My first competition

Locally there was a "British Ales" competition on yesterday. I decided a few weeks back to take the Landlord clone I recently brewed off tap, and preserved the last 2 litres in order to enter it. At the last minute I also decided to enter the Riggwelter clone - more of that anon.

The landlord clone was not as well received as I might have hoped. It came 6th in the category, and the scores were not terrible, but I was disappointed with the comments it received. I entered it as a "best bitter", correct i think considering the commercial beer I was cloning has twice won that category at the GBBF. Of the three judges, one felt it was over balanced towards malt, one towards hops, and one thought it was well balanced. Two out of three judges felt it was too light in colour for the style. All judges picked up an astringent/sour finish on the beer. I think this is just due to the age of the beer in the keg (11 weeks), though the judges suggested stressed yeast and oversparging as possible causes. I would certainly rule out oversparging, but it is possible that the yeast may have been acting up a bit, as it was a repitch of WY1469 which caused me some issues with the next beer it was pitched into. I can detect the flavour they are describing, and I'm pretty sure it has only developed in the last few weeks, so I'm putting it down to age.

 I feel it was worth entering, as it will certainly help me to improve this beer next time around. Being marked down in most of the categories (appearance, flavour etc) I can live with, but in the "Overall Impression" category, I expected to do better than 6.5, 6 and 7. In saying that the judges scored it within a 2 point window of each other, so I'll just have to take my medcine.

I made a serious error with my other entry. After considering at length which style to enter it as, I decided upon "Northern English Brown". Unfortunately a brain fart during the online entry process caused me to select "ESB". A sample comment for this one: "A well brewed beer with no obvious flaws, but completely out of style". Again there was a divergence of opinion on some aspects of this beer, with one judge describing it as thin and watery, while the others called it full bodied and creamy. I would certainly agree with the latter. Some offline feedback is that it would have done well as a northern brown, lesson learned I suppose.

Anyway, that's competitions done with for a while.