Homebrew Contest
I want to thank THIRSTY homebrew club for hosting a great homebrew Contest at the brewery. I look foward to doing it again next year. We had 50+ entries in many different categories, and a dozen BJCP certified judges from all over Iowa.
We cleared out the backend of the brewery and setup tables for the judging. I am not a BJCP trained judge, but they let me judge because I am a siebel trained brewer. I got to be a judge in the strong ale/mead category (I think they were trying to get me drunk!). We had several excellent beers there, including an Eisbock (a dopplebock that has been frozen to increase its strength!), a barleywine, several wee heavy’s, a traditional bock, a sparkling mead, and a braggot (a mead/beer combo beverage).
I must say being a judge was quite fun. The way it works is that two judges pair off in a category. They each sample the beer, write down their impressions of it, and then score the beer points for the following attributes: aroma 12pt, appearance 3pts, flavor 20pts, mouthfeel 5pts, general impression 10pts for a total of 50pts. An average beer should be about 30pts, and only a world class beer would get a score above 45pts. Then the judges discuss the beer, and if their point difference is more than 7 points then they haggle over it to reach a median score. I just love to haggle over beer!
After awarding first, second and third place; each first place beer then is tasted and the top three get the best of show awards. This involved lots of bargaining between the judges. For us it came down to brown ale, a foriegn extra stout, and a wee heavy. Two of us liked the brown, but didn’t think much of the stout. And two judges like the stout but didn’t like the brown ale. We were all able to agree that the wee heavy scotch ale was exceptional, though it had quite an alcohol flavor. One of the judges had been to scotland and he said the unbelievable strength of the beer was truly in style. So we awarded that beer first place, the foreign extra stout second place (my favorite) and the brown ale third place (I really am not a fan of brown ales).
It was great fun to give all the beer judges a tour of the brewery. They even got me drunk enough to put on my bronze medal and walk around the brewery like a show off 
Everyone seemed to agree that our Chocolate Bock is very good this year, and definately has a nice Chocolate flavor. We snuck in this years Oktoberfest as a ‘ringer’ beer and it got well rated, in the upper thirties. Hey its a tough competition! Its always great to see such excitement about beer here in Iowa. Next year I hope we have even more entries. Prost!