World Cup Results/White Ale update
Well we pretty much struck out at the World Cup this year. There were more entries overall than in previous years. Here are the results for the categories that we entered in:
Belgian Style White (or Wit)/Belgian-Style Wheat, 17 Entries
Gold: Hoegaarden, Interbrew S.A., Brussels, Belgium
Silver: Allagash White, Allagash Brewing Co., Portland, ME
Bronze: Blanche de Chambly, Unibroue Inc., Chambly, Canada
Vienna-Style Lager, 28 Entries
Gold: Schaumburger Landbier, Schaumburger Brauerei, Stadthagen, Germany
Silver: Gordon Biersch Vienna Lager, Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant, Chattanooga, TN
Bronze: Sainsbury Taste The Difference Vienna Style, Meantime Brewing Co. Ltd., London, UK
Traditional German-Style Bock, 16 Entries
Silver: Brick Anniversary Bock, Brick Brewing Co. Ltd., Waterloo, Canada
Bronze: Bock Lager, Elk Grove Brewery & Restaurant, Elk Grove, CA
You can see they didn’t even award a Gold medal in the Bock category. These judges are not fooling around! Hoegaarden took the Gold in the Wit category, just like I predicted, and Allagash White is certainly a good beer. Good for Gordon Beirsch taking a silver in the Vienna lager category, though I have not ever had that beer from them. Otherwise i’m pretty unfamiliar with all the other winners… Oh well, There is always next time. That will be in two years when they have the contest again. Time for me to work on perfecting my brews I guess.
I have been seeing little blurbs around about how Cedar Brewing has won a bunch of gold medals at the World Beer Championships. I would like to refer people to my previous entry on this subject. In short, I don’t think these medals are worth much.
Today we made our 4th batch of white ale. I harvested the WLP400 belgian yeast from the 3rd batch. It was the first time I had ever harvested this yeast. They were quite frothy and active! This yeast is only semi-flocculant, but it is better than Hefeweizen yeast, which is absolutely non-floculant (harvesting that yeast was like basically scooping up beer). WLP400 seems to clump up a bit and float on foam. So I tried to get as much foam as possible. This is the difference between top fermenting and bottom fermenting yeast. Our lager strain does not float to the top when its done. But this ale strain seems to catch on the bubbles and go for a ride. I seem to get plenty of yeast, but we will see if this yeast will change in character over many repitchings. We only used our Hefe yeast twice in order to prevent this from happening. But I need to get alot of yeast ready because in two weeks we are going to make two quadruple batches in prepration for Beers Across America, who want a truckload of the White Ale for their beer of the month club for June.
Our White Ale labels are supposed to arrive on friday, so the White ale will be bottled for the first time next Monday, the 26th of April. I am praying that Chris is as handy as he thinks he is and can get our bottling line to handle long necks without too many headaches. It will be a first for this brewery!