After my last batch of this ended up all over my basement floor, I wanted to rebrew it at the earliest opportunity. Today I got the chance.

Recipe

• Recipe, Hopvile
• Recipe, Fancy (with some errors in water calculations, as well)

Exactly the same as last time, only I've bumped up the batch size to 30.5 liters, which should give me 26.5 liters (7 gallons) of finished beer. Because my kettle can't hold all of that wort, that required a high-gravity partial-boil approach that gave me wort I could put into two 5-gallon carboys and dilute with water. I also had to increase the proportion of hops, so as to get the same amount of bitterness in a high-gravity wort.

Brewing

Partial-boil is usually thought of as a 'beginners' technique -- and, unfortunately, many people equate 'beginner' with 'bad'. In my experience, partial boil is neither. Yes it's a technique that most first-time brewers use (and that many continue to use), but it can actually be quite technically tricky. For it to work well, you have to be very familiar with your system. You have to be able to measure volume accurately, both the amount of water you add to the kettle and the make-up water. You have to know your system's evaporation rate, otherwise you might be adding more or less make-up water. For the same reason you need to know how much trub to expect.

I don't do partial-boil frequently enough to have all of the techniques down, so my brew day was not silky smooth. One of my fermenters is about 25% full of trub, for example. But I'll be doing more batches this size in the future, so I'm sure that I'll work out the kinks.

A new technique I tried with this batch is the hop stand -- also sometimes called a whirlpool hop addition, or a hot whirlpool addition. The idea is simple, at the end of the boil add your flameout hop addition, stir the wort, cover the kettle and wait. If you want a really strong hop aroma the hop stand can last up to 80 minutes. For this beer I only let the hops stand for 20 minutes.

The beer was rated by three judges -- two Certified and one National rank. That's a nice collection of experienced judges! With a lot of competitions you'll get a mix of experienced and inexperienced judges, but MCAB makes a point of providing proficient judges. Also, I recognize one of the judges' names. He's an accomplished brewer who has produced some very tasty brews -- one of which I was lucky enough to taste last year.

Enough gushing about the judges, what did they say?

 "Phenolic...Sour metallic...carbonation pushes boundaries of style...color and aroma better than flavor." 37/50*
"Cherry/chocolate roast...caramely-sweet malt...finishes medium-sweet with roast to balance...low carbonation...roast is a bit high." 38/50
"Rich caramelly/toffee maltiness...dark fruit complexity...finish is sweet and smooth...good carbonation." 43/50
Final score: 39.3, Silver Medal

Ah, judging, you're so weird. The first judge notes that he raised his score to match the other two judges. His notes are not that of a 37 point beer. One judge says I have high carbonation, another low and the third takes the Goldilocks route and calls it just right. This reflects the struggle I had with the beer's carbonation, both in the keg and in bottles. Giving a beer such low carbonation is trickier than you'd think.

The 'too roasty' note appears here again, and I think that is a flaw in the beer. My intention was to cold steep the roasted grains, so as to get their color in the beer without the astringent roasty notes. But I forgot to do that. Next time.

At least two of the judges got the flavors that I was trying to put in the beer, a rich luscious maltiness backed with dark fruit flavors. I'm glad they tasted and appreciated it. I'm not sure why the third judge had such a different experience of the beer, but everyone has their own palate. I'm also glad that the beer did well at MCAB, considering its showing at this year's Mashout. As I said earlier, I have to assume that I gave the Mashout judges a bad bottle.

After a short delay I got my results back from my favorite homebrew competition, the Upper Mississippi Mashout. Last year I won a gold medal, this year none of my beers placed. What did the judges have to say?

Beers Entered

I entered 2 beers into 3 categories. Gustatory Daily Dubbel was entered as a Belgian Dubbel while the MCAB Brown South was entered as both a Southern English Brown and as a Mild. I entered it into two categories because the two categories are very close and I wanted to see how the beer fared under both sets of guidelines.

The bottles of MCAB Brown South were filled at the same time as the bottles that I sent to this year's MCAB, a competition where it won a silver medal in the English Brown Ale category.

Judging Notes, Reactions

Gustatory Daily Dubbel

"Nice beer...needs more malt complexity...finished sweet."
"[Needs] additional malt complexity...one-dimensional"
Final score: 31.5/50

My thoughts: Perfectly in line with what I thought of the beer. It's ok, but too thin in character. I entered it not because I thought it was great, but mostly because I have too damn many bottles of it. I was happy to pay UMMO to drink 2 of them.

MCAB Brown South (entered as Mild)

"Slightly overcarbonated...roasty character overpowering."
"A good beer...roast too pronounced."
Final score: 31/50

My thoughts: Considering that I didn't brew it as a mild the notes about its roastiness are understandable, although I don't feel that it's especially over-roasty. The score reflects that even though the beer was out of style, it was still well made.

