Strong Ale Wort Alert Article October 2010
The Club Only Competition for Strong Ales is on December 4, 2010 and entries are due November 30th. On Tuesday, we will select the club’s representative with the best chance of winning for the competition.

The Strong Ales category includes Old Ale, English Barleywine and American Barleywine. Each of these examples are sweet, malty and have a higher level of alcohol than several other English and American styles. All tend to age fairly well and develop complex flavors as they mature.

September VPs Corner - Wort Alert

Fall Beers
We changed over to fall last week and I thought it would be appropriate to discuss fall beers at the meeting. Back in March I covered Märzen and Oktoberfest as that is the traditional time to brew a Märzen . As September and October are traditional months to drink an Oktoberfest, the green group brought an Oktoberfest for everyone to try.

As I mentioned above, I’d like to cover the wide range of fall beers that brewers start looking to in the months where the temps start dropping and the days start getting shorter.

My goal in this document is to present a ‘Cliff’s Notes’ version of the Judging Mead section of the Mead Study Guide prepared by several members of the BJCP and available at this URL: http://www.bjcp.org/mead/Mead_Study.doc This document is very long and is intended to include all information needed to pass the BJCP Mead certification exam. Every bit of the following discussion is taken from this tome.

Judging mead differs from simply drinking mead as a judge is to compare his/her drink to idealized standards and discuss why it does and does not fit the profile.

March 2, 2010 - Munich Helles

So I really liked a Stoudt's Gold that I bought as part of a mixed case last time I visited my folks in Pennsylvania. This beer is a Munich Helles style lager and is the opposite of a Pilsner, it is malt accented and hops only help balance the malt. It is a somewhat sweet (from pilsner malt) malty light lager. Since I enjoyed the decoction process the week before, I decided to see if I could find some undermodified pilsner malt for a batch. While picking up Dredhop entries in Ft Collins, I found that they had a sack of undermodified bohemian pilsner malt.

February 20, 2010 - Munich Dunkel

On February 20th I brewed a Munich Dunkel using a decoction mash and 100% Munich Malt. This is the first decoction mash I've done since diving into the BJCP study cycle that has caused me to delve much deeper into brewing books.

This recipe consisted of 23lbs of grain, 78% Munich 10l and 22% Munich 25l. I dove into a decoction mash hoping to both maximize the extract from munich malt and get the 'beguiling maltiness" described in Greg Noonan's "New Brewing Lager Beer".