Ripping down what’s left of the bines left over from Great Hop Harvest of 2010 in prep for winter. Dumping some manure and compost on the hop hills to prep them for 2011. Record harvest over Sept and early Oct… brewed a great wet hopped ale (it’s all the rage) from hops harvested few hours before flameout. Sorry, it’s allll gone now! Rest of hops cold dried via patented BS technique… will come in handy for the upcoming brewing season. Vac packed as usual and crammed in the freezer, which is now bulging at the seams! I’m not going to speak to the barley I grew to feed the Flying Barley Piranha’s from Hell again. Outsmarted once again. Good news is couple of the SOB Brethren I provided seed to successfully harvested a crop and one chap actually 2! I’ll have to follow up with them to see if they threshed their way to actually malting some.
On lighter note, posted some pic’s of the 2010 CBA’s. Was fortunate to judge the BOS for this. I think the rest of the BJCP Judges did a stellar job in picking the brewed crème de la crème . Most worked an uncelebrated average of about 15 hours over the course of a last weekend of summer to work their way through the pile of about 400 entries. Anybody who’s judged at this level knows how painful this is. It’s not fun after your 14th entry of light lagers! The entry’s keep coming every couple of minutes and a judging sheet has to be fully completed every single one of them!! The assault continues for hours… writer’s cramp! All through this integrity of the judging must be maintained to be fair to all entrants. Have to make sure details down to even the temperature is correct for the style provided. Can’t judge a ESB at 6 degrees C!!
Some interesting stats re CBA:
Gold: 11 for BC, 11 for ON, 4 for PQ
Silver: 7 for BC, 13 for ON, 5 for PQ
Bronze: 5 for BC, 12 for ON, 5 for PQ
Not sure what the # of entries per province was but I’ll bet the majority were from Ontario. If you look at Gold per capita BC is 2.7 and ON is 0.9. So Gold Beer is 2.9 times more per cap in BC vs ON. I’d chalk it up to a beer culture that promotes local craft brew in BC vs the beer masses in ON that still imbibe mostly industrial swill. Could be more restrictive legislation in ON too.
Good news is more and more Beer advocacy groups like Bar Towel and Homebrewing Groups like SOB are making an impact. Slowly and steadily turning the tide of opinion. Obviously way behind BC and PQ so still a lot of work to do. This CBA was first time PQ actually entered en masse but I believe entries were much lower from there than ON and BC.