NYC Homebrew Competition Results

This past Sunday was the NYC Homebrewers Guild "Homebrew Alley 4", their fourth annual homebrewing competition. As I stated in the previous post, we entered 5 of our beers.

In our testing of the beers the night before dropping them off for entry, we determined that our Number 2 English Barleywine and our Smoke Ale were our best attempts, and we hoped we would maybe place with one of them.



Well, I'll be! Above: (from L to R) Tim Bullock, Jeff Quinn and myself, John Kleinchester. Award-winning homebrew team! We were honored to receive First Place for our "Smokey Smoke" in the Smoke Ale category. We also took home Second Place for our "Number 2" English Barleywine in the Strong Ale category. At that point we were already more than happy with the results. But that wasn't enough! At the end of the ceremony, competition organizer Vlad Kowalyk announced that our Smoke Ale actually won Third Place Best of Show (out of 370 entries)! This was the crowning achievement.

Not only did we get to take home those awesome ribbons, but we also got PRIZES too. For the first two awards we got to select prizes from a table of wonderful choices from various charitable beer-related donations. In the end we took home a 50lb bag of grain (to make more homebrew of course) and a bottle of StarSan (a homebrew equipment cleaner, not cheap).



Before leaving we were able to get some score sheets for all of our entries, so hopefully for the ones that didn't do as well, we may be able to pinpoint where we went wrong and improve the recipes for the next time around. We split a cab back to Brooklyn (its hard to bring a 50lb bag of grain from Chelsea to Williamsburg) and celebrated our surprising victories with the very beers that got us there.



We also were delighted to learn that our Third Place Best of Show win actually garnered us an additional prize... a $50 Gift Card to Brooklyn Brew Shop. A timely prize as we're going to be expanding our homebrewing to 3 separate micro-nano-breweries instead of just two.



All in all, it was a great night and we're really glad we decided to enter. Thanks to the NYC Homebrewers Guild and all the BJCP judges AND thanks to those who came out to show their support for the Ten Dudes Brew Team: Heather, Cinzia, Jared, Pat, Charlie, Gille, Amy and Mike.

For a complete list of winners, check out the Homebrew Alley website.

NYC Homebrew Competition: This Sunday 1/31 at Chelsea Brewing

Hey all! This coming Sunday afternoon, homebrewers and onlookers will converge upon Chelsea Brewing Company in Manhattan for "Homebrew Alley 4", the NYC Homebrew Competition presented by the New York City Homebrewers Guild. The beers in the photo above are the ones my brewing team and I (Ten Dudes Brewing) submitted:

"Number 2" - an English Barleywine that has been bottle-conditioned for 15 months
"Smokey Smoke" - a smoke ale brewed with weyermann and cherrywood smoked malt
"Wedding Wit" - a witbier created for fellow brewmate Tim's wedding
"Kölsch It" - an (unfortunately cloudy) kölsch
"Depressed Umpire IPA" - an American IPA that was just bottled the day before entry

It was $7 per entry with no limit, but since we were splitting the costs three ways we just picked 5 of our homebrews that we enjoy. We were required to submit 2 bottles (12 or 22oz) of each entry which was difficult because we only had a few remaining bottles of the likes of "Number 2" and the "Wedding Wit".

As for our chances? Eh. We could get lucky and place. Our Kölsch turned out too cloudy to win that category. I think our best chances are with our "Number 2" barleywine and "Smokey Smoke Ale". The "Depressed Umpire" could be the dark horse, but having bottled it the day before the dropoff, there's no telling for sure how that will turn out. Even without any wins, it should be a fun time. Hopefully we'll at least get some feedback to improve our future brews.

PS: Don't worry, the homebrews did not stay exposed to the light of that window for more than a few minutes!

Are there really only 2 brewpubs in NYC?

While thinking of a good place to found our brewpub (help us determine the name by voting in the poll to the right!), I began searching on BeerAdvocate for places in the area that are considered brewpubs. I was surprised to discover that the only ones listed are Chelsea Brewing Company (represented by the photo above) and Heartland Brewery. Chelsea is a good brewery/brewpub/restaurant that is able to boast that its the only beer actually brewed in Manhattan. Heartland Brewery is actually brewed in a facility in Brooklyn, but in general their multiple locations are tourist traps. I've never had a beer at any of them that really stood out to me.

