Ireland’s Best Kit Brewers

BeerSmith, one of the competition sponsors who designs software for home brewers, offered five copies of its software to show its support for home brewing. We guessed that many of the all grain/extract brewers were already using software of some form to assist them and so it seemed reasonable to offer the licences to the 5 best scoring ‘kit’ beers in the competition. These participants would be seen as being close to migrating to a brewing method which would require the use of software to assist them.

Adrian Rowe is officially receiving his BeerSmith voucher later next month and his ‘Wex pils’ entry scored an impressive 41 in the recent NHC brewing competition.  It consisted of a Bohemian pilsner hacked kit topped up with 3 separate 5L water additions. The first addition was boiled with 300g of Magnum, the second was boiled with 300g of Target and the third was boiled with 200g of Goldings. The beer was then dry hopped with 200g of target and 100g of Goldings which in total adds to a monster 1.1kg of hops! His beer scored a bronze medal in category  6.

LordEoin came in a close second with 40 points for his orange and coriander Witbier. His brew was put together with a combination of 1kg of wheat DME and 1 can of Coopers Wheat Beer. He first steeped 300g of carapils for 30 minutes which was then strained and brought to the boil. He then added the rind from 2 Valencia oranges and half a teaspoon of ground coriander seed to the boil for 10 minutes.  This mixture was then strained into the fermenter and the kit/wheat was then added and swirled until dissolved. The mixture was then topped up to 23L and fermented warm at 23 degrees C for one week with WB06 yeast. It was fermented for the second week at 17degrees C.

 

Declan scored 38 points from brewing a beer quite similar to Sierra Nevada pale ale by hacking a Coopers Australian Pale ale kit. This beer was brewed as a demonstration at a group brew-day in the TOG hacker space in Dublin, part of TOG can be seen in the background of the subsequent presentation. He made the beer by simmering 20g of Cascade with 500g of DME in 2L of water for 10 minutes on the stove. This mixture was then strained into the fermenter along with another 500g of DME. The APA kit was then added with the residue rinsed out with some boiling water and then topped up to 21L. The wort was then fermented with US-05 with 25g of Cascade as dry hopping. Declan has plans to improve the recipe with some CaraMalt or crystal so we are hoping for a repeat performance in the pale ale category next year. 😀

Colin’s Northern English Brown Ale scored a 35 in the competition and was composed of a hacked Coopers Dark Ale kit. He initially steeped 300g of crystal and 100g of chocolate malt for 30 minutes in 2L of water at 65 degrees C. This was then added and strained into the fermenter to which the dark ale kit and 1kg of medium DME was added. Once the mixture was dissolved it was topped up to 22L and fermented using Nottingham yeast with an OG of 1.044.

Kevin’s American Pale Ale weighed in at 32 in the competition and was made up of a combination of Coopers Australian Pale Ale kit, 1kg of DME, 200g of crystal and 50g of Centennial hops. He first steeped the crystal in 2L of water and left it for 60 minutes. The grain was then removed and 1kg of DME was then added to this mixture and brought to the boil. 30g of hops were boiled for 10m and then 20g of hops were added in the last 5 minutes. This mixture was then added to the fermenter and mixed in with the Coopers kit. The fermenter was then topped up to 23L with cold water and 1 hydrated sachet of US-05 added to much though a wort with an OG of 1.042. Kevin recommends dry hopping the beer with a further 20g after the initial fermentation has subsided.

Thanks to all the brewers who either made their recipes available on the forums or provided them to me specifically for the purposes of this article. Congratulations to all involved and thanks again to BeerSmith for sponsoring us this year.