[aiptasia]

I decided to enter my Toe Tag IPA into a local beer club competition last night. It's essentially a tweaked version of Jamil Zainasheff's tenth attempt at Stone Brewing's Arrogant Bastard; which you can find online. I added about a third of a pound more Special B to the grain bill and miscalculated the amount of chinook I had on hand, so I had to use an ounce of galena with the chinook in the first (bittering) stage. With five hops additions on this beer, I don't think anyone tasted the difference.

We have a vigorous local club, and the master BJCP judges dared each other to taste the difference between the Toe Tag and Arrogant Bastard. The only discernible differences they could fault me on was in the aroma (Stone pumps AB through a hop rocket before bottling, I need one of those). Color, taste, everything else was a match.

Out of dozens of great beers, the Toe Tag won this silver CASK medal. It lost gold to a Rare Vos clone that was completely dialed in. Next batch I do, i'll be sure to do a dry hop step just shortly before bottling. I'm very proud of this little beer.

[tagz]

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