True Brewer 2018 Results

True Brewer 2018 was the club’s first foray into running a BJCP sanctioned competition. This competition was coupled with a homebrew holiday swap (and with it, people’s choice voting). So even though our judging took place way back at the end of November at Royal City Brewing‘s Warehouse, we withheld results until our January meeting such that our participants could enjoy and vote on the various beers without being biased by the BJCP competition results. Topp’s Hops provided 10# of fresh 2018 BC grown hops to use as prizes for this competition.

This year, we allowed for both 24-bottle and 12-bottle levels of participation. We had 28 participants total between the two levels of participation, and we randomized the swaps such that everyone got a different set of 24 unique beers. I think this was a success and allowed more people to participate. I’m not aware of any other homebrew doing their holiday swaps in this manner.

We realized later that when it came to our People’s Choice voting, that there was a roughly factor of 2 advantage to the 24-bottle level participants (not quite a factor of 2 as 24-bottle level participants received back one of their own beers, and 12 bottle level participants did not). We applied a correction factor as such to level the playing field.

There was of course no particular advantage to any participant in the BJCP component: every participant who wanted in on this provided the standard two unlabelled bottles in addition the homebrew swap bottles. We accepted entries in all of the categories in the 2015 BJCP guidelines. Beers were then organized into 4 flights for our 8 judges based on what was received.

Our True Brewer, is the person who wins BOS. Their beer will be brewed at Rhythm and Brews. Our 2018 True Brewer is Mike Hurst! Mike has kindly made the recipe for his beer ‘Do the Smokey Pokey’ available to us here.

Special thanks to Royal City Brewing who provided a judging location, Topp’s Hops who provided prizes, Block 3 who provided a venue for our awards ceremony, and all of our beer judges and stewards. Without all of you this would not have been possible.

Full results below!

Hoppy Holidays (IPA’s)

1. Tyler Ferguson – Troppin’ Bombs
2. Chris Luederitz – Take Off IPA

Frosty’s Funk (Belgian, Funky)

1. Brian Packer – Bohemian Raspberry
2. Martin Williams – Blue Whale Pale Ale
3. Jonah Greenbaum-Shinder – Pucker Up Funk Sauce

Santa’s Specialties (Specialty)

1. Jeff Bueckert – Spooky Stout
2. Mike Ongena – Pumpkin Beer
3. Jonathan Klingenberg – Winter Warmer

Merry Maltiness (Malt Forward)

1. Mike Hurst – Do the Smokey Pokey
2. Kent Rundle – Lukenuf Vienna Lager

Best of Show

1. Mike Hurst – Do the Smokey Pokey (Pro Am with R&B)
2. Jeff Bueckert – Spooky Stout
3. Martin Williams – Blue Whale Pale Ale

People’s Choice