Author: Ken Carman

A BJCP/AHA homebrew competition, here? Why: yes!!! And: why not?

The Topic: Small Competitions and the Best of Mississippi

 

Written by Ken Carman for Professorgoodales.net

Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

History was made.

Yes, there have been competitions, but the first officially sanctioned: BJCP and AHA competition in Mississippi was held November 19th, 2011 in Brandon, Mississippi: a suburb of Jackson. A competition in a state where homebrewing is still illegal. In fact I think Ole Miss. is one of the last states, if not the last.

ERG!

Usually I just do a more news reporter-like  competition story for The Professor when I cover my judging adventures, and save Brew Biz for reviews of brew businesses, interviews with important brewers  and other facets of the biz. But I feel this column covers two important topics in beer world.

1. That history was made: Mississippi has taken another important step in not just legitimizing homebrew with their first sanctioned competition, but blazing a path that hopefully will be taken many, many more times.

2. Most sanctioned competitions I have judged at are blow out affairs with hundreds to close to a thousand entries, over 6,000 bottles at one. (3 bottles were required.) This was a very small competition with just two categories and a small stipend was offered to judges who traveled to the competition… and as those of who judge often know: judges frequently travel many miles at their own expense. But I would never decide against judging at a competition because it is small. In fact I find small competitions are like small towns and small churches: more intimate, more focused on the reasons why people gather together. Less on the pub crawl, less on competing with other big towns, or the huge coffee hour after the church service.

Big, more often than not, is not better: it’s worse.

That doesn’t mean I’ll stop judging at competitions like Bluebonnet where they had close to 6,000 bottles. It does mean, as a boy who lived near New York City when I was real young, but also a boy who loved it when he moved and started going to a K-12 school with only 500 students, I think I instinctively knew that small competitions like this would have as much, or more, to offer than brew-extravaganzas.

Not unlike the difference between being just one bottle of Bud amongst many on a mega-brewer’s bottling line or all the bottles in one special one off batch. A judge in a small competition might feel like one very special brew amongst a very small number of one off batches for an up and coming nano-brewery.

A lot more care and consideration is give when you’re not one of many.

But the object of my reverie awaits. Let’s move on to the main event: the first sanctioned homebrew competition held near Jackson, Mississippi: Brandon, actually.

Competition Organizer Brad Lovejoy: yeah, that’s him, was a gracious host and a grand organizer. We spent a lot of time on the web planning; E-mailing back and forth, about how judging was to be handled in this small, two category, competition. We had 4 judges: split into two teams of two for American Pale: category 10: then a mini Best of Show (BOS), and three judges for Stouts: 13. They had breakfast both days and we stayed up stairs for the night. Wow! I’m not used to this much attention since I’m usually one judge amongst many.

See what I mean about big is not always better?

J.L. Thompson: yes, that’s his full name, folks, both judged and talked to the judges, and the stewards, before we started. He did a great job and had asked me to chime in with any advice. Except for a few minor things I didn’t have to say anything. I thought from the start J.L. had it handled, and handle it well he did.

Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”

Written by Ken Carman for Professorgoodales.net

Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

The Topic: Beer Statistics

Is it because I’m on the hunt for beer related stories to write about and pass on to the Professor that I find so many, or do they hunt me down? Not sure. Sometimes it seems to be both.

I was in the gym and wanted to read some of the on hand copies of Newsweek to distract myself from the grinding tasks of pumping legs, pulling at weights. On page 29 I found the October 10th “Bottoms Up” article that listed stats on beer consumption in America.

Bad news… and good news.

Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”

Written by Ken Carman for Professorgoodales.net

Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

One of the most difficult things regarding judging beer is not all the categories, or assessing the style vs. the beer you’re judging at the time. Not even sensitizing you palate to defects you sometimes have to suffer through, or beers you must give lower scores simply because they are so bloody out of category.

(I mean, really, how can you even think of submitting a Pale Ale in Oatmeal Stout category? But I’ve seen worse.)

The hardest thing is something no course in the exam, or study effort, can teach you. Think of it like CSI: putting a “team” together that works well and finds common ground.

I came to this realization last competition…
Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”

The Brewery
Bandwagon Brewpub
114 N. Cayuga St.
Ithaca, NY 14850
(607)319-0699

When I stopped by Bandwagon last year, for various reasons, I didn’t have time to interview Lars. I promised I would this year.

Here I am! Where’s the damn BEER?

Kidding.

Lars reminds me of my wife’s nephew. Damn, I’m getting old. As you can sort of see I graced his young presence with Ken’s spastic camera. So here’s a better picture: he’s on the left, in the brewery… only this time you can see him better. My other picture didn’t even come out. Erk!

The story he told was fascinating and weird. I find that’s not that unusual at any brewpub where I’ve interviewed the brewer: how he arrived at his brew-destination. Each brewer is so individual, for sure, but they almost always seem to come from different angles. Lars told me he started brewing around 16. You know why. The same reason far too many of us found some way to get beer, or whatever, back then. He started out with mead: admitted what they made was pretty bad. Graduated to cider: ditto. And then found his true calling by using some his father’s old brewing equipment. I know what you’re about to read seems such a cliche’, but it’s true: they were brewing in a bathtub.

His mother would ask questions like “how did my favorite pot get into the tub, Lars?” He claims his parents never knew. He made up something. And would use bleach on the tub to both sanitize and keep it nice and white. But before you claim his first beer must have been bad too due to the bleach, that’s not necessarily true. I used to sanitize with bleach as well. You rinse. And rinse. Then rinse again. In fact we both agreed, even if it’s a sanitizer they claim you don’t have to rinse, you rinse. He showed me the sterilizer they use now: Steramine.

