On Sunday we ran the first SOBA Homebrew festival, which also happened to be the first beerfestival run by our organisation. It was a fantastic success, all our worries about liquor license infringements, violence and assorted other troubles proved to be unfounded. On offer was a range of craft brewed beer and one cider, and homebrewed beer. There were six beer engines in action which I suspect is more than were employed at the recent Hops and Glory Real Ale festival. There was even a pin of Twisted Hop IPA sent up from The festival served as a prize giving for the recent SOBA National Homebrew Competition. The competition gathered some outstanding entries including a barley wine which had 10 years of bottle age on it. I took out best in class English style IPA with a silver medal for Chilka IPA.
A great day and a lot of hard work for a good cause, great beer.
18 comments:
Man, thank goodness the beer was good because those 'sausages' look like the sausage equivalent of DB Draught!!!
Looks like a grand day.
Fantastic occasion. Hope it will become an annual event and there are no ACC cases from Adams crane-like use of his back.
I dont disagree, but we were working to a budget, cheap and cheerfull.
Actually the more plastic looking snags were Stu's special treat, he has lived as a vego for sometime so I suppose he can be forgiven.
looks like a great occasion, annoyed that i couldn't be there, the sunshine looks wonderful and bright. such a contrast from germany where i am right now. mind you, the gluehbier, basically mulled wine but with a base of kriek lambic plus spices and served hot with a big pillowy head in the biting cold with a sausage chaser, is going down well at the christmas markets....
and off tomorrow to the land of real ale if i can avoid the massed ranks of underlicence keg lager on the white cliffs.
happy christmas all.
Ed
Cheers Ed , sorry you couldnt be there.
Thanks also for the bottle of Stout from the royal canal and Calcium Carbonate. How much do you add to your dark grists?
Merry Christmas, give the Germans Gareths love.
Looks like you chaps had a cracking day the formula of sunshine+beer+mates really takes some beating. I must say that I am highly envious of the sunshine and BBQ, I'm currently psyching myself up to go and scrape the ice off the car before I go to work in the dark!
Congrats on the prizewinning ale by the way.
Geoff, which sausages look like the problem? The skinny one, which I'm holding up is a delicious kransky. It was the expensive sausage (the fat ones being generic pre-cooked snarlers). The kransky is an enigma wrapped inside a riddle of mystery meat. Goes well with hoppy IPAs.
It was a great day. I gave away all my beer and I feel good.
Nice work again Kieran. Wish I'd tried that IPA. There's one bottle left in my cellar, so I'm looking forward to a Wellington homebrewers bbq in late Jan.
Cheers
Stu
To be honest they all look pretty grim. But then again, it's probably just to my Pommie eyes!
No, they are all grim, kranskeys are glorified cheese sizlers, popular though, just like processed cheese, and CF beer.
Kieran, be interested in having a squizz at your prize winning IPA recipe, the only decent recipes I can find are for American versions and I want a good English one.
Care to divulge?
Sure Chilka IPA
Grist:
50/50 blend of Golden Promise ( I actually was substituting with Pearl at this point) pale malt and Weyerman Pils malt to achieve a o.g of 1060
Adjunct: cane sugar for gravity adjustment.
Hops
(900mbu sorry I dont use those fancy ibus)
- NZ Cascade (8.5% aa) 105g (60min)
- Goldings 40g (20min)
- Goldings 40g (5min)
- Styrian Goldings 40g (flameout)
- Goldings 40g (flameout)
Yeast US-05
I step mash everything, and burtonised my water with 1/2 tspn mag sulphate, and 1 tspn calcium sulphate.
The only critism for it not being a gold was that it lacked malt complexity, unfortunitly I have pretty strident views on IPA, cheif among them is that they shouldnt have specialty malts added and should be seriously pale, hence it might be fated to never surpass silver, the NZ Cascade were added mainly as a housekeeping measure to get rid of them.
Strident view on no specialties yet you allow half the grist of German pils? Interesting.
So the grist made up to 1.060, what was the OG after sugar adjustment?
Thanks for that, the hop regime is right about what I'm after.
Step mash, what steps for what times, and why?
Cheers Kieran and congrats, a great class to get best of. I'm envious!
Strident view on no specialties yet you allow half the grist of German pils? Interesting.
So the grist made up to 1.060, what was the OG after sugar adjustment?
Thanks for that, the hop regime is right about what I'm after.
Step mash, what steps for what times, and why?
Cheers Kieran and congrats, a great class to get best of. I'm envious!
I 5tep mash because I learnt from papazian, and when I tried to go to infusions my beer went to shit.
I mash in at 55c to 60c for an hour then up to 68-69c for an hour to 90 min.
I use the pils malt to drop the colour, modern pale ale malt is to dark, in the UK you can get low colour marris otter which would be about right but here I use whats avalible.
The Golden Promise is pale and mixed with the pils malt you get a truely pale beer.
Save your envy you kicked arse, I would have love to take out English pale ales with an ordinary bitter, that would be my ultimate goal.
OH and target og is 1058 to 1060, I use cane sugar if my pre boil gravity is to low.
Sorry bout the double post...
Topping English pales with an ordinary bitter would indeed be something, I still can't believe I was within a sniff of best of show with a mild... Stephen Plowman would not've been impressed - a mild isn't something that would flow out of his taps anywhere near as fast as that bock will :)
Agree on the colour, the Bairds Maris Otter we get here is really quite gold/amber on it's own. My summer bitter (bronze) was 100% MO, it wasn't nearly light enough. I've done beers with 100% golden promise though, they were straw coloured, very light indeed. I find hoppy beers much nicer with some crystal, heresy I know but they just taste better to me.
Thats one long mash you do, how do you step up in temp? More water? Or direct heat?
We really should trade emails rather than bantering through your blog comments. Or maybe you could add your IPA recipe and technique to the "calling all SOBA winners" thread on realbeer?
Not herasy, but I would never do it. Tuatara IPA used to be proper pale and hoppy, judging notes always said it needed malt complexity so he added crystal, it accordingly won a best in class at BrewNZ. The beer however I feel has lost alot since it has darkened. Then again I was one of the judges that gave it best in class so ...
I add water to rAISE THE TEMP.
Email me , onlooker@paradise.net.nz
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