January Forum Comp - American Pale Ales

[MartinHaworth]

Had one of my DIPAs last night and the hop aroma is almost completely gone. I'm actually amazed at how fast it went, I thought I might be getting a cold or something. I'll have to time my next one to be at prime hoppiness for competition.

This is interesting. I've been thinking about developing a more deliberate approach to preparing for competitions. There are many, many beers that improve with age (to a point), whilst others (like IPAs and heffeweissen) that peak much sooner.

Too often, if I have 22Lt in my FV this really equates to a full corny of clean beer - and I don't bottle any.

I think that I need to have the discipline of bottling 10-15 of every brew. Over time this should mean that I always have available beers to easily offer, and across a range of styles.

Dunno if it might be worth having a thread on competition approaches? split off from here? What do you think @Chippy_Tea

MArtin

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

Having come joint first in this, my first ever competition, I was kindly sent a large pack of Summit hops and two packs of S-04 yeast as a prize. I use S-04 often but I’d never used Summit before. I looked for some recipes on BF and worked up something with the grain I had available to make use of the hops. On 7th March I knocked up a BIAB Summit pale ale. This was kegged on 21st March and, although needs a bit more time to clear, I had my first pint tonight and was very pleasantly surprised. Thanks @Ghillie for organising and judging this completion, and for my prize. Very much appreciated. Cheers.