Brewer's Cup Judging, July 9 & 10, Indy State Fair Grounds

[sirgiovanni]

Great, thanks a bunch!

[sirgiovanni]

John mills with two firsts and two seconds along with best of show!!!! To the hardest working brewer in Eville, HOOBAH !!!!

[Don]

Congrads John!!

He does make some fine beers.

What about the clubs beer, how did we do?

[john mills]

Jim Peel was bringing it home too. A 1st place and a 3rd place! Way to brew Brother!
Our club beer came away with a 2nd. Mishawaka got the 1st with their braggot. (I'd argue disqualification because mead was not a judging category at the brewers cup). It sucked too!
But at least FOSSIL's have to eat s**t now.

[Don]

Thats like a 1st...
I'm glad that all of the work payed off.

[sirgiovanni]

Peel? You're funny John.

I could of understood Jimmy Pitcher Bitch. ;)

[Jim Dippel]

That's MR pitcher bitch, and he did a fine job. I would have had a very good weekend along with all of the comraderie, ect, but DWAYNE SNORES! hehe.

[Jim Dippel]

I'll bring along a few of the beers that we got to the next meeting, But I wanted to thank Cris Norrick's uncle Scott for the crash pad.

[john mills]

Peel? You're funny John.

I could of understood Jimmy Pitcher Bitch. ;)

Sorry Mr. Pore! No slam intended to the best pitcher bitch of the weekend. It just had to of been a typo corrected by the phone.

Too bad the main group took off early. While I was collecting my booty of beer, the announcement came out to take as much as you could haul home. I only had room for a couple of cases. There had to of been at least 100 cases left.

[sirgiovanni]

Phones do that.

I tried to stick around and I asked John about it a couple times but I'm glad I left when I did, I was kicked by the time we got home.

[Chris Norrick]

Six ribbons, second in the barrel comp, and a best in show. Can't ask for much better than that. Good job OVHA!

[BREWsmith]

Congratulations John, Jimmy and the Barrel-Aged Team! I think it's fair to say that OVHA's rep got elevated a couple rungs.

[Chris Alvey]

Great job everyone! Congratulations to the club on a great showing and big congratulations to all the individual medal winners. Seems like we crashed the MECCA awards ceremony bigtime!

Where's that FOSSILs beer now? Let's set up a little roadie.

[Chris Norrick]

Full results posted:

Homebrewers: http://brewerscup.org/2010-hb-winners.pdf
Professional: http://brewerscup.org/2010-pb-winners.pdf

It looks to me like we were second in ribbon count = second place for Homebrew Club of the Year!

[sirgiovanni]

I'd like to ask some questions. I hope this doesn't come across as subjective sour grapes because I'm absolutely thrilled to see John get recognition for his relentless brewing. I have always said what a great job he's done and I'm very excited and proud for him.

Now, about the judging sheets I got back.
I obviously brew in the far out categories. I have just brewed for a very long time and this is what I like now. The lowest beer I entered was over 7%. I base all my brewing on what I've learned from Belgian breweries, but I have worked very hard to combine that information within the categories described in BJCP. But it seems to me that the judging was at times, extremely subjective, outside the confined realms of the standard provided for "judging" in this competition. I'd like to go over some examples.

The first place raspberry fruit was described to have a slight chill haze when in fact it is has a thick blanket of cloudiness from the fruit, there is nothing slight about it.

The blond I received a third place on was knocked down for not having a hop aroma. This of course was by design for the style. The beer was described as sweet, but too dry. This again, was by design and both qualities are not only part of any decent Belgian Blond you would purchase but both are as is described by the judging standard and within gravity restrictions.

My Dubbel was described as needing specialty malts, even though the second judge described it as malty. This ale was brewed with only specialty malts including 100% Munich for the base.

I turned in a couple beers that ranged from 10 to 12% in alcohol and very high in yeast esters. One judge could not describe the yeast properly and suggested the beer was infected.

I entered an imperial IPA. I told my friends it was a wasted 10 bucks to enter this beer because Americans, let's face it, follow fads. Right now, the fad is to out-hop everyone else. However the standard is clear on what establishes an imperial IPA. So I said, let's just see what they say. What they said was that I should have entered my 9.3%, 70 IBU ale as american pale ale. Clearly, as you can read from my opinion, I do not believe in outdoing anyone on hops. If you have drank my beers, you know I prefer to balance hops in particular. I definately don't have a problem with this beer placing below hoppier beers if they are better in the category. But I find a complete lack of credibility in the comment provided for the judging.