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Brewcrafting: NHC 2016

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Part of the Brewcrafting series.

My future NHC medals.If you have not yet heard, the American Homebrewers Association (AHA) recently released the guidelines for the 2016 National Homebrew Competition (NHC). This will be the first year the competition will use the updated 2015 BJCP styles [PDF warning], so many homebrewers–especially myself–have been eagerly awaiting the release of these updated guidelines. The AHA mentioned last year the NHC 2016 competition will be a transition year and will only be using a subset of the new styles; it will be especially important to closely examine the competition guidelines and not the 2015 BJCP Guidelines, as there will be significant structural differences between the two. Fortunately, the relevant updated style guides have been included within the NHC 2016 guidelines, so stick with them and you will be A-OK.

Direct download

This is a good time for another installment of my Brewcrafting series, so take a look a the guidelines, read on, and let’s get ready for NHC 2016!

Bonus: take a look at the NHC 2015 Gold Medal winning recipes to help you plan your own!
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Neomexicanus Hop Review: HBC 438

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Part of my series on neomexicanus hops.

HBC 438 closeup
Think about all the hottest new hops you know about: Mosaic, Azacca, Hallertau Blanc, Equinox–scores more are bursting onto the scene every year. Did you know that your favorite new hop is one of a small handful of its sisters that started its journey over a decade ago? The path to naming and releasing a hop is a long and highly selective process in which vary few varieties make it past even the first year of cultivation.

Hop Breeding Flow Chart

Hop Breeding Flow Chart – Credit Jason Perrault

Breeders begin by crossing popular existing varieties that they think will 1) produce interesting flavor characteristics and 2) possess the right agronomic traits (e.g. disease resistance, high yield, good storage, etc) and whittle the plants down year by year until only the fittest and most interesting make it into the market. In the latter stages of the process–years 8-10+–select breweries are given the opportunity to experiment and give feedback to the growers; Russian River Brewing famously rescued Simcoe from the brink and popularized it back when it was still an experimental hop variety. Finally, when the breeders, growers, and brewers all agree the variety is worthwhile the hop is given a name and released to the general market. In the mean time, the variety will unceremoniously be referred to by its codename (e.g. HBC 123, YCR 456, USDA 123456, etc).

Ron Mexico label

HBC 438 (aka Ron Mexico)
debuted at NHC 2015.

Those of us fortunate enough to attend the 2015 National Homebrewers Conference in San Diego this past year were treated to a special debut: a single-hop session IPA made by Russian River Brewing named Ron Mexico, the nickname of HBC 438, the experimental hop variety used to make it. The offspring of a Neomexicanus variety “Chuck’s Mexican” cultivated from the wild by Chuck Zimmermann and an unknown Lupulus father, HBC 438 is a rising superstar amongst the brewers who have had the rare opportunity to use it. Described as “tropical and stone fruit” with notes of “exceptionally unique herbal and mint” and possessing high levels of total oils and alpha acids, HBC 438 has taken an unusual path and jumped from a single hill to becoming commercially available much faster than most other varieties.

The biggest treat of all, however, was for those those in attendance of the seminar titled Brewing With Experimental Hops: A New Hop Variety Just For Homebrewers led by Jason Perrault, Karl Vanevenhoven, and Vinnie Cilurzo: a double whammy of 1) the breaking news that HBC 438 is going to be available to homebrewers exclusively starting this August/September and 2) that everyone in attendance was going to take some home with them! Through some finesse and friend-wrangling I managed to grab a total of five ounces of HBC 438, three of which I decided to dedicate to a single-ish hop review beer and two to blend into a multi-hop beer in the future.

Read on for details and my review.

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Brewcrafting: Prepping for BrewUnited

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BrewUnited Challenge logoAs I hope you are well aware, the 2015 BrewUnited Challenge is officially underway and I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the recipes I am going to brew. I have entered each of the three categories (Malty, Balanced, and Hoppy) in an effort to win the coveted BrewUnited Homebrew Hero award, which goes to the brewer(s) with the highest sum of entry scores. Word is that the Homebrew Hero will receive a cape as a reward, so the stakes are high! I thought this might also be a good time to discuss the different elements of the competition and examine how I go about building and brewing a recipe for a maybe continuing series I am calling “Brewcrafting.”

I know, I know, I can already hear you asking, “if you give away all your secrets will you not lose your advantage for the competition!?” Now, in both my personal an professional life I am of two core beliefs:

  1. Good ideas should be shared–a rising tide lifts all boats and all that.
  2. Good ideas are a dime a dozen–it is the execution of the idea that is important.

After all, if we remember Brulosopher’s Brewer’s Thumbprint xBmt we learned “that even when using the exact same ingredients, mash temp, and fermentation schedules, every brewer is going to produce a unique beer.” So really, if you glean enough from this to beat me in the competition you were probably going to beat me anyway. 🙂

Read on and let’s take a look!

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Extra Bestest Boy – ESB

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Secret Puppies

Check out the rest of my recipes in the index.
I have been doing a bad job writing up recipes recently, I let a few get by me while I worked on my big sour mash and lacto starter posts. In an effort to not lose momentum by agonizing about things left behind lets just leave those write-ups for the re-brews.

Speaking of re-brews, I have mentioned before I am a big fan English style pale ales; it is one of the few styles I revisit frequently as I attempt to perfect my technique. While not the hop bombs that American ales tend to be, English ales are packed with malt and yeast character that make them supremely drinkable, even better that they tend to be very sessionable. In my mind a good English style ale is dependable, full of character, and always by your side–just like a certain four-legged companion!

In honor of my (not so) Miniature Long-Haired Dachshund–Professor Snugglesworth–I have named my English pale ales after him: Good Boy Bitter, Bestest Boy Special Bitter, and Extra Bestest Boy ESB. When they are on tap I certainly want to fetch them again and again!

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Fiesta Cumpleaños – Vienna Lager

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Fiesta Cumpleaños wide

Check out the rest of my recipes in the index.

Anton Dreher

Anton Dreher

I have a curious attraction to Vienna Lagers, a style that all but disappeared off the face of the earth, save for a handful of breweries in Mexico. If you do not know the story, it goes a little something like this: in the early/mid 1800’s a fellow from Vienna by the name of Anton Dreher formalized the process we know today as lager brewing with a beer he called Märtzen. At the time the “pale” malts were significantly darker than they are today and produced a beer that was a coppery reddish-brown with a significant amount of toasty melanoidin character. Flash-forward to the late 1800’s and an Austrian immigrant to Mexico by the name of Santiago Graf (whom little is known, unfortunately) opened a brewery using the traditions he brought from home, with the addition of a small percentage of roasted malt to compensate for the alkaline water of the region. Thus, as Vienna-style lagers began to disappear in their homeland (favoring pale Pilsner style lagers), the style lived on in a handful of breweries in Mexico.

My own interest in Vienna Lagers is due to San Diego’s proximity to Mexico: we are too far from Europe to easily get any interesting European imports, so in the bad old days before craft beer took over there was only bland macro lagers or a handful of Mexican imports to choose from. If you were lucky, a restaurant or supermarket would have Negra Modelo available; a fine beer and just about the perfect pairing for Mexican food. To this day, if I go somewhere that has Negra Modelo on draught I will likely choose it 80% of the time. Now that San Diego is a craft beer mecca it has gotten harder and harder to find any Vienna-style lagers (or lagers in general), so I have decided to take matters into my own hands.

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