The long road to TBW 2012: Homebrew Competition

We pull the plain dark brown bottle from the fridge, its only distinguishing mark is a decorated bottle cap. The anticipation rises as we cradle the bottle fondly for a moment to recall its short lifetime. It has been five weeks in the making -- three in the primary, one of which was spent dry-hopping, and two conditioning within the bottle. Now is the moment of truth. The silence is broken by the satisfying hiss as the cap is pried off and we let out our breath.

The homebrew competition as part of Toronto Beer Week (TBW) first came to our attention last year. At the time we had just started our adventures in brewing with our first mead. Realizing that mead takes about a year to complete, and according to one person we'll need to wait five years before it becomes really great, we switched our focus to beer. The faster turn around time meant more experimentation and more confidence with the process. Although we didn't have any brews for TBW 2011, we made a resolution to work on a recipe to enter the following year.

We carefully pour out the freshly opened beer into the official tasting glass. As we raise it to our nose to take the initial whiff we recall our last two brews. We wanted to experiment and deviate from our methodological process of crafting our recipe. Neither of those brews satisfied on first sampling. One showed improvement after a month of conditioning, the other initially described as tasting like "battery acid" degraded a bit with age. Our current beer was the redeemer, a competition worthy brew. These thoughts dance in our mind as we bring our nose to the glass. We flare our nostrils and inhale deeply to give ourselves a bold first impression.

A couple of other homebrew competitions deadlines passed us by during the summer. We were either unprepared with a brew or too embarrassed with our current beers. Luckily, our decision to return back to our original recipe coincided with the announcement of the TBW homebrew competition. Without debate we organized our next brew day to craft the redeemer. A week later we found ourselves brewing again to mark the first anniversary of our fermenting adventures. We were cutting things close, so although we had high hopes for our anniversary brew, it would not be ready by the competition cut off.

A familiar explosion of stale yeast enters our nose and our heart sinks. The redeemer fell far short of its anticipation and the competition deadline was a day away. Defeated we take a timid sip from the glass, with our hope rising with the glass to our lips. Maybe the taste will come through and the aroma will fade over time. The beer splashes onto our tongue where we let it linger for a brief moment, aware of the slight prickling of carbonation, before gulping it down. We smack our lips and click our tongues as we concentrate on the flavours and evaluate the beer. A bitter slurry of stale yeast. Our last thread of hope has been cut.

We got over our disappointment and resolved to enter the beer into the competition and hopefully the comment cards will help improve our brews. We already had one improvement in mind: change up the yeast. We have been unhappy with the yeast we were using from its lack-luster performance in the airlock to the yeasty taste of the resulting beer. We had a good experience using a different yeast for our anniversary brew and we resolve to upgrade from the bargain basement brands of yeast. Our prospects looked good.

Defeated we log into the homebrew competition to enter our entry's details. Something catches our eye on the website and it seems a bit off. We read it again, and then once more. Each time our heart beats a bit faster and our spirits are lifted. The submission deadline is extended and not by only a few days but by more than a full month. That is enough time to brew again. Our minds start racing to crunch the numbers -- a week to ferment, dry hopping for a week and a half, condition for ten days. We can make it! Time to order better yeast and schedule the next brew day. The Phoenix will rise and our anticipation begins to swell again.

We are going to have two entries in this year's TBW homebrew competition: our anniversary raspberry wheat and our current graffiti alley that has a couple more days of dry hopping before we bottle it later this week. We are happy with our raspberry and our hopes are high for the graffiti alley. Both of them could use improvement and we look forward to the judges' comment cards. Things are looking up and its almost time to start thinking about TBW 2013.