MCAB Brown South (entered as English Southern Brown)

"Oxidation and astringency...a bit old. High carbonation."
"Plastic. May have some age. Sanitize."
"Nice Southern Brown...notes of oxidation."
Final score: 25.6/50

My thoughts: All three judges hit me for oxidation, so I can only assume that they got a bottle that was either sealed poorly or had some other problem. If all my bottles had the same problem then I would assume that the beer entered as a Mild would have similar notes, which it does not. I know the beer is solid, so I need to chalk this score up to bad packaging on my part.

I'm going to write this up as a regular brewday, but there will never be any tasting notes for this beer. After racking from the kettle to the carboy, the carboy toppled and shattered, sending the wort all over the basement floor. So the batch was a total loss.

Recipe

• Recipe, fancy
• Recipe, Hopville

I think I came up with this one all by myself. I wanted a porter with a strong brown malt flavor, but not as strong as my experimental brown. Originally it was only hopped with Fuggles -- hence the name -- but I switched to Target for bittering so that I could put less hop matter in the kettle. The biscuit malt should add some extra nutty characteristics, while the mix of English dark crystal malts brings dark fruit sweetness. I don't know of any porters with this flavor profile; most of the porters made in the US tend towards the 'Robust Porter' category, which I'm not a big fan of. Even the English porters I've tried have barely any brown malt flavor.

Brewing

A simple brew day (well, until the carboy shattered). I've finally gotten to know my all grain setup well enough that a brew day is easy to manage. Efficiency was slightly higher that expected, which is probably due to me milling the grain twice at the store.

Thanks to a recent article in Zymurgy, I've started swirling the immersion chiller around in the wort. This speeds up chilling incredibly. In previous batches I'd chill the wort for 15-20 minutes.  This batch went from 200 to 65 in 8 minutes. Of course, I'm also helped by super-cold water because it is winter here in Minnesota. That aside, moving the immersion chiller through the wort during chilling makes the process much faster and efficient.

I'm really interested to see how this recipe works, so I'm planning to brew this beer again in two weeks. Here's hoping that I don't destroy that batch as well.

I was wondering when I'd get my score sheet back from this year's MCAB, so I checked the site:

Medals will be custom-engraved, shirts will be custom-sized/logo'd and special awards will will be custom-etched; therefore, awards for all medalists will be mailed as soon as all awards are available, so please expect a delay of two to four weeks.

The shirt in question is "A polo-style shirt...the logo color will reflect the highest place finish of each medalist."

That's pretty dang fancy! So it'll be a while until I get my score sheet, but it will be worth it.

I have beers in two big competitions this weekend. First, thanks to my gold medal in the 2011 Mashout, I got to enter a beer in this year's MCAB, which is being held in San Diego. And speaking of Mashout, this weekend is also the 2012 Mashout!

For MCAB I worked long and hard on perfecting my Southern English Brown. Work that apparently paid off, as I won a silver medal in the English Brown Ale category! Very exciting, and I'm especially looking forward to getting the score sheets for that beer.

For Mashout, I entered two beers into three categories. Again, I entered the Southern English Brown. But this time I entered it both as a SEB and as a Mild. I can see that beer falling into either category, so I'm interested to see what sort of tasting notes I get. I also entered my dubbel. I don't expect much from that beer, but I've tasted a few well-regarded commercial dubbels and find them similar enough to mine that I want to get some judging feedback. Also, I have far too many bottles of the dubbel, so I was happy to give some to the competition.

A nice feature of the Mashout is the face-to-face judging session, where you get to talk directly to a grandmaster-level (or almost-grandmaster-level) judge about a few beers. I brought my SEB and my Oaked Stout. The judge's thoughts were similar to my own: the SEB is good, but over carbonated; the Stout is solid but has too much oak flavor. We brainstormed a lot of good ideas to help improve later batches of the stout. Hopefully I get to brew that again soon.

Update: None of my beers placed at Mashout this year. I should get my score sheets on Monday and then start figuring out what I can do to make my beers better.

My second attempt at a clone of 21st Amendment's Bitter American. The first attempt was pretty far off the mark, so I revised the recipe (with the help of an interview with 21A's co-owner Shaun O'Sullivan). I brewed up the new recipe at the end of 2011, and that batch is now ready to drink! Also, Bitter American is now available in stores again, so I can finally compare this beer with its commercial ideal.

The Sociable (batch #31)

Aroma: Citrus, pine. Aroma gets a little bit booze-y as the beer warms.

Appearance: Solid off-white head, good lacing. The beer is a hazy orange.

Taste: Bitter upfront with a bit of harshness. Malt and sweetness never quite compete with the bitter. Finishes dry. Not sweet. Good presence of hop flavor throughout. Citrusy.

Mouthfeel: A bit thin, lightly bubbly. Might need higher carbonation (it's at about 2.3 volumes currently)

As with any clone I need to judge this on two criteria:

1. Is it a clone
2. Is it a good beer

First off, it's not a clone of Bitter American. The 21A beer has more caramel sweetness than mine, a slightly fuller body and less bitterness. I think they also have a higher percentage of Golden Promise than I used in my grist. And my beer has way more dry hopping than 21A's, since I do two additions and they -- I believe -- only do one.

