Yesterday was our fifth competition: Porter. It turned out to be our biggest competition yet: a grand total of 13 competing beers made it to the table. Needless to say we are very happy and proud for all the effort that was put into this competition and the interest around our brewgroup. I’d like to thank everyone that brewed and made it to our meeting to judge.
The goal of this competition was to brew a porter that fell into one of the four styles defined by the BJCP (https://www.bjcp.org/docs/2015_Guidelines_Beer.pdf)
Style: Porter
– 9C. Baltic Porter
– 13C. English Porter
– 20A. American Porter
– 27. Historical Beer (Pre-Prohibition Porter)
We ended up with mostly English Porters, some American Porters, and exactly one baltic – and one pre-prohibition porter(ish).
Another premiere was our new voting system. Pete brought us into the 21st century by automating some of the voting. So without further ado – let’s take a quick look at the beers.
Kiko entered a sour porter. Not exactly fitting any style guide but it was enjoyable still. Hope he keeps some bottles to see how this evolves.
Joost, Chantal, and Gijs – all first time attendees – brewed an orange porter. Again not fully in line with the style guide – but a very good effort. I could tell that they were very pleased with the result – and so were we.
Paul brought a porter he dubbed seven shades of brown. This was a great and complex beer befitting the big number of malts going into it. I also think this was his first competition beer not using kveik yeast 😉
Erwin made an American porter that was bitter and roasty yet smooth. It also had a pretty nice pearly foam.
Rob also brought an American porter that was even more on the bitter side. I heard he split the batch and added loads of coconut to the other half. It will be interesting to taste these side by side.
Pete brewed perhaps the most classic porter of them all. After two more bitter American porters it was great to sink into the malty sweetness and some fuggles. Yum!
Tom and Karl could not make it for the evening so we sampled their beers without them present. Tom made porter that he described as super crushable. And he was not lying – it was fresh, drinkable, and light. Karl went the other route and added a lot of interesting malts, cocoa nibs and some orange peel. It has a lot going on. We were happy that they dropped their beers and hope to see these great brewers in our next competitions
Rodrigo & Jorge made another classic tasting porter – nice! It was very smooth and easy drinking. It benefited from being aged a tiny bit longer than most other beers.
Janneke submitted a beer she had presented at an earlier meeting as a stout. But if it fits right into the style guide for American Porter it fits 😉 You could tell that age does wonders for dark beers – great effort!
Oscar brought his porter as well. Good roast and easy drinking. That’s already a lot of porters..
Sacha made a super interesting experimental beer. Instead of a baltic porter with a bottom fermenting yeast and long lagering he supercharged the beer with kveik. A very interesting beer that sparked some nice discussion on what a clean yeast can be.
Jeremy was also a first time attendee and he brought a porter with him. He said he was not really happy with the result but the brew showed a lot of promise. We hope to see you again in the future for more beers.
At the end of the evening the table was stacked with bottles. The entries were great in number and quality. It was nice to see that calculating the evaluations took a bit shorter than last time due to Pete’s clever google docs solution. We came to the following top 3:
– 3: Erwin
– 2: Paul
– 1: Pete
The average scores were a bit more evenly distributed than the last competitions. However, between the top four there was only a 1.6 point difference! We want to congratulate Pete on his well deserved victory! I think we all agreed that his porter was the best example of the style this evening.
Our next homebrew competition will take place in January. It will be another creative assignment. We’ve decided to go for a fruit & vegetable theme. The idea is to brew any beer that uses either one of these (or both). The website will soon be updated with more information. We hope to see an equal high number of entrees for this one.
Our next regular meeting is 12 November As always we are open to all. A lot of people that show interest in our events on Facebook never make it to our meetings. Even if you don’t brew beer, or are not very knowledgeable about beer you are very much welcome to join us.
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