But what is curious is that I know that there are bars that tout their own brews on tap. So shouldn't they be considered brewpubs as well? Or are they trying to keep it relatively quiet? I'm assuming most of these types of bars can't actually brew on-premises, so where is it being done? Questions, questions! I'll have to do some investigating to find out.

Speaking of investigating, this weekend I'll be traveling to one of two brewpubs in NJ (there aren't too many in Jersey either): The Ship Inn in Milford, NJ, which has some pretty good reviews on BeerAdvocate, or Trap Rock Brewery and Restaurant in Berkeley Heights. I am leaning toward The Ship Inn as Trap Rock has valet service, which is an immediate turn off. But Ship Inn is further, so we shall see. I'll document whichever adventure we go on and post the pictures here next week.

Have a great weekend!

My Day at Chelsea Brewing Company

This past Friday, thanks to fellow blogger Ian Phillips and Ambassador at Chelsea Brewing Company, I was able to spend the whole day shadowing and helping head brewer Chris Sheehan and assistant brewer Mark Szmaida. The day began with my arrival to the brewery at 7:30am (which was quite difficult considering what I was doing the night before) and Chris immediately put me to work washing kegs. He said it was to be a busy day because they would be brewing AND cleaning and refilling multiple kegs to redistribute to various bars in the area (they had recently numbered all their kegs and they were up to 200).

After finishing cleaning about 20-25 kegs, Chris & Mark started the brew. For the most part I just followed them around as they went through the steps of making their flagship beer, Chelsea Checker Cab Blonde Ale, occasionally lending a hand here and there. Imagine my surprise when they asked me to climb INTO the mash tun and clean it out after the mash had been transferred to the hot liquor tank to be brought to a boil. So I got in with a hose and started working my way around clearing out the excess spent grain, thinking to myself, "I'M INSIDE A MASH TUN!". Nerdgasm. Cut to 25 minutes later, and I'm climbing out of the tank soaked with my back killing me. It made me realize that if my dream to become a brewer came true, it would still be hard work. But much more rewarding than anything I've done before (or am doing, don't tell my boss that I wasn't actually sick on Friday).

Once I was done with that, the boil had begun, so Mark let me add the 3 lbs of pellet hops. Awesome. Sounds stupid, I know, but it's fun to think I actually had a hand in making beer that will be sold to thirsty costumers at both the brewery and other bars in NYC. In between all of this, they let me do a fair amount of sampling from the taps from behind the bar. Man, to constantly have beer YOU MADE on tap right there every day would be wonderful. I definitely only had a liquid lunch.

I finished up by helping with the hopback (seen above - a running of the wort through whole leaf hops and then into the fermenting tank, didn't know that before Friday) and then assisting with the cleanup process. We were done by about 3:30pm, about a 7 hour day. Not bad! Although, I think if I had my own brewery, I'd probably make my hours a little later...I'd have trouble getting up at 6am every morning.

Big thanks again to the brewers, Chris & Mark and to Ambassador Ian. It was great to get an idea of what operating a commercial brewery would be like. Hopefully someday I can be as helpful to the curious homebrewing community as they were to me.

The Pony Bar - Manhattan

Last night we took a post-work excursion to a brand new craft beer bar named The Pony Bar. An oasis in the subway-less wasteland that is the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. And WHAT an oasis! Every. single. beer. here. is. Five. Dollars. FIVE! DOLLARS! Granted, there are quite a few beers that are 8 oz. pours, but they seem to only be either the high ABV selections or the more rare kegs that they don't want to eliminate so quickly. While the selection was Sixpoint heavy on Monday evening (who's complaining?) because of the bus trip to Sixpoint/open bar they offered Sunday, they had a good range of other American micros as well. Great offerings from Chelsea Brewing Company, Avery and Ithaca among others.

It was hard to believe we were sitting in midtown Manhattan drinking quality American craft beers for FIVE DOLLARS A PIECE! Highly recommended.