CAP

[Bill Lawrence]

At your request, here is my formulation for the CAP you had over at Orlando's social:

38% American 6 row malt
38% American 2 row malt
4% Carapils
20% Corn grits

Yeast 2206
8.8 HBU Hallertau for 60 minutes
2.7 HBU Tetnang for 20 minutes
1.0 oz Hallertau at knockout

Brewing notes: this requires a ceral mash to convert the grits. Basicly, you take all the grits and maybe a pound of 6 row, heat it up to 154 and leave it there for 20 minutes then boil the whole thing for 45 minutes. This stuff is a sticky mess so you need to stir the entire time otherwise it will surely burn on the bottom of the pot. 10 minutes before the ceral mash is done boiling, dough in the main mash to a temperature of 120 for 10 minutes. Add the ceral mash and as much boiling water as needed to get the entire thing up to 154. I then let it go for 90 minutes but maybe you can get away with less. After that, it is pretty much like doing any other lager so the usual caveats apply.

There are several things you can do differently and still get a good (maybe even better beer). First of all, the grits are a big pain so you can substitute flaked corn instead. The beer will be good (I have done it) but in my opinion, the grits are better (seems to lend a smoother character to the beer in my humble opinion). Also, if you are not a corn man (or woman), try messing with rice. I have no experience doing this since I am not really a big fan of rice in beer but it worked pretty well for Anheiser Bush so it should work for you also (and what the hell do I know anyway). Corn adds kind of a sweet, grainy taste that I like and I understand that if you use rice, your beer will be dryer so you may want to screw around with the hops a litttle if you decide to go this route. Maybe somebody out there will give it a try, I would like to taste the difference. Cluster hops are traditional in this style but frankly I hate them so I used traditional German noble hops, your milage may vary. Finally, you can mess around with the base malts used. For the batch you tasted, I decided to use 1/2 six row and 1/2 two row. I have done this beer a few times using all six row malt and that is traditional, I just messed with it this time for the hell of it. Finally, I noticed that this particular batch was a little darker than usual. That may be have happened for a couple of reasons, first the two row malt is a little darker and two because I was missing my gravity by a little so I just boiled the whole thing for 30 minutes extra (it's not like I really have any control over what I am doing anyway).

Anyhow, if you have never done a lager before, this may not be the best choice for your first attempt. Also, if you have no experience with decoctions, I have a few other recipies that are a little more forgiving than this one to just get your feet wet. The thing I really like about this style though is that there is not a commerical example out there so you can do pretty much what you want (unlike say California Common which requires you to brew an Anchor Steam clone). Hopefully, at least some of the above rambling will be useful to somebody.

[chris mewhinney]

Thanks Bill! This will be one of my next brews.

Chris

[Bill Lawrence]

In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I got my butt handed to me on a silver platter with this beer at the Bluebonnet. My average score was an anemic 20.5 (which was by far the worst of all the entries I sent in this year) so maybe more work is needed on this one.

[chris mewhinney]

Or maybe the judges were full of...well, beer. I got a couple of "surprising" scores on my Schwartzbier, all from "apprentice" judges (along with a very good score from the lone experienced judge). Your beer was excellent. Mine was good. And yes, I am bitter!

Don't change the recipe. Enter it in a different competition!

Chris

[Bill Lawrence]

Actually, I am not bitter at all, just somewhat surprised. The thing with competitions is that anything can happen and if you turn in enough entries, it probably will. This whole thing is 100% subjective so you just can't get that wadded up about it, win or lose. At least it's not as bad as figure skating, nobody is running around with a tire iron trying to bash you in the knee to put you out of the competition. What I might do just for grins is pull off another bottle of the stuff (before I drink it all which will soon happen) then whip up another batch and compare them just to get a clue.

The thing about this that is somewhat troubling though has nothing to do with winning or losing. One of the guys who judged the beer is very experienced and so I respect his opinion. Apparently, at times at least, I can't tell the difference between good stuff and swill. I know that I am biased when drinking my own beer and, to at least some extent, the phrase "a skunk never smells his own scent" holds true for me (which at the end of the day if why I enter competitions in the first place). The problem though is that if I can't reliably tell good from bad, I am doomed to produce just average stuff since I won't know any better. On the other hand, maybe that's not such a bad thing as ignorance is bliss, right?

[chris mewhinney]

Yep, beer judging is, ultimately, completely subjective, in spite of the BJCP efforts to make it less so. My focus has always been on making beer that I like and my friends and family like. When I've accomplished that, I feel my work is done. There will always be those who don't agree, for whatever reason. Rest assured, yours is a good beer (judging by the reaction at the last brew day). Is it true to style? I leave that to the experienced judges to assess but, in the end, does it really matter? There's a lot of successful breweries making very popular beers that defy all style definitions.

What got me was that the 2 new judges said my black beer tasted of plastic. Now i know I am not a "sensitive" taster, but I cannot for the life of me, detect anything close to plastic. Nor did the experienced judge. But, like I said, I will enjoy my beer in spite of the shelacking it got at the BB!! And you will too!