Here are three claims I found regarding this compound…

“It is a quaternary ammonium compound, which is a very strong sanitizer.”

“Surfacine is a new, persistent antimicrobial agent that may be used on animate or inanimate surfaces. It incorporates a water-insoluble antimicrobial-drug compound (silver iodide) in a surface-immobilized coating…”

Quat(Quaternary Ammonium) is a great all purpose sanitizer, the only problem is its terrible on beer glasses. Quat will leave a coating behind or a film that prevents the glass from having a proper lacing effect. Steramine is a quat based product.

SOURCE

Not sure about the first. The web seemed to have little info on Sterasmine, which according to one brewer was also called “Surfacine.” If the second quote is true the “insoluble” bothers me, but since iodine is a common sterilizer in homebrewing and, as long as you rinse, you’re probably still good to go.

I haven’t noticed any defect specifically sterilizer-problem related at Bandwagon, except occasional head problems in some of the beer I had last year. Could be the problem the poster mentioned. Could have been something else.

Like Lars I just recommend rinse and rinse again. It doesn’t hurt and do you really want something in your beer the packaging claims you’re not supposed to get on your hands, like Star San? I don’t.

Lars found out about the job at Bandwagon from the brewers at Ithaca Brewing. He started out as a dishwasher (been the, done that, got sore feet standing forever on slippery surfaces doing that) …and now does 99% of the brewing.

Some of my favorite past brewing included a chocolate raspberry stout, double IPA (before the hops shortage) a pumpkin ale with local pumpkins, a Belgian tripel called the ‘Ella Fitzgerald’ A local peach wheat ale, peanut butter chocolate stout, and a beer called the ‘Royal Hoppiness’ I used hops, mostly noble, everywhere but the boil. mash, sparge water, first wort, and dry hopping, and a watermelon wheat.
– Right now I am mostly trying to improve consistency for distribution purposes. I would like to try a sour mash beer, a local barley beer, a stein beer, and I would like to incorporate real bananas into a beer somehow.

Continue reading “Brewer Profile: Lars Mudrak- Bandwagon”

Without intent, I have collected well over 1,000 beer bottles since the early 70s. When something finally had to be done about the cheap paneling in this old modular, I had a choice. Tear down the walls while, oh, so carefully, replacing the often rotted 1X3s. Or: cover them with…

…The Bottle Collection.

Written by Ken Carman

The Professor asked me to “provide content,” due to the fact he flew into the middle of nowhere and his Hughes Net immediately died. So apologies for a lack of a picture on this post. I have both the “soft serve:” pre-growler Newman Brewing container and the later bottled version, which I’m pretty sure was towards the end and vended out to Matt Brewing. You know: “Saranac.” That’s a good thing: Fred has his brewers brew to recipe, unlike some schlocky brewers that brew for others.

No names mentioned.

We met Bill Newman in the early 80s in Albany at his industrial area, somewhat run down part of town brewery. Run down enough that we were nervous about parking our new Subaru there. I remember him telling me he really hadn’t been into beer… he just saw it as a trend. Surprising for the time: this didn’t translate into “bad,” like it usually does. I do remember an Amber which, for the time, was a nice, clean, ale with few hops at all… though a bit more hoppy than the few Ambers out there. For the time that was actually it was a tad aggressive. Similar to Abita Amber; only better.

Somewhere I have a picture of him stirring the grist at the brewery and I will try to remember to post it after I get home in a week. And I will have the Professor post a neat historical take on Bill and his brewery after this edition of “From the Bottle Collection.”

Thanks to the Professor for the picture!

Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

Brew Biz is a column written by Ken Carman for Professor Goodales

The Topic: Beer Priests vs. Gurus of Greed

I have never done this before: exported one of my beer columns over to my political/social commentary column that I have written since 1972: Inspection. But this topic is that important.

I am a BJCP beer judge, homebrewer and fan of fine beer; since about the same year: 72. Before that I thought all beer was Bud or Miller-like, not that there’s much of a dif between the two. One uses corn as an adjunct, one uses rice. And, in fact, in America: especially on the east coast, that’s all there mostly was… with few exceptions: Bud and Miller products. The indes, like in the auto industry before that, were dying, going or gone. And the Adirondacks, where I mostly did my drinking, were not home to oddities like Prior Double Dark or the Bock beer that did exist, un-Bock-like that most of it was.

Now, in addition to what I’ve already mentioned, I run two beer tastings in Beaver River Station, NY that involve beer education. I pay for the beer, the ads I run and until last year I didn’t even put out a donation bucket. And, to add to all this, I supply a good portion of the beer for Big Bob’s Barleywine Bash in Pensacola Beach; weekend after Labor day, every year. Again: out of pocket.

To make it worse my wife and I travel as far as Albany, NY and Charlotte, NC to judge beer in BJCP competitions.

Last year Frank, down the lake, at the Stillwater shop asked me, “Why? What’s in it for you? I try to make everything I do make money: feed back into the business.”

This year I was asked the same, basic, question by Barry who now owns the Beaver River Station Hotel: site of the Labor Day weekend beer tasting.

It dawned on me then that this meme’: that everything, every decision, anything we do in life, must make money or be advantageous to the doer, is perhaps part of the problem with attitudes these days. Just like everything must agree with a certain take on life, politics or faith, or “that means war:” sometimes literally. And I was once part of the problem when it came to having that attitude in my own chosen career.
Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”