Award Winning Homebrew Recipes on Popular Mechanics

[chrispykid]

Hey guys,

I've been a regular lurker and an intermittent poster here for a few years now and have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to do some freelance beer/homebrew writing for major publications from time to time. I do write beer reviews for Mens Journal and homebrewing and DIY projects for Popular Mechanics. Several of these features have involved collaborating with (and crediting) members of this forum for their recipes and ideas so I hope that it's ok with the moderators that I'm using this space to schill for another project I just put together.

For this piece I collected 10 recipes that have won awards at BJCP competitions over the past couple years. All the recipes came from members of my local club, the New York City Homebrewers Guild. Each recipe includes some notes given by the judges and there are some really great tips from the brewers in there as well.

Anyway I thought some of you guys might be interested: http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/skills/10-award-winning-home-brew-recipes?click=pp#slide-1

 

[rhamilton]

6 different hops in that IPA...... way different than my IPA philosophy.

But then again, 1st place @ NHC vs nothing from me

 

[Schumed]

very cool....

 

[mtyquinn]

i might try that ESB recipe. Never used Carahell before.

 

[Revvy]

Nice, thanks for posting!!

 

[chrispykid]

6 different hops in that IPA...... way different than my IPA philosophy.

But then again, 1st place @ NHC vs nothing from me

RHamilton, there's lots to be said for keeping hop bills simple. Most of my IPA recipes usually call for just one or two varieties as well.

That having been said, Fritz is the go to guy for advice about IPA recipes and techniques in our club. That wasn't his first award by a long shot and he regularly shows up at our meetings with crazy hop bombs.

 

[HopSong]

Question.. you mention in the Glossary about adding malt extract at the beginning of the boil to adjust SG up. I've never made a gravity check at the beginning of the boil because it changes so much at the end.

Help clarify.. thanks.

 

[chrispykid]

Apologies for not tracking this thread more closely Hbgbill. I recommend measuring both pre and post boil gravity with every brew. The idea is to aim for a repeatable process. Ideally you're boil off rate should be constant from batch to batch and the difference between the pre-boil gravity and post boil gravity will always change by the same amount with each boil assuming boil time is the same. If you know that you missed a target gravity at the beginning of the boil it's pretty simple to correct by adding either water or DME to get you back on target.