Irish Red Head

With two beers on deck that both use the WYeast 1084 Irish Ale, an Irish Draught Ale and an Oatmeal Stout, I thought it would be a good time to do back-to-back brews so I can reuse the yeast. Common sense would say do the ale first, then the stout, so that's what I did. Brew session went pretty well, although the mash temps were up and down. First I was a bit low on the mash-in (only a few degrees), so I thought I'd run it a bit through the RIMS to bring it up. Overshot the mash temp by about 7 degrees, so I used a little cold water to bring it down. Then, due to my inattentiveness, the HLT and mash temps both dropped, so at the end of the 60 minute mash I was about 15 degrees low. Took about 20 minutes to bring the mash up to the 170 degree mash out. After the first runnings went into the boil, I batch sparged twice and stopped the runnings at 1.010. After all of this, I ended up with 5 gallons in the fermenter and an OG of 1.052, about 3 points above recipe OG. Odd thing is my efficiency ended up at 107%, which seems counterintuitive, but the mash points are theoretical, so I guess it is possible to be over 100%.

I have discovered a few flaws in my setup, which will require constant tweaking until I'm totally happy with it. Using a grant/hopback helped to prevent negative pressure on the grain bed, which may have contributed to my higher efficiency. In the past, I'd just pumped straight from the lauter tun and had come close to a stuck mash once. Down side is that you can't connect it directly to the lauter tun, because it makes it really hard to clean it if it's connected directly.

My fabulous wife also agreed to the purchase of a 13 cu ft freezer and Johnson Controls A419 external temperature controller for use as a lagering/kegerator cooler. My wife is the best! Pics will be posted soon. Next up: oatmeal stout.

The Envelope Please....

So, apparently there are some differing standards when it comes to judging homebrew competitions. I can understand that perhaps my cleaning and sanitation on one of the bottles I submitted wasn't perfect, but when I have to send three bottles and there is an obvious defect in the one you open (as was pointed out by the judges in the Florida competition) it would only seem right that since I'm submitting these to judging that I'd appreciate some feedback. Since the first had obvious flaws, there's no doubt in anyone's mind that my beer isn't going to the Best Of Show judging, so why not do me the courtesy of taking another stab at it? What's it going to take, another minute of your valuable time? True, I'm certain there were many other beers, but isn't this the whole point to entering these competitions? To get some educated and valuable feedback? After all, I did part with SIX valuable bottles of my own creation, and I did have to pay SEVEN dollars to have them judged. At least give me a fair shake.

I've asked around to other judges and have been told that what I got from the Florida judges was "a courtesy 13", which is given when there are obvious detectable flaws in the beer, such as a contamination. Well, if it's that obvious, try the others.

What I've also been told by other judges is that often a score in the 30s will win that style. Hmmm, 13 from Florida, 28 and 31 from California. You be the judge.