Brülosophy Short & Shoddy inspired competition

[Dorst]

It's been a while since my last post on this forum; but still brewing ;-) I wanted to share a competition idea inspired by Brülosophy's Short & Shoddy series (link) in our homebrew group that is turning out to be great fun. Perhaps it can inspire some other homebrew groups that are looking for ideas?

The basic idea: Competition entries need to be brewed after our May meeting; and will be drank during our June meeting. So grain to glass within a month - which already puts the pressure on quite a bit.

We want to encourage short & shoddy corner cutting, so decided to award a multiplier to your competition score based on corners cut & self imposed difficulty. Anyone can brew a kveik hazy IPA or weizen within a month; but what about a lager or imperial beer?

These are the process criteria we will score the entries on:

• How difficult is it to brew this style within a month?
• How S&S was the mash?
• How S&S was the boil? (if any boil at all)
• How S&S was the fermentation? (compared to the normal fermentation time)
• And a bonus point system to award self imposed restrictions/shortcuts etc. This way we can award creative shortcuts but also even out the level the playing field a bit for those that can only bottle condition vs force carbonation etc.

If you cut all possible corners and brew a difficult style you get a 2x score multiplier. If you did not cut any corners and brewed a relatively simple style you get a 1x score multiplier.

Next part of the competition is to establish if the beer is any good, and we will use regular BJCP guidelines to score the beer. An entry must choose the style of entry from the BJCP guidelines (for example 3C. Czech Amber Lager) and will be scored by those standards by participants. 50 points are divided between Aroma, Appearance, Flavour, Mouthfeel, and Overall impressions, as is pretty standard.

S&S multiplier x BJCP score = final score.

By balancing process and quality we want to create an incentive to cut corners. But when you cut too many corners you might end up with a bad beer. To win this competition a participant will need to find the perfect balance between corner cutting and quality. Or you could just brew a great quality weizen and hope that all the corner cutting by others will lead to very poor beers - and still claim victory.

People have been super enthusiastic in our homebrew group with sharing photos. I'm super curious to taste all of these beers. It will be an interesting tasting indeed.

 

[Dorst]

Obviously I'm entering with a beer; behold my all corners cut German Pilsner:

• Normally I would use 100 percent pilsner malt for a German pilsner; but for this brew I added some dark bohemian malt (basically a darker Munich) to compensate for colour and add some flavour.
• I wanted to cut mash corners hard. I mashed in at 38 degrees; heated the water with malts to 64 degrees (10 minute mash) and heated to 78 degrees to mash-out (I use an electric kettle so this is relatively easy). To help with efficiency I added some gluco- amylase enzymes at the start of the mash. This micro-mash led to a 68 percent efficiency - which is not bad all things considered; OG 1.045
• The mash-out step was also my pasteurisation step. So I removed the maltpipe and kept the beer at 78C for a few minutes while it was leaking out. I did not bother to sparge.
  
  Why 78C?
  a) I wanted to prevent any DMS (VDK to DMS conversion happens above 80 degrees) in my beer,
  b) I wanted to denature the gluco amylase so I would not end with a FG of 1.000. I decided that my German Pilsner would be a no-boil beer.
• Since I was not boiling I needed a solution for my hops and bitterness. I added 40 grams of Saaz in my mash and I added 60 grams of Saaz in my fermenter when transfering from kettle to fermenter. To get to the right level of bitterness I bought some isomerised hop extract that I added post fermentation (12ml for about 30-35 IBU).
• I fermented with the recently released Lallemand Nova Lager (link). It's a bottom fermenting strain that can work at higher temperatures. I pitched double the recommended amount and fermented at 20 degrees. It was done in 4 days (). As a plus the yeast allowed biotransformation of hops so hopefully I would get some hop flavours. FG 1.008 for an ABV of 4.9 percent.
• The beer was then cool crashed and transfered to a keg with gelatine. I put the keg in my kegerator at 4 degrees to "lager". This way the beer will be "lagered" for about 3 weeks by the time competition comes - and relatively clear. I am using a floating dip tube for my kegs to help with beer clarity for the first time.

