AHA Best Beers of 2013... for me.

I recently received an email from the AHA regarding the Zymurgy's best beers of 2013. The email provided a link to pick your favorite 20 beers of the year. I have never done anything like this before, and have only really kept a mental list of my favorite beers. I decided to give it a try, and with much help from Untappd (https://untappd.com/), I was able to come up with a list a 20 of my favorites for the year.

Honestly, I found this pretty challenging. At time, my rank order is somewhat irrelevant. If anything, my list of more of an honorable mention of 20 different beers that I really enjoyed throughout the year. That being said. the top 5 is probably the closet to an actual rank ordered listing. I have put them in bold. Let me know what you think, I am curious to hear other's opinions and I encourage everyone to, first, join the AHA, and, second, do their top 20 list.

1. Ballast Point Sculpin IPA
2. Stone Espresso Imperial Russian Stout
3. Sierra Nevada Celebration
4. Sierra Nevada Narwhal
5. Selin's Grove Brewery Saint Fillian's Wee Heavy
6. Devils Backbone Schwarzbier
7. Lagunitas Little Sumpin' Sumpin'
8. Hardywood Park Gingerbread Stout
9. Midnight Brewery Purdy Mechanic IPA
10. Anchor Steam
11. Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout
12. Foothills Peoples Porter
13. Lagunitas Pils
14. Legend Oktoberfest
15. Center of the Universe Slingshot Kolsch
16. Dogfish Head Craft Brewery 90 Minute IPA
17. Strangeways Brewing Blitzkrieg Bock
18. Troegs Troegenator Dopplebock
19. Victory Prima Pils
20. Midnight Brewery Rockville Red

As you can see, its been a great year for Virginia, and especially Richmond beer. Its good time for the city. I should include some honorable mentions such as:

Legend Golden IPA
Midnight Granite Oatmeal Stout
Lickinghole Creek Tripel
Apocalypse Ale Works Wet Hopped Hoppocalypse

Did I leave any out? Hit me up on Untappd! Username:Boitnottmk

Yeast Comparison: The Competition

As mentioned before, my local home brew shop (Weekend Brewer http://www.weekendbrewer.com/) held a competition for the different beers brewed for the ClusterBrew. My dad and I brewed a Smoked Oatmeal Porter for the competition. He used English Yeast and I used California Common Yeast. I listed the details of the beer and the tasting results in different posts. The next step was the competition and here are the results! (For a more detailed listing go here https://www.facebook.com/weekend.brewer.3)

1st Place: The smoked porter with the Cal Common yeast actually won first place! The judges scored the beers in typical BJCP fashion with a 44/50. All judges agreed on a pleasant smoky character that was well-balanced with the other malts. They also mentioned a creamy texture from the oatmeal. The first place prize was a Blichmann floor burner and a $50 gift card to the Weekend Brewer.

The actual burner shown here has unistrut attached to the side of it. This add-on was not included.

3rd Place: The other smoked porter (with English yeast) actually tied with four other beers for third place. All judges a agreed the beer was well-balanced with a light smoke character and specialty malt. 3rd place prize was a $25 gift card to the Weekend Brewer.


After weighing all the results from the taste tests, and most notably, the Competition. I would say this yeast comparison experiment went pretty well. I would also say the base recipe for the smoked porter is a great one. If you wanted to have a really interesting yeast, then go with the WLP810 (Cal Common), but typical English yeast will work as well.

Special thanks to the Weekend Brewer for hosting the Cluster Brew event!!