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 

100g Cacao Nib - Boil 10min

200g Madagascan Cacao Nib - secondary (dry hop....   I mean dry cacao)

Whats brown and sticky? The followup

After 2 weeks sitting on untoasted american oak chips and sitting in the bottle for another two, the results are in for my oaked brown ale; too much oak was added. Rather than a soft, mellow oakiness that I was looking for, I got harsh, gnawing on wood. Its like a living tree in the beer i.e green. At least those were my thoughts. I took this beer along to the homebrew meetup and got some good feedback. Some people digged the oak flavour while others agreed with me that it was too much. While other people noted vanilla and raisin on the nose and a good oak flavour. People suggested leave it for a 2 months or reduce the oak or maybe get toasted oak next time.

Despite being far from what I wanted, its not terrible and perhaps I was being a little hard on myself. Can't expect to get it right first attempt. I'll definitely take on peoples thoughts and maybe reduce the oak for next time. I will also play around with different toasts of oak and differnet woods.

Chances are that it will mellow out over time and . At least I hope it will. Until then I'll drink the other beers I have.

Coconut Rough Stout

I've been enjoying adding extra ingredients to my homebrew.

I have used, coffee, strawberry, cacao nib, vanilla, cinnamon and crisps. (!?)

I brewed a stout with one of my favourite Misc ingredient, coconut.

I'm not actually the first one to try coconut in the beer. There are some commercial example out there.
Maui Brewing Coconut Porter from Hawaii is a popular one and 2009 NZ national homebrew competirion (NHC) winning beer was coconut porter, too.

I tried the NHC 09' winning homebrew - brewed commercially at Hallertau in Auckland and fell in love with the beer for couple weeks. (Yes, only few weeks. I like mine better now)

My opinion was that the beer was too sweet and I applied to dry stout for the first time last year. It worked quite well. I modified the recipe and brewed again couple months ago and gave some of them to my friends.

Coconut Rough Stout tasting 1


Coconut Rough Stout tasting 2



The beer was getting some good compliments, but Greig picked up "green apple" in the beer, which is a fault and it is due to the stressed yeast. I remember that I pitched the dry yeast straight into the fermenter without hydrating them nor making the starter. Greig said that using the dry yeast without hydrating them kills the half of the yeast I pitch.

The failure of the brew apart from the one Greig picked is that the beer was 'wet' and 'sweet'. I was supposed to make it dry, but the beer came out as coconut caramel cream beer. Right. It is not what I aimed and it is far way from what I brewed last year. The reason I can think of is that I left the coconut in the fermenter too long.
I was supposed to bottle after a week I threw the toasted coconut in, but I was way too busy with my work and other stuff. (excuse? yes it is.)

Here is the recipe for the beer (20L batch)





 3.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter  
 1.00 kg Barley, Flaked 
 0.45 kg Black Barley 
 0.25 kg Oats, Flaked 


 20.00 g Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min
 20.00 g Target [11.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min 


 50.00 g cacao nibs (Boil 10.0 mins) Flavor 7 - 
200.00g dry coconut meat (Boil 10.0min)


200.00g dry coconut meat (dry hop 7 days)


Add oat to the recipe this time to give the some texture, but I think it wasn't a good idea
Probably roasted barley could be added to gain the 'dry' impression when its consumed.
I should have kept the grain recipe more simple.

Recipe modification and going back to least favorite beer

I have been taking off from brewing in July and concentration on drinking my own homebrews.




I had too many beers going on back then ...

It was hard for me to look after all 8 beers at the same time and I think I decreased the quality of the beer I brewed meantime as I couldn't be paying enough attention to each beer.


MASS PRODUCTION = LOWER QUALITY


It's kind of easy theory from economic course at university (ECON 101)




What I did was to tidy up my brewery  to

looks better now....




It's not only tidying up my brewery, I was up to in last few weeks.


I tried my Imperial Black IPA.


The conclusions to improve the IBIPA is:
- Imperial Black IPA isn't dark enough and needs more roasty flavour as well body. So, adding Black Barley or Roasted Barley is necessary.


This is the modified recipe

6.50 kg Pale Malt

0.60 kg Crystal Malt 40L

0.60 kg Crystal Malt 80L

0.20 kg Chocolate Malt

0.50 kg Roasted Barley

40 gram Pacific Gem  90min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  60min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  45min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  30min

30 gram NZ Cascade  10min

30 gram NZ Cascade  5min

50 gram NZ Cascade  1min

Increased the amount of dark malt and also more 1minute hop addition. I'm hoping the chocolate malt will help the roast flavour and the huge hop flavour get along with its sweet toffy malt character.

I also tried American Wheat Ale and Hoppy Wit.

I confess that Hoppy Wit was my least favourite beer I brewed this year so far. However, I tried from the  bottle today with a friend. He told me that his favourite was Hoppy Wit over American Wheat Ale saying that Wheat Ale was hoppy and good beer, but not interesting compare to Hoppy Wit. 

Actually Hoppy Wit was brewed because of accident that my 8 months old Hef yeast didn't start up after I pitched the yeast. Yeah, I was planning to brew Hopfen Weiss. 

As it's been popular to brew the beer with Belgian/French beer yeast, Saison yeast. 

There's Saison Sauvin from 8 Wired Brewing, which is IPA brewed with Saison yeast. The beer has Belgian yeast character and slightly sour.

My friend tasted similar sourness in my Hoppy Wit and suggested me that it may be possible to brew Wit IPA as well as Saison IPA. I agreed with his idea, but I have to change the hops around.

I thought it is very cool to go back to some beers you wouldn't pay attention to or wouldn't like (at least me) and seek out a new possibility. 

I'd say Imperial Black IPA and Hoppy Wit will be my next brews I must do.