July 2023 meeting recap
Our July 2023 meeting was filled with excitiment of the club’s recent success at the National Homebrewer’s Competition!
We are proud and excited to announce that the New York City Homebrewers Guild has been awarded the 2023 Gambrinus Award! This prestigious award is awarded annually at Homebrew Con to the club with the best ratio of awards to entries in the final round competition. This year, we had two of our brewer’s featured, Alex Cigan and Joshua Cotton. Both are prior presidents of the Guild.
Alex won second place with his British Golden Ale.
Notes on his entry below:
British Golden Ale is a refreshing, drinkable style of beer that modern British brewers developed to compete with mass-marketed lagers, and is unusual among British ales in that it can contain new-world hops.
"Bit Gold, Innit?" was brewed with a grist containing pale malt, Golden Promise, and biscuit malt; bittering, flavor, and aroma additions of Pacifica and Bravo hops, and US-05 ale yeast.
Joshua had three beers in the competition, a dark mild, specialty cider, and Berliner weisse. Notes on his entries below:
Dark Mild - "Healing in His Wing" - 35, Very Good
This beer did not advance past the first round. The judges feedback has been pretty consistent from the NHC and regional judges. I really love a roasty ~3% abv beer, but perhaps my tastes are too roasty for the style. Maybe I'll slam it with crystal malts for a future iteration.
C2F - Specialty Cider - "Au Naturel" - 39, Excellent
This cider made it to the Mini B.O.S. All of my ciders are bone dry and incredibly sparking, tannic, and acidic; and I'm very proud of this one (100% natural fermentation with some aging in used oak). The judges often comment that there is too much crabapple character (fair, if you don't like your palate blown out, peasant) and it's too acidic (lame). I'm just not going for a super well-balanced cider as much as a challenge to what we normally consider drinkable cider. I'll keep doing what I'm doing and maybe I'll win when the judge stars align. They definitely don't always, as this one got a 14, Fair in Homebrew Alley.
23A - Berliner Weisse - "3 Day Berliner" - 36.5, Good
This beer placed 2nd in the category of 162 entries. Honestly, I think I'm a bit lucky that this placed, as my judges didn't love it as much as (it seems) the BOS judges. I really pushed the production of this one to the last minute, so it was low carbed (a killer for this style), and the judges noticed that. Also, I keep this beer clean by mashing with 20%+ acidulated malt and then adding an acid blend to bring down the pH the rest of the way. Overall, this beer can beer a crowd pleaser at 3% and is super easy to make.
Congratulations to our awardees!
See you in August!