Had the 2nd to last of the BJCP study sessions last night at my place. The styles were the funkys. Last session is the doctored beers which should be really useful in fine tuning our fault finding skills.
Definitely challenged a few of us, some such as an unblended lambic were ok, almost refreshing, the others were hard work. When you are able to describe a beer with the following ' like licking a wet goat' you'll begin to understand. I now understand what horse blanket, wet leather actually tastes and smells like.
Not my cup of tea but when you are judging in comps you judge the category you are given so you need to understand them.
The first beer of the night was an authentic belgian pale ale brought back by one of the boys. Not available in Australia. It was gorgeous. It didn't have that strong belgian aroma and i immediately realised why my one and only attempt at the style scored so poorly in the comps last year. It's a subtle, session beer. You don't want all those esters you find in the stronger belgians.
The boys also sampled my house ale, the rye 'golden' ale with homegrown chinook and they were impressed. They also got to admire the hop plantation which is growing in front of my eyes after the last week of warm weather. At least i built the trellis in time and the hops are winding themselves up the string, some already nearly 2m in height.
We had a sample of my RIS which is in a keg with a plank of american oak. Why i have it in a keg and why i carbed it up and attached a picnic tap is anyone's guess. I argue i had to sample it prior to bottling it. Glad i did as the oak has definitely come through, a lot of vanilla flavour as well as the expected woody flavour. So i plan on bottling this via CPBF soon and leaving it till next winter when hopefully the rough edges are smoothed out.
And whilst not beer related, we took a sample of the wine that we are making. Tastes magnificent! Lovely blackberry aromas and flavours, plenty of tannins and the oak has come through so now we just need to organise to have it bottled. 800L worth so am somewhat relieved it has turned out as good as it has.
