Iron Brew Competition

[OpenSights]

Next Saturday my club and LHBS is having a compilation called Iron Brew. Similar to the food network show we are given a surprise ingredient. The strangest I’ve heard of is basil.

Anyhow it’s team based, max of 4 per team. $35 for “reasonable” supplies per team. One 5 gallon batch which will be judged a month later at the next club meeting.

I’m teaming up with a fellow jarhead, he’s from the Vietnam era and I was in during the Clinton era, just before 9/11. We are brothers, so hit it off good when we joined the club at the same time.

Both of us are newbies and extract brewers on the verge of AG. However I’ve had support from the club wanting an extract brewer to win.

Depending on what the surprise ingredient is I plan on a fairly short boil unless I need some bittering hops. Start with appropriate DME and add LME about 15 minuets before end. Yeast to be determined on the day of.

This will be a fun experiment. Other than cider, I’ve never made my own brew not from a kit.

Wish me luck.

 

[JimRausch]

Based on your pic, better hope the secret ingredient isn't squirrel balls........
Bon Chance!

 

[OpenSights]

I’m just hoping they don’t call black licorice! I hate that stuff...

 

[OpenSights]

Turned out to be carrots. My team didn’t want to go too dark so we went with an amber. Carrot cake amber. Other then the grain and hops, we added two cinnamon sticks, sweet orange peel and lactose. Only four teams, one porter, our amber one blond and I believe the last one was a saison. I’m glad there aren’t doubles. Seven weeks till judgement day. Carrot flavor is required to win.

 

[PRM]

How did you incorporate the carrot into the brew?

 

[OpenSights]

We mashed with some roasted shredded carrots. In secondary we’re going add cinnamon and nutmeg soakin burbon along with carrot juice from roasted carrots, adjust to taste.

I guess a few years ago the ingredient was mushroom. Apparently nobody made a beer that you would want to drink.

The night before the competition my buddy called and said he couldn’t make it as he was leaving town after word of his daughter having her baby. So I joined another team, which was a good thing. The three other guys are very experienced.

 

[PRM]

Cool, can't wait to hear how it comes out.

 

[Rob2010SS]

Slightly off topic, but I recently had a sour that was made with beets. Beets are probably the third weirdest ingredient in beer I've had. The first is pickle juice and second is now carrots. Good luck. Curious to hear how it comes out.

 

[OpenSights]

Slightly off topic, but I recently had a sour that was made with beets. Beets are probably the third weirdest ingredient in beer I've had. The first is pickle juice and second is now carrots. Good luck. Curious to hear how it comes out.

Honestly, I don’t think beets are a bad idea! Here in Michigan there are sugar beet farms, never tried one, so don’t know if they taste like normal beets. They make sugar out of them.

Now pickle juice beer! I like pickles, dill pickle potato chips, but beer?!!! I’d try it, but a very small sample!

 

[OpenSights]

I’ll be sure to give a review of all four styles.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

There's a brewery here in Virginia that uses beets in one of their beers. The beer is pretty popular although I've never tried it

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/47762/275927/

 

[Rob2010SS]

Honestly, I don’t think beets are a bad idea! Here in Michigan there are sugar beet farms, never tried one, so don’t know if they taste like normal beets. They make sugar out of them.

Now pickle juice beer! I like pickles, dill pickle potato chips, but beer?!!! I’d try it, but a very small sample!

Yeah, the beer I had was a beet sour. I forget who made it. It was at a bottle share at one of the local breweries around here. It was actually good. I enjoyed it. That being said, I still think beets are a weird ingredient lol.

 

[PRM]

Carrots actually make a lot of sense and would work really well in a spiced beer like a Belgian witbier not to mention carrot wine is apparently good although I've never made or had any. I can see the carrots adding a subtle sweetness to the beer.

We usually leave the carrots in the ground until after the ground freezes. Since it seems to help concentrate the flavor and sweetness.

 

[OpenSights]

Carrots actually make a lot of sense and would work really well in a spiced beer like a Belgian witbier not to mention carrot wine is apparently good although I've never made or had any. I can see the carrots adding a subtle sweetness to the beer.

We usually leave the carrots in the ground until after the ground freezes. Since it seems to help concentrate the flavor and sweetness.

That’s a great idea! I’ll suggest this to my team.

 

[PRM]

FWIW, I found a could of mobcraft recipes that involve carrot. The Rabbit one must have been pretty decent since it won their monthly recipe competition.

https://www.mobcraftbeer.com/recipes/rabbits-bounty-carrot-cake-ale-5
https://www.mobcraftbeer.com/recipes/thallic-baldwin

 

[OpenSights]

Had a meeting with my team tonight, three out of 4 anyway. Roasted carrots were added to secondary. Kegged and force carbed yesterday.

Not a bad tasting beer, just one of those, “Yeah, I’ll have a taste! Not bad, no I probably won’t finish a pint.” The carrot flavor is very hard to showcase!

All we need to provide is a growler so we’re going to tweak just that. Per half cup additions are one drop of vanilla and two ml fresh organic carrot juice. Going to double the carbonation which will hopefully wake the spices and flavors up.

Submissions are due Tuesday. Winner will be announced at next month’s meeting, second Tuesday of the month.

On a side note... our club has a whiskey barrel full of beer. It’s a sour. The rules are you show up with 1 gallon, 3 gallons, 5.. whatever and take the same amount you brought.

I’m not a fan of sours, but I brought home a sample for Mrs. OpenSights. She really liked it! Maybe I’ll do two batches of ginger IPA.

 

[OpenSights]

Well we had our meeting tonight. Other than iron brew sampling the theam was mead and cider.

We sampled each teams beer before hearing who won. The saison wasn’t very good, drinkable for sure, but other than over carbed nothing special. The team that did the blond added ginger, I honestly would have voted for theirs, but I’m partial to ginger. The other team, reining champion team did the porter. I tasted the most carrot flavor while sipping, but when they mentioned the carrot juice they added kinda had a tomato juice flavor and you took a normal size sip, yeah, you could taste tomato.

My team won! Iron brew has now hit the eight year mark and it’s the second time my team has won.

The judges this year comprised of 4 head brewers from local breweries (we have a ton of small breweries around) and our LHBS manager.

Here’s a picture of our beer, cream brown ale, lactose, cinnamon, vanilla extract, obviously carrot.... seems like I’m forgetting one ingredient....

Got 3/4 of a growler for myself. Wife says she doesn’t like it, so it’s all mine! I could drink a glass, but wouldn’t really order a second at a brewery.... but that’s the point of the competition. The least bad beer.

For the next Firebrew, where we brew 100-200 gallons I think I’m going to step up and try to be brewmaster. Basically don’t drink, monitor temps, direct helpers and follow the schedule.