BeerQuest: German Ales

Four times a year, Empyrean Ales hosts BeerQuest, a homebrew competition. It's pretty sweet.

Basically, the first 21 brewers to get their applications in are in the first round. Empyrean supplies the barley and hops for a 5 gallon All Grain batch. Then the head brewer of Empyrean, their marketing guy, and a lucky assistant choose 10 of the 21 to go on to the second round, which is judged by members of the public who plunk down $20 to judge 10 homebrews and snack on tasty appetizers from Lazlo's, the brew pub behind (or in front of) Empyrean Ales.

The winner gets their beer made by Empyrean as a seasonal, which is pretty cool.

Last June's BeerQuest was Session Beers--beers lighter in flavor and alcoholic content (5%abv max) that lend themselves to extended drinking sessions so you don't see pink elephants after a pint or six. I made an American Wheat beer, but unfortunately did not make it past the first round. (But hey, I got a 38/50, not too shabby for my first competition. More on the judging process in another post).

Anyway, on Aug. 26, Lazlo's in the Haymarket is hosting the next BeerQuest. The style is German Ales. This includes Kolsch, Dusseldorf Altbier, North German Altbier, Dunkelweizen, Weizen or Weissbier (German wheat beers) and Roggenbier (rye beer).

I'm making a Dusseldorf Alt. Here's my recipe, using ingredients available from Empyrean:

Altimate Nullifier (all grain)
4 lbs Cargill 2-row Pale
3 lbs Cargill europils
.5 lbs Cargill red wheat
2 lb mussedorfer munich
1.5 lbs Weyerman caramunich
0.1 lbs Bairds chololate

2 oz Tettnang (60 minutes)
1 oz tettnang (45 minutes)
1 oz saaz (30 minutes)
1 saaz (0 minutes)

SG: 1.056
IBUs: 52
abv: 6.2%

So even if i don't make it to the 2nd round, I'll still have plenty of good beer to drink.