2014 Competition Results - Dublin

[akavango]

Just curious? Why did some medals where not awarded? and why one category has gold and silver not awarded and another has bronze and silver not awarded. Surely if there was only one entry in the category, it should get the gold?

[irish_goat]

Just curious? Why did some medals where not awarded? and why one category has gold and silver not awarded and another has bronze and silver not awarded. Surely if there was only one entry in the category, it should get the gold?

You have to hit a certain points threshold I think. It prevents someone being the only entrant in a category and still getting gold even if their beer was muck.

[brian_c]

"by default" the sweetest phrase in the English language.

Sent from my Lumia using Tapatalk

[biertourist]

come on lads give me something to fight for in  2015

I will even help ye beat me! get down to our famous brew-days and steal some of our secrets....we are in it for the social and fun passtime and really enjoyed the past year and all the events we attended and  the dozens hosted...

I like your strategy: target the lager categories. 

Adam

[brenmurph]

Not quite sure how to respond to that
We have entered lagers, hybrids, ales and stout this year  some not judged yet ( english, Irish and scottish ales). We dont make IPA's or belgian beers.
We specialise in lagers as everyone knows and long conditioning of some ales including our spruce lager, lemon lager, Liqorice ale, beertroot ale, and 200 other beers in the past 2 years since joining the NHC. We also scored 46 (2nd highest) out of a large entry in the summer sessions with a lager and finished 2nd in the Lucan Bjcp with our California common ale. We work hard and share our knowledge to anyone who chooses to attend our numerous FREE events throughout the year.
Medals were not awarded if the beer didnt deserve it, all our medals were well- earned and perhaps there will be more reward for our hard work and determination in Cork

We would like to see a lot more people experimenting with beers that are a little unusual and the numbers of entries should follow.
lager outsells every other beer, Im surprised its not more popular among homebrewers, all it takes is a cheap second hand fridge some brewing skills and patience! We make very good lagers, all welcome to see how we do it
We strategicaly stayed away from the standard lagers, we could have flooded that category with our many coors clones and light european styles that we started brewing since Dodge's inspiration at he amazing camping / brewing weekend last year. Dodge won 4 medals last year and 5 this year, thats no fluke, he brews all the time and experiments all the time on his very basic eqiuipment as we do here in South Kildare We wanted to showcase some very difficult lagers (technically), which we brewed and succeeded with. An awful lot of work went into one of our beers from sourcing ingredients, to brewing, peer reviewing and conditioning to get kit just right on the night.
Once again and in line with previous quote if anyone wants to absorb some of knowlege especially lagers, get down to our brew days...we brew every week multiple times per week. this week we brewed an Altbier for a keg swap and a special Irish red for Ciderheads BJCP comp

[Tom]

Oi! I hope you're not belittling my silver medal in the lite lager category!

[brenmurph]

I certainly am not......read my txt tom...I clearly said medals were not awarded if the beer didnt deserve it.  Urs and the others certainly deserved it

We used a lot of our own home-grown hops for our beers as light lagers have very little hopping we didnt go down that road..we experimented with more hoppy styles

[Tom]

Too busy with the brasso to read the thread properly.

[Partridge9]

Took me a minute to get that Tom, because I'm reading it through the clouds ( on cloud 9)
Ok I'll get my coat !!

Loving that keg swap idea Bren, best idea since the wheel.

[donnchadhc]

brenmurph

I think the appropriate response to Adam's post is 

[Ciderhead]

Even though there was comments made about the number of medals available, if your beer was pish you didn't get one to maintain standards.

[Ciderhead]

Too busy with the brasso to read the thread properly.

I hope you are rubbing your medal

[Ciderhead]

Not quite sure how to respond to that
We have entered lagers, hybrids, ales and stout this year  some not judged yet ( english, Irish and scottish ales). We dont make IPA's or belgian beers.
We specialise in lagers as everyone knows and long conditioning of some ales including our spruce lager, lemon lager, Liqorice ale, beertroot ale, and 200 other beers in the past 2 years since joining the NHC. We also scored 46 (2nd highest) out of a large entry in the summer sessions with a lager and finished 2nd in the Lucan Bjcp with our California common ale. We work hard and share our knowledge to anyone who chooses to attend our numerous FREE events throughout the year.
Medals were not awarded if the beer didnt deserve it, all our medals were well- earned and perhaps there will be more reward for our hard work and determination in Cork

We would like to see a lot more people experimenting with beers that are a little unusual and the numbers of entries should follow.
lager outsells every other beer, Im surprised its not more popular among homebrewers, all it takes is a cheap second hand fridge some brewing skills and patience! We make very good lagers, all welcome to see how we do it
We strategicaly stayed away from the standard lagers, we could have flooded that category with our many coors clones and light european styles that we started brewing since Dodge's inspiration at he amazing camping / brewing weekend last year. Dodge won 4 medals last year and 5 this year, thats no fluke, he brews all the time and experiments all the time on his very basic eqiuipment as we do here in South Kildare We wanted to showcase some very difficult lagers (technically), which we brewed and succeeded with. An awful lot of work went into one of our beers from sourcing ingredients, to brewing, peer reviewing and conditioning to get kit just right on the night.
Once again and in line with previous quote if anyone wants to absorb some of knowlege especially lagers, get down to our brew days...we brew every week multiple times per week. this week we brewed an Altbier for a keg swap and a special Irish red for Ciderheads BJCP comp

Bren you are the model NHC brewer and and example for anybody starting out in all grain, you don't need to defend your success, you didn't do as well as expected last year and this years result came from focus and hard graft in development of recipes, hardware and tweeking in the last 12 months.

I can say that with first hand experience as you have been kind enough to give me samples every time I've dropped by and its pretty obvious you are really getting the hang of this homebrew lark.

Well done and congratulations  

[Tom]

Hear hear!

I'm looking forward to a road trip down to Kildare this summer, to Costa Del Bren & Kellie.

[brenmurph]

Dec osta del brenankellie is always open for visitors summer and winter... weekday and weekends.. we have three mashes done this week..mon, tue and today

We have just spent the evening trialling our new test batch setup. We produced our first IPA....just to silence any critics that may be out there that think we can only make lagers we have just moved into USA IPA teritory.

Because we brew so much we cant drink all the beer we make so we decided to make less ....so we probably have the smallest brewkit n the planet comprising.....
7 litre boiler
8 litre mash insulated tun
12 inch long slotted filter made with 1/2 inch copper and silicone hose compliments of someone in Bray direction
5 litre demijon

the hard bit is measuring 0.35gram of whirlfloc : any suggestions?

We acquired some of the best hops on the planet specially flown in for us from USA .... fresh as a daisy and top quality and we used a traditional floor malted ale malt. the recipe is secret till after the comp it is being entered in
All for a 5 litre brew... thats where we r at

wish us luck