Chris

[Bill Lawrence]

I agree, hell, at the end of the day this is just a hobby anyway. If you really want to see a wild looking score sheet, have Brian Beyers show you one of his (it won't take much, just give him a beer and ask). In essence, he did a Belgian which both judges noted was a gusher (and that is not necessarily a bad thing for a Belgian). Anyway, one of the judges then went on to say that the beer was under carbonated. Now, maybe I am missing something but to me, those two observations are mutually exclusive aren't they?

[BrotherhoodBrew]

Well if it gushed out all the Co2 then it could be flat. Judging can be hard and I suggest everyone try it and get a feel for "the other side". Of course there are some plain dumb judging sheets out there. The real question on the feedback is did the experinced and non experienced judges come close on score? As a relitivley new judge it can be hard to put tastes with names and a good experienced judge can help with that. At least I know I didn't judge either of your beers so it's not my fault haha

[chris mewhinney]

Yeah, actually Brian ripped one of my beers, and he was right on the money. It was not great and I knew it. And Donnie judged my Scottish and really liked it! Gave me a solid score. Both guys provided constructive advice, which I really appreciate. They were the only judges who did so. So thanks guys.

Chris

[Bill Lawrence]

Well if it gushed out all the Co2 then it could be flat

oh, I don't know about that one, maybe you and Orlando have been filling up your Bluebonnet steins a few too many times. To get a gusher, you would have to have say 3 or 4 volumes of CO2 dissolved in the beer. Once you open the cap, there is no way all the CO2 would suddenly all come out of solution leaving you flat beer, unless maybe the beer was boiling hot which I am sure it was not during judging. Maybe we need to get Ken to give us all a lecture on the chemistry/physics involved in disolving gasses in liquids.

You do bring up a good point though, it is not easy to do a good job judging beers (especially after judging a couple of flights of Barley Wine or Belgians). I cringe when putting my e-mail address on the top of forms I complete because I am afraid that I'll really screw up and then hear about it latter. Of course it takes a fair amount of work to produce each and every entry and I would hate to screw somebody over just because I was being stupid. For whatever it's worth though, I am not saying that the judging was bad on my entry, really I'm just amazed at how clueless I can be at times, especially when evaluating my own efforts. The main reason I enter these contests is to get the scoresheets so I can hopefully use them to make better beer. If you think about it, you always learn more from your screwups than you do from beers that win metals (although a little success once in a while helps with the confidence). Chris has got it exactly right though, this is just a hobby and really, if I like the stuff I make and have fun making it, that is what is really important.

[schulysses]

Beer competitions are like baseball. On any given day, the best baseball team can lose to the worst baseball team. It isn't even particularly "unlikely", as events go. We compete because we love playing the game (win or lose). If we receive helpful criticism from a "referee/umpire", so much the better!

[donniestyle]

Thanks for the kudos on my judging feedback. I too know well how bad score sheets can be. If we were A-holes we would copy them to the BJCP, and complain. Our fellow Lone Star Circuit competitions are far too lax. That said, there is still room for improvement in our own local competitions. We have Bluebonnet, Celtic, and Limbo. Moreover, I find it difficult to judge, and difficult to communicate my perceptions also. It's something we all need to do, otherwise, we shouldn't complain about those that try. It's an open book test. You have all the answers right in front of you while judging. You just have to read, look, smell, taste, and write. I don't see an excuse for some of the score sheets I receive. If you take points off, you _must_ tell the brewer why. If you can, you _should_ tell the brewer how to improve the beer. If you're in the BJCP, and you cannot do that, ....!

[donniestyle]

Back on topic. Bill, I'm planning to brew a few back-to-back CAPs. Can we get together on one? Are you planning to brew one soon?

[Bill Lawrence]

Donny, sorry about not getting back to you sooner, I just saw your post. I am planning on brewing this weekend and I was going to do a Northern German pils however I could be persuaded to do a CAP instead. If you are going to be at the meeting this evening, we can talk about it. My plan is to do two or maybe three lagers in a row and I am going to start growing up a starter for the first beer, likely tomorrow (I'm going to use Wyeast 2006 for all three). So anyway, my tenative plan is to do some kind of pils, a Munich Dunkel and some sort of Bock assuming I can get myself enough cool space (I need to kick up the consuption rate a little I guess).

[donniestyle]

Nao tem problemo, bro. I'm planning to do some extract Belgian this weekend. Does that make it French?

I'll be able to do a lager in about 3 weeks. I too need to make some elbow room. I was splurging on the available supplies of festival lagers now in abundance, and I have to pour some of them down the hatch to open up enough room to ferment a lager.

I too am hopping to brew this weekend, and plan to do so over at Walter & Pam's. I need to make a starter for that, and have two vials of WPL510 to pitch onto 2000 ml and grow it on a stir plate. The vials are a little dated, but I hope to get at least 300,000,000,000 yeast cells to pitch into 10 gallons of Trappista.

Let's put our thinking CAPs on.