I ended up with about 7 gallons of this beer, at least 5 of which I gave away this weekend. First I took a keg to a party for the movie theater where I volunteer, then I gave 3 gallons of it away to my 'tasting group' (aka some friends whom I hassle for tasting notes).

That's one of the fun things about making your own beer, you can give it away for fun or special occasions. And, while sometimes I might be sad to lose a bunch of beer that I could be drinking, in this case I wasn't overly upset.

Aroma: Roasty nut character from the brown malt. Floral and piney notes from the hops. Didn't notice any maltiness or sweetness.

Appearance: Kind of a sickly brown, like a cloudy iced tea. There might be some bits of grain or hops floating in there. Yuck! A light tan head diminishes over time, leaving thin lacing.

Flavor: Too astringent and roasty. The nut aroma in the aroma comes through into the flavor. No sign of maltiness -- it's overwhelmed by the roast. Slight notes of chocolate and coffee. Balanced bitterness made slightly too bitter by the roast notes. Some lingering hop tangling with the lingering roast.

Mouthfeel: Creamy. I definitely notice the astringency in my cheeks. Slight carbonation.

So, this one didn't turn out exactly as hoped. A lot of the flaws that I found in my Historical Southern Brown reappear here, which is puzzling. In the Brown I used brown malt for 27% of the grist, in this porter I only used it for 12% of the grist. That's a huge decrease, yet the brown malt still seems overbearing.

Yet I've used 10% brown malt in beer plenty of times and haven't really had a huge problem. 10% vs 12% is not a huge difference, so I'm reluctant to just point my finger at the brown malt.

Some of the flaws aren't due to the recipe. I ran into problems racking the wort into fermenters and racking the beer into kegs which explain some of the cloudiness and floating bits. However, the recipe certainly needs adjusting. I think there are three changes that I would make next time:

1. Drop the biscuit malt, replace with a mix of base grain, pale chocolate -- for color and flavor -- and crystal -- for sweetness and color.
2. Change the yeast, mostly just to try a new yeast.
3. Drop the IBUs slightly so that the hop bitterness and the roastiness don't compete.

That should hopefully give me a beer that's got a healthy dark-brown color with a nice balance of sweet, roast and hops. I won't find out for a while, though. I probably won't get a chance to revisit this recipe until July at the earliest.

Another iteration of my low-gravity American Pale (a style I call American Session Pale), and it couldn't have been a better day to brew. 60 and sunny, a perfect early spring day in Minnesota.

Recipe

• Recipe, Hopville
• Recipe, Fancy

After my last attempt I dropped the idea of cloning Bitter American, so for this version of the recipe I'm trying some new ingredients and approaches. I've dropped the basic 2-row and replaced it with a pale malt from Canadian Malting, a malt that I've liked in several previous batches. I threw in a bit of carapils in order to fill out the body and I upped the amount of Caramel 10 in order to provide a little more sweetness.

On the hops side, I decided to take advantage of my stockpile of the currently-scarce Simcoe and Amarillo hops. I was lucky enough to buy a bunch of these varieties before my local store sold out. I thought an even mix of Simco and Amarillo (aka Simarillo) would be a perfect time to try a hop stand. I tried an abbreviated version of this technique when brewing a porter, but for this hoppy beer I decided to try the full 80-minute stand. With this approach I hop to get a huge amount of hop aroma without having to dry hop.

Brewing

Other than some confusion over the beer's pre-boil gravity and volume, the day was largely uneventful. The addition of a 80-minute hop stand lengthened the brew day by only a half an hour, because I was able to use the hop stand time to do nearly all of the post-brewing cleanup.

When I started playing with water chemistry I bought myself a scale with 0.1 gram precision. It's perfect for measuring any small addition, such as potassium metabisulfite, yeast nutrient and hops. With hops I've found that the weight on the package might not be what you actually get. So it's good to weigh out your hops!

My homebrew store carries pre-packaged hops from Hopunion in 1oz and 1lb sizes. I have a lot of recipes that call for an even ounce of hops, so I normally just open up the hop package and dump in the whole thing. But over the past few batches I've weighed out the hops and found that some 1oz bags of hops contain an extra 3-4 grams of hops. For a late hop addition that's no big deal. But if your bittering addition is off by 3-4 grams you could be adding 10 IBU to your beer (more or less, it depends on the hops and the recipe, obviously).

So pick up a scale designed for 0.1 or 0.01 gram increments and measure those hops!

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.