Homebrew Competition Tomorrow

Northern Brewer General
1

Our club is hosting a homebrew competition tomorrow as part of the Fiesta Del Sol, a festival going on in central park in Hannibal MO. We have about twenty entries lined up, the format is for festival-goers to taste each entry and vote for their favorites. We also have three celebrity judges (Brian Brei from Goose island, a brewer from Cathedral Square Brewery in StL, and a couple others). We’ll have a prize for People’s favorite, and one for Celebrities’ Choice. $150 gift certs to the LHBS in Quincy IL, not too shabby!

After the contest (12-2), we are helping pour beer for the local distributor, Goose island products including Bourbon County stout, Sophie and Matilda. Theres four bands playing bluegrass, blues and folk, Ingrid Croce is here and a chef is serving some of her recipes including shortrib sliders. A farmers market will be set up as well, and theres an art fair downtown.

Anyway, the purpose of this event as far as our club is concerned, is to continue to bring craft beer to the attention of our little burgh, and to let people know what fine products our club members are churning out. We’ve got a great variety of styles, including a hard cider, a couple of gruits, Berlinner weisse, Flanders red, German pils, doppelbock, dunkelwiezen, BDS, amber, IPAs, wheat beers, Cali Common and ESB.

If you’re in the area, come on down! If you aren’t, be jealous!

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Hometown of Mark Twain! Sounds like a blast!

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Yeah the tourist season is in full swing already, we’re trying to attract a lot of locals though. Hoping for a crowd of 1000, I think they’ve sold over 500 tickets as of a couple days ago.

4

Homebrew contest and tasting went well, we introduced a lot of different styles to the public. Our experienced guests complimented the club on the quality of the beers that were in the contest. A DIPA won the Celebrities’ Choice, and a Root Beer Beer won the Popular contest. People really sucked down his root beer, there were folks wanting to buy it.

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Here are the results of the popular voting. One person looked at this and asked if this was a crowd of college girls. There were plenty of ladies, but it was also noon-2PM on a 90F day and sunny, and the group was largely uneducated about craft beer in general.

Dopplebock -36
German pils -14
Strawberry blonde -61
Ak stout -22
Cali brown-33
Munich dark wheat -14
Root beer gruit -114
American Amber ale -30
American wheat -12
Belgian stout -23
Berliner weisse -33
Bavarian hefe -11
Honey weisse -45
Hard cider -60
Belgian wit -14
Double IPA -37
Armageddon -36
Pale ale -23

PS the first three beers were mine. The strawberry blonde was made specifically for the festival, I figured it would do well and it did. I also had a Flanders red, a best bitter and an IPA dry-hopped with Sorachi Ace.