Good on you housecat. 1 beer, 1 placing, top stuff!

Well done housecat, congratulations!

Lots of competition in that class housecat so you should be very happy with that. Good on ya!

At the Brisbane Home Brewing Conference 2011 http://theqhc.com.au/we did a "System Wars" brew day a few weeks earlier, with the resulting beers to be judged at the Conference Lunch and voted on by the attendees. All brews made from identical ingredient packs, then fermented side by side at Bacchus Brewing in their cool room then filtered and kegged and served at the conference. The beer was a Fullers ESB style from Graham Wheeler's Real Ale book.

The four systems were:

• BIAB in a 40L electric urn (Moi )
  A 3 vessel system using pumps to transfer wort etc, gas powered kettle.
  A 20L Braumeister
  A "ghetto" system using plastic buckets, one fitted with an electric kettle element to make a "bucket of death" boiler.

Results:

BIAB won

Edit: it's all up on YouTube, here's me mashing in, just search around this one to view the full series: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb04sig4NkI

Edit edit: "Babbs" refers to the Brisbane Amateur Beer Brewers club I'm a member of, we ran the Systems War exercise for the conference.

I should point out that the brew length for the comp was specified at 20 litres. I normally brew 25 litres and on the day I took a stab at how much strike liquor I would need for such a length, and really screwed up, the resulting beer was a bit weaker than specified. However the judging was not by BJCP guides so it was just based on what brew the punters preferred to drink.

The interesting thing is that during the brewing, the gravities were accurately measured by refrac and as it turned out the BIAB was right up there with efficiencies compared to the other methods, came in about 74% - which gives the lie to the "BIAB is less efficient" mantra.

Great job Beachbum.
now how about posting the recipe you used for the rest of us to make and taste this fine beer?

Here 'tis:

The Recipe - Fullers ESB BYO British Real Ale (Wheeler)

Same ingredient pack for everyone - Brewday Target @ 75% Efficiency (20L @ 1052 OG)

4kg Maris Otter Pale Ale, 400g Dark Crystal
Single Infusion Temp Rest @ 66oC with Mash Out
14g Target, 7g Challenger, 7g Northdown @ 60min
10g East Kent Goldings & ½ Whirlfloc @ 10min
5g Gypsum in Mash, 2g Gypsum in Boil
Wy1968 London ESB Ale Yeast fermented @ 19oC
All beers No-chilled, pitched, fermented, cold conditioned and filtered together in temp controlled environment
Approx 32 IBUs & 5% ABV, 27 EBC

It turned out quite well, but I'm going to re brew this at full strength instead of watered down - love some of those Graham Wheeler recipes. Can you get that book in Israel? Available online from the Book Depository.
Fck, could kill for a Goldstar right now

well done BB it just gets better and better ....

BeachBum you win everything in Queensland. Have you got any friends left there?

Good on you

A little birdie told me that BobBrews received a first place for his black IPA at a recent comp.

Nice one Bob .

Confirming once again that BB is my hero.

Well done Bob. Here in Oz it's March, (edit, now that's a stupid statement, it's March everywhere ) however it's getting into Autumn and the golden brewing months and the comp season will be on us before we know it. Time to do some strategic planning, methinks. However I'll probably only do one lager. Last year I brewed lagers in February and March from the finest Bavarian and German ingredients, lagered them faithfully for months, and had judges who wouldn't know a good lager if it bit them in the bum mark them down as "not to style". After all that work So I'll be sticking to ales, with maybe a Vienna Lager from the sack I bought.

Fooball exec, movie poducer/editor/star,online interview pesonality, part time standup comic ,body builder ,and multple award winning homebrewer Holy crap Bob do you ever sleep?
Congratulations Bob I can see that you put all your energy and abilities into everything you take on.

Thanks all!

The funny thing is that the beer was an everyday beer that was not meant for competition. The people running the competition moved the annual date back from June to March 3rd. Our club must have missed the memo! Now, we did win the club trophy last year and it seems suspicious that we (missed the memo)??? We had our club judge the top 3 entries and we were going to submit them to the committee and were told sorry you missed the entry date!!!

I was pissed but it was on the website and our club was at fault for not reading the fine print! I like to enter the peoples choice event which accepts entries up to the last minute. I had only two weeks to do something so I sanitized 6 bottles and filled them from the tapper! The beer was recently put on tap and was not fully carbonated yet. I dropped in 4 carbtabs and hoped for the best. The day before the competition I checked a bottle and it re-carbonated perfectly!

The funny thing (to me) is that the recipe is OK as written but I tweaked it just to use up some grain that was near it's end! I put in some melanoiden and biscuit grain, I thought they would go good with the normal grains. I guess they did! I could have put that beer in about 3 categories and they would have won!

To make a long story short (too late!) I won and had 35 3V brewers standing with their mouths hanging open when I shouted "Brew in a bag with No chill wins again"! At least I think that is what I said? It probably was something like "I hope my fly is closed" when I ran up to get my 1st place medal!

The last 4 days I've been brewing 6 beers. I hope I'll finish tomorrow.
They are all for the first Homebrewer's Competition in Greece.
The beers are not all mine, I'll participate with 3 beers and 3 friends
of mine take part with 1 brew each.

I hope I win and if I go to Athens to be there in the competition,
I'll try to get a t-shirt with "BIAB rulez" logo :D

*Today I have a 1.07something IPA ,12 lt VIF and I have to mash twice
with my 10lt pot
After I complete the 6 beers I quite brewing

natept wrote:Entered my first competition (March Mashness) just looking for some feedback and took a silver medal in the English Ale category with a special bitter. Only got marked down for not having enough bitterness (which was my opinion as well - actually had the recipe set for rebrew in Beersmith with about 5 more IBUs before I got the scoresheets back). Another medal for BIAB.

Well done natept,,another great score for Biab

Please post your recipe under "Silver medal winning Special Bitter". I'd be interested to brew it myself.

Hi Kostass

I'm Glad Pat's let you off the leash and your finding the time to do some brewing. . You really need to get a bigger pot !!

Keep us up to date as to how you get on in the comp.

Yeasty

natept wrote:Entered my first competition (March Mashness) just looking for some feedback and took a silver medal in the English Ale category with a special bitter. Only got marked down for not having enough bitterness (which was my opinion as well - actually had the recipe set for rebrew in Beersmith with about 5 more IBUs before I got the scoresheets back). Another medal for BIAB.

Congratulations natept!

Good on you nat . That's great that your impressions were confirmed by the judges as well. Nice .

And a big congratulations to stevem01 for his second place prize in the Sail and Anchor Seven Seas comp here in Perth. The challenge was to brew the Seven Seas English ale that used to be brewed at the Sail and Anchor many years ago.

Top job Steve

This is good news/bad news competition success:

I entered my oaked scottish ale in 22C and scored a 38 and a 40, two scores I have not been able to get that high

Bad news is I never medalled, and a few of my peers jaws dropped when I showed them the sheets. Must have been a damn competitive category that particular time...

I'm entering it again in a week to another so gopefully I won't be denied again, lol

Tough comp! Where are have you been entering squared?

You will get them next time! Keep the beer coming and the trophies will follow!

Lylo wrote:Tough comp! Where are have you been entering squared?

Yeast wranglers and ALES

Our competition is in a week or so for the EHG, so I'm sending everything.

I mostly like the feedback I get because my best friends and my family give me endless compliment, but I know that they do it even if I'm not satisfied with the result, ya know?