Brew-off fun

A couple of months ago, when I was helping a buddy out with one of his batches, his wife proposed that she and my wife collaborate and that I collaborate with my buddy in a brew off, where each pair of us would put together a recipe, brew it and see who could brew the better beer. The style was IPA.

The tasting was last night and was a fun event. We had them over to our place with a couple of other friends as objective outsiders for the panel, cooked out, had some other home brews from my collection (all big hits, which is both good and bad, considering now my pipeline just shrank incredibly) and then did our tasting. My buddy and I won by a narrow margin, but I think in reality, to be all modern, new age, we all won, because we ended up with two awesome and somewhat different IPAs. Theirs had a harsher hop bite that lingered a bit long, and ours probably could have used a bigger hop punch (it came in at the low end of the IBU scale for the style), but was delicious, with just a hint of apricot aroma from too hot of a fermentation. All in all an awesome evening, and a great way to introduce some friends to home brew. And now my wife doesn't just tolerate the hobby, but actually wants to get into it a bit.

 

Maybe that's what my wife needs to get her fired up. She did a bang up job on her 1st (national home brewers day too!). Seemed to enjoy it,but doesn't have a burnin heart like many of us do about things we're passionate about.
Anyway,what y'all did sounds like gangs of fun. Maybe she needs to brew with another women who's into it? She says I'm an excellent teacher. So whatup,home girl???