First brew ever = Best of Show!!!
 

My first brew ever just took best of show at Cincinnati Octobersbest over the weekend. I was so surprised, I thought my friend was joking when he called me to tell me. I entered it in two categories, 23 as an India Brown Ale, and 14 as an American IPA. The recipe was supposed to be a black IPA, but it came out brown instead of black so I just rolled with it and changed the name! Still can't believe it won out of 150 beers! I'd say this is a good start to my new favorite hobby. If it weren't for all the reading and research I had done on this site, it would not have happened! Thanks for making this community so helpful and informative! :rockin:

Sweet! Any details on the beer? AG or PM?

Here's the recipe:

9.9 lb Light LME
1 lb Crystal 60
1 lb Carafa III
2 oz. Chinook - 60 min.
2 oz. Simcoe - 10 min.
2 oz. Amarillo - 10 min.
1 oz. each Simcoe and Amarillo - Dry Hop in secondary for two weeks
Wyeast 1056


Not really sure how it came out brown instead of black, other than I added two cans (6.6 lb) of LME at the beginning of the boil, so maybe it caramelized and lightened it up a bit.

First off, CONGRATS! thats a great accomplishment that no one can take away from you...

Based on what I see in the recipe I would expect this beer to be brown and not black. Only one pound of 60L and a pound of carafa will definately darken the beer substantially, but using that along with nearly 10 lbs of light LME definitely insures a brown beer as opposed to a black beer.

anyway...don't listen to me; Ive never won best in show or even first place for that matter! so what do I know??

Congrats that is awesome! I might have to give your recipe a try. What is the batch size?

hehehe I love that. An extract with steep recipe! You CAN use extract to make GREAT beer!

But then again, the asterisk is that this was in Cincinnati... what do they know about beer?

I kid! I kid!

Batch size was 5 gallons, although after racking and such my final volume was 4 gallons. OG was 1.070, can't remember what the FG was right off the top of my head, but I'm thinking it was around 1.018.

I think if I ever try this again, I'm going to use dark extract instead of light. I also want to try to make a regular IPA with the same hopping schedule to see how that turns out! So much fun experimenting!

From what I hear, the best of show judging was done by national BJCP judges ( I have a friend who judged some categories, none that I entered, he filled me in), so the Cincinnati effect shouldn't have been too strong ;)

Whoa you lost a whole gallon from racking? How much water did you start your boil with?