My Brewers Cup Runneth Over

5/5: Cascade Brewers' Cup Day One. Showed up early out at Redhook Woodinville to help pull entries and whatnot. Sat two flights. Seven Pilsner entries; Germans and Bohemians and one Classic American Pilsner (Advanced to BOS). Seven Stout entries; all the substyles represented except for Russian Imperial Stout. The best was a very nice Foreign Extra.

5/12: Cascade Brewers' Cup Day Two. Showed up early out at Redhook Woodinville to help setup, pull entries and yes, whatnot. Sat three flights. Nine American Ale entries; Pales and Ambers. One of the Pales was nice, scored a 37. Seven Belgian and French Ale entries; three Wits, a Belgian Pale, a Saison and a "Specialty Ale" (no French bieres). One flight of 4 Other Smoked Beers and 3 Wood Aged Beers; good entries overall, the Smoked Dunkelweizen advanced to BOS. Excellent beer; sweet roll malt flavors, firm banana, warm spice phenol (clove, cardamom) and firm smoke. Think Bananas' Foster over the campfire. Should have been the big session but only 6 judges showed. Bummer.

5/16: Cascade Brewers' Cup Day Three. Pick-up judging session at Mountain Homebrew to make up for getting stiffed last Saturday. Sat one flight of Specialty Beer (Huzzah!). Interesting ingredients, etc.; a very fine Berliner Weisse (firm carbonation, soft lactic character, dry with green apple notes) and a handful of entries that appeared to be Dogfish clones (a Golden Shower-like Strong Bohemian Pilsner, an Indian Brown and a Black & Blue-like beer but with cherries along with the blueberries instead of blackberries).

5/19: Cascade Brewers' Cup Day Four. Lake Washington Rowing Club at 9AM. Sat a flight of Russian Imperial Stout with 8 entries. Solid low to mid 30's and then a 41 for the final entry. Great glass of beer; rich complex malt flavors, tons of chocolate, dried dark fruit and alcohol, low carbonation with a velvety mouthfeel. Sat the Best of Show round. That was a bit of allright, took a bit long to get it knocked out though. Win, Place, Show turned out to be a Weissbier, an American IPA and a British-Style Premium Bitter. The Best to Brew prize went to the 41 point RIMP.

Cheers to the Brewers' Cup Organizer for pulling the Competition along kicking and screaming. For a club that has a national level competition written into the bylaws you'd figure that it wouldn't be so hard to get the clubs' judges to participate. Sheesh. Anyways, I believe that I now have enough experience points fer me National pin. Yes!