This is a picture of my beer out of the fermenter attached. When I sampled it I was surprised how neutral it ended up being. It has a bit grainy taste and the hops/bitterness did not really settle yet. I hope with some time "lagering" this will improve. Will let you know how this turns out :)

 

[AnimatedGIF]

It's been a while since my last post on this forum; but still brewing ;-) I wanted to share a competition idea inspired by Brülosophy's Short & Shoddy series (link) in our homebrew group that is turning out to be great fun. Perhaps it can inspire some other homebrew groups that are looking for ideas?

The basic idea: Competition entries need to be brewed after our May meeting; and will be drank during our June meeting. So grain to glass within a month - which already puts the pressure on quite a bit.

We want to encourage short & shoddy corner cutting, so decided to award a multiplier to your competition score based on corners cut & self imposed difficulty. Anyone can brew a kveik hazy IPA or weizen within a month; but what about a lager or imperial beer?

These are the process criteria we will score the entries on:

• How difficult is it to brew this style within a month?
• How S&S was the mash?
• How S&S was the boil? (if any boil at all)
• How S&S was the fermentation? (compared to the normal fermentation time)
• And a bonus point system to award self imposed restrictions/shortcuts etc. This way we can award creative shortcuts but also even out the level the playing field a bit for those that can only bottle condition vs force carbonation etc.

If you cut all possible corners and brew a difficult style you get a 2x score multiplier. If you did not cut any corners and brewed a relatively simple style you get a 1x score multiplier.

Next part of the competition is to establish if the beer is any good, and we will use regular BJCP guidelines to score the beer. An entry must choose the style of entry from the BJCP guidelines (for example 3C. Czech Amber Lager) and will be scored by those standards by participants. 50 points are divided between Aroma, Appearance, Flavour, Mouthfeel, and Overall impressions, as is pretty standard.

S&S multiplier x BJCP score = final score.

By balancing process and quality we want to create an incentive to cut corners. But when you cut too many corners you might end up with a bad beer. To win this competition a participant will need to find the perfect balance between corner cutting and quality. Or you could just brew a great quality weizen and hope that all the corner cutting by others will lead to very poor beers - and still claim victory.

People have been super enthusiastic in our homebrew group with sharing photos. I'm super curious to taste all of these beers. It will be an interesting tasting indeed.

Edit: I just realised you.said "grain to glass" so am I right to think it has to be All Grain? If so, my response is invalid


I like this idea. Perhaps because I have a 'S&S' process I have been using to brew quick beers when my stocks are low.
Most recently I did a lager in a couple of weeks. One of my usual shortcuts is doing a small (3ltr) boil for the hops in the stovetop then topping up with DME and cold water (rather like doing a kit beer). I've made a couple of cracking beers this way.
My main shortcuts (none of which are revolutionary):

1. Tap water
2. DME
3. Boil only 3L (top up with cold to elminate need to chill

 

[Dorst]

Edit: I just realised you.said "grain to glass" so am I right to think it has to be All Grain? If so, my response is invalid


I like this idea. Perhaps because I have a 'S&S' process I have been using to brew quick beers when my stocks are low.
Most recently I did a lager in a couple of weeks. One of my usual shortcuts is doing a small (3ltr) boil for the hops in the stovetop then topping up with DME and cold water (rather like doing a kit beer). I've made a couple of cracking beers this way.
My main shortcuts (none of which are revolutionary):

1. Tap water
2. DME
3. Boil only 3L (top up with cold to elminate need to chill

I know some people will be competing with (partial( DME beers. It's an interesting dilemma for judging; is it cutting mashing corners heavily, or is this par for the course when using DME?

 

[Dorst]

The competition takes place this Tuesday.

This afternoon I connected the keg to see how the beer is doing.

As you can see the beer is already quite clear. Colour is as expected. Relatively clean with some hops on the nose. Head retention is better than I expected - bright golden. There is something going on with the bitterness that I can't put my finger on - I think this is the isomerized hop extract. It has slightly above average malt for a beer of this style (no boil effect?).

All in all I think it turned out better than expected. Let's see how it does in the competition.