nebben
Well-Known Member
I've got two pilsners, some remnants of an IPA, and recently a new steamer all in kegs. My current bottled beers are either commercial, or 1+ year homebrews of early personal homebrewing history.
My conundrum is this-
I had just been talking to a friend yesterday about this same thing with his cider. He wanted to enter his berry cider into the Fruit Cider category, but while reading about that category, I saw that it only allows dry and semi-sweet, but not full sweet. I recalled that I read about actual terminal gravity thresholds that mark when something is sweet, semi-sweet, and dry. His appeared to be sweet, so I suggested that it wont fall into the fruit cider category as described and perhaps should be moved to a different category. Now, I'm in the same boat with my OG being too high.
Any ideas about judges flexibility with style guidelines in AHBA events? Would this be best to just find an alternative category that the beer's numbers fall into?
My conundrum is this-
- The IPA is based on someone else's recipe, so even though since I personally brewed it, I feel that if someone compliments the flavor combination of hops/malt, I can't take full credit since I just put them together and didn't screw it up.
- The newly kegged (about 4 weeks ago) steamer tastes great, to me at least. However, as I was formulating the recipe, I failed to take into account that my AG efficiency has been ~80-85% lately. The recipe assumed 75% efficiency, so while loosely considering style guidelines, I let it pass and got an OG of 1.058. I didn't worry about it since the style is "close" at 1.054 maximum OG.
- The pilsners taste fine to me, but they don't produce a good head, or much of one at all. They are also slightly on the low-side of optimal carbonation levels.
I had just been talking to a friend yesterday about this same thing with his cider. He wanted to enter his berry cider into the Fruit Cider category, but while reading about that category, I saw that it only allows dry and semi-sweet, but not full sweet. I recalled that I read about actual terminal gravity thresholds that mark when something is sweet, semi-sweet, and dry. His appeared to be sweet, so I suggested that it wont fall into the fruit cider category as described and perhaps should be moved to a different category. Now, I'm in the same boat with my OG being too high.
Any ideas about judges flexibility with style guidelines in AHBA events? Would this be best to just find an alternative category that the beer's numbers fall into?