Golden Ale Challenge 09

It’s taken me awhile but here is the Golden Ale Challenge round up. Last months Autumn Ales Festival included the Golden Ale Challenge where different brewers brewed a golden ale at the same strength with the same ingredients. We ended up having 3 entry’s One from Brendan, one from Ed and one from me. Ed and myself both brewed English style Golden Ales with the character of the NZ hops shinning through. Brendan on the other hand chose to brew a Kolsh. Ed’s Sugerloaf Gold was definitely the best beer, it was bursting with hop aroma , brilliantly clear with a nice malty backbone. My Golden Challenge was a touch on the young side with a bit of diacetyl and raw grain flavour coming through. Brendan’s Kolsh was pretty good, alittle hazy and estery with a subdued hop character that the style dictates. Half way through the evening both Brendan and Ed admitted they had broken the rules and used Golden Promise instead of Maris Otter (Brendan even tried to make out it was some kind of act of solidarity with his Scottish heritage!) so I won by default. I was drinking Ed’s however. I will come up with a porter challenge for winter.

The Golden Ale Challenge

Through the years the topic of house characters has often come up for conversation around the bar. Each homebrewer who provides beer for the taps here has a unique profile that most of their beers conform to, we often said it would be interesting to brew the same beer in each brewery and see what happened.
The Golden Ale Challenge is my attempt at a highly unscientific experiment into the differences between each brewer. With a mind to serving the beers at next February’s Valley Summer Ales Festival I have contacted a range of homebrewers who will each brew a 1045 golden ale with Maris Otter Pale Malt and New Zealand Styrian Goldings and Nelson Sauvin hops.

The rules are as follows:

- Each brewer will formulate a 100% Maris Otter Grist that would normally result in a 1045 beer.

- They will then mash in what ever way they normally mash.

- Each brewer will be provided with 80g of Nelson Sauvin and 80g of NZ Styrians be added in what ever quantity and regime they want

- The brewer will ferment the beer with their house yeast (or if they don’t have a house yeast what ever they feel is right)

It should be a bit of fun.