Is it a good beer? Almost. I'd have no problem drinking a keg of this beer as is, but there are a few small tweaks I want to make in future versions.

As for future versions, I think I'm going to abandon the idea of cloning Bitter American, not because I think I can't but because it's no longer necessary as Bitter American is now available year round. Since I'm no longer trying to clone a beer, that gives me the freedom to craft my own American Session Ale without constantly comparing it to a single commercial beer.

If you're interested in cloning Bitter American, I think my third version of the recipe will get you pretty close. It's similar to the recipe I made here, but with lower bitterness, higher percentages of Golden Promise and Caramel 10, simpler dry hopping and a 1-degree increase in mash temp. If you do make it, let me know how it compares to Bitter American.

But for my next attempt at this style, I'm going to drop the Rahr 2-row and replace it with a more flavorful pale malt -- maybe Gambrinus or Canada Malting. Beyond that, I'd like to try adding some CaraPils to beef up the body a bit. I'll probably leave the hops mostly untouched, but once I figure out my grist I think this will be a fun beer to use for hop experiments -- keep the grist and bittering the same, but use 2 new aroma hops with every batch.

Recipe

• Recipe, fancy
• Recipe, Hopville

Not much to this recipe, really. In Brewing Classic Styles the all-extract lambic recipe comes from Steve Piatz, who not only brews award-winning lambics from extract but is also a member of my home brew club. It seemed only sensible to follow his example and go all-extract for my first lambic. I didn't use his exact recipe, though -- I added a bit of corn sugar. I did this simply so that I could use only whole 1lb bags of DME. I don't like keeping open bags of DME around.

Lambics usually use aged hops, of which I had none. So for this first batch I used Hersbrucker with just 2.3% alpha-acid. I'm going to set aside some hops to age for future lambics. I plan on brewing annual batches for at least two more years so that I start blending them into geuze.

Brewing

Haven't not brewed one since August 2010 I'd forgotten just how easy an all-extract batch is. Gather some water, dump in the DME, boil. Simple. It was a nice change of pace to have a brew day that took less than five hours. Although I quite enjoy doing all-grain brewing, I can see myself doing more all-extract or extract+specialty grain brews in the future. With a newborn in the house it's a lot easier to find 3 hours for brewing than it is to find 5.

Since this brew day was so simple there's not much to report. A heavy wind messed with my burner, leading to a lower evaporation rate, giving me more beer at a lower gravity (1.051-52 instead of 1.054). But other than that it was as simple as falling off a log.

I quickly found a problem with my keg/carboy washer. The bucket I put the pump/cleaning solution in is wider than a 5-gallon carboy, so when I tried to clean a carboy that size it simply sat right on top of the pump preventing the water from draining back into the bucket.

For a while I tried to come up with some sort of plumbing solution, or a collar that would hold the carboy off of the top of the pump.

After thinking about it far too much, I realized that a bucket lid with a small hole cut out of the middle would serve as a perfect collar:

And if you make the hole just wide enough for a keg, then it also helps keep the keg upright during washing:

Rājasthān was my first original recipe in almost a year. I've developed recipes in the intervening year, but they've always been attempts to directly clone a commercial beer. Rāja, on the other hand, wasn't meant to clone Thornbridge Jaipur, but to incorporate the aspects of that beer that I enjoy.

I brewed this batch for a party and the revelers drank the whole thing, so I never got a chance to sit down and take detailed tasting notes. But here's what I remember:

Aroma: Strongly hoppy, leaning towards the fruity/citrus hop aromas. A touch of the pine/resin aromas as well.

Appearance: Golden in color. Haze from the dry hops. Solid white head. Nice lacing.

Flavor: Strongly hop flavored. Crisp. A bit too bitter, especially after I moved the keg and threw the yeast back into suspension. The resin-y hop notes come stronger in the flavor than in the aroma.

Mouthfeel: A touch of creaminess, but mostly light. At a little over 2 volumes the carbonation is present and almost too strong.

Overall: This is pretty near the beer I was aiming for and it was an enjoyable beer to drink. I definitely want to make it again. There are a few problems that I want to address when I rebrew.

First, the bittering addition was too strong, but I think this was process-related not a fault of the recipe. I've been experimenting with leaving my hop bags in the wort until chilling is complete, which means that the hops sit in hot wort for 10+ minutes after the boil is done. I'm going to go back to removing the hops as soon as the boil ends.

Second, too much dry hopping. I used a little over 1oz of dry hops per gallon of beer. I want to back that down to about .75 oz per gallon (or about 6g per liter).

More that one person told me that this beer tastes 'kinda like Surly Furious',  and I have to agree with them. Weirdly, the two beers have almost no ingredients in common; the grist and aroma/flavor hops are entirely different. I'm attributing the similarity to a combination of the dry hopping levels and the use of the same yeast (White Labs 007). Apparently if you put enough dry hops in a beer it starts to taste like Furious. Strange.