More Beer Stainless Brewer Competition Pt 1
Recently, my favorite on-line homebrew recourse, MoreBeer.com, announced their 3rd Annual Forum Competition. I did participate the first year, but not the second. Well, I guess it was fortunate that I did participate the first year for it made me eligible to participate in a separate invitation only competition they are holding too.
This year, More Beer is trying something new. It is the “Stainless Brewer Competition“. Here is what they have to say about it: ‘The second will be an invitational comp for the first and second place winners of last years comp. Since this is a new thing, we will be inviting first and second place winners from both previous years to brew a special beer, whose recipe is a secret. I will be contacting those people soon with details and info.’ It sounds like a neat idea to me, so I called up and ordered my “secret” kit.
I received my kit yesterday and was surprised. I knew it was going to be extract with specialty grains, pellet hops and dry yeast – but that’s about all. So when I open the box and that was about all that was in there I was surprised, no additional instructions, no other rules, and everything was more stripped down than I would have guessed. I have not weighed out the ingredients, but it appears to be about 6 lbs of light liquid malt extract, 1 lb of light colored specialty grains, 2 oz of hops Centennial and Cascade and US-56 dry yeast. Sounds like a super light dry West Coast Pale Ale to me.
Anyway, thinking there should have been more to it, I wrote to the guy in charge asking if the lack of information was correct. This is the reply I received: ‘You are not supposed to know what style you are brewing, that is correct. There should have been the basic extract instructions in there, but that is about it. You are not allowed to alter the recipe in any way. The only control you have is over the cleanliness of your brewing, and your fermentation temps.’ So, is this a competition where they are seeing who can brew the ‘cleanest’ beer? Great, I don’t think a week of being in the mail is going to help my entries.
More posts on this as I brew the beer, enter the competition and here the results over the next several months.