Salvagebeer Homebrew Beer Blog

Apologies to all for not posting in a few days, I’ve been very busy with my day job - an unfortunate and necessary distraction from beer. All is well, though, and I just entered 2 brews each in the
Knickerbocker Battle of the Brews and the
New England Regional Homebrew Competition. While I’ve been brewing for years, and in my opinion, doing so quite well, I have not, until now, entered any of my beers into a BJCP-judged competition. I’m pretty excited about the competitions, as I really look forward to getting feedback from trained judges, and I’m hoping for some validation of my commitment to the hobby. I entered the smoked porter that I’ve been talking so much about, as well as a 2005 oaked cyser that is just coming into its own. In retrospect, I wish I’d entered my straight mead of the same vintage, as I believe it to be a better mead, but I put a lot of time and energy into the more complex cyser, and have been having a tough time admitting that the simpler batch is the better one of the two. It’s the cyser that really look forward to reading the judging sheets for. Of course, I put Colin’s name on the Smoked Porter, as well, and ended up accidentally crediting him with the cyser for the New England Regional comp. For that reason, I hope that they’re not too awfully tough on that entry, as I’d hate for him to be associated with a poorly-received entry that he didn’t actually make. I will share the judging sheets from both competitions, word-for-word, here when they come back to me - sometime next month, I expect.