Final results in!
Last night at NHC1-Seattle, after judging all night, I had the honor of sharing a bomber of my Munich Helles and German Helles Exportbier with some rock star PNW judges. Grand Master and Director of BJCP Ed, Randy Scorby. Grand Master and Asst Director of BJCP Ed, Steve Antoch, Grand Master and Owner of Hop Heaven, Ted Hausotter. There were 3 or 4 other great judges too.
The general consensus was that the MH is a 40pt beer and the GHE is about a 38. I'm down to very small changes like hop quality, malt freshness, and in the GHE maybe prurging a bit more sulfur off.
Summary: good fresh German ingredients, go easy on water salts, single infusion, a little CaraHell, acidify with phosphoric, bitter with FWH, pitch active healthy yeast. Thats about as tricky as I need to go.
This has been a really fun project, I learned a lot and got to meet some fantastic people! I'm still no "expert" at these, but I'm confident that I can brew about as good of a fresh, authentic, example as can be found in my neck of the woods. I'm going to make a couple very tiny adjustments and rebrew one more time next weekend, to enjoy with friends. Then next winter I'll pick it back up and maybe take a run at NHC with them.
Cheers!
Topic: Rube Goldberg Part Two (Read 7186 times)
