Operation Bravo

Well, another competition is in the books.  This one didn’t got quite as well for me, but I still had a really good time doing it.  This one was Operation Bravo, held at Shannon Brewing Company in Keller.  It was put on by the good folks at Homebrew for Heroes, and was free for all current and former military, as well as first responders.  This was the first (of hopefully many) annual event, and the turnout was pretty great.  There were about 30 homebrewers or so, and the crowd was great.  I’d bet at least half of the crowd were walkups from Shannon’s normal Saturday open house and tour.

I got there pretty early and got my tent and table all setup with the help of my father-in-law.  I had a good spot, only a few spaces down from the entrance, so I was able to get guests to come by before they had already had a few!  I dropped my entry bottles off and then waited for the crowd to get there.  In the meantime, a homebrewing friend of mine, David with New Main Brewing, showed up a little late, and there wasn’t a lot of room for him to setup anywhere.  Since I wasn’t taking up all that much space, I offered to let him setup under my tent.  It worked pretty well, as we turned out to be a popular stop.

Unfortunately for me, my bottles all turned out to be gushers, so they weren’t able to be judged.  The judges did end up stopping by my booth later on, though, to try out my quad out of the keg, and they were impressed.  The only negative comment that I got was that it needed to be aged/conditioned longer.  So, for next year, if I enter the same beer again, I’ll brew it 9 months or more ahead of time!  I had several people stop and ask if I was the guy with the quad they were told they had to try, so I had some good word of mouth going.  Can’t be too upset about that!  All the other homebrewers that came by and tried it were impressed as well.  It wasn’t all bad news in the competition under the tent, though, as David’s robust porter took first overall!  He’ll be joining Shannon Brewing at some point in the future to brew a batch of it on their system for local release, and to enter into the 2016 Great American Beer Festival in the ProAm category!  I was able to taste a sample of it before it was all gone, and it was damn good.  Well-deserved win, David!

The next competition I’m going to try to enter will probably be next year’s Bluebonnet Brew-off.  Entries are normally due in February, so I’ll probably enter the saison that’s fermenting now into that one.  It’s a competition only, no serving festival to go along with it, so I’ll only need to enter three bottles.  I might try to see if I have three bottles worth of the quad left, too, and save that to enter as well.  It claims to be the largest single-site homebrew competition in the country, so it will be nice to see how my beer stacks up there!  I might also be able to get one or two more brew days in before then.  I don’t want to rush anything, though, so we’ll see.

Up next for me, I thinking of doing a Dunkelweizen.  It’s similar to a hefeweizen, just darker, maltier, and a bit stronger.  It’s a style that’s good for fall brewing and winter drinking.  Of course, half of the fun of homebrewing is being able to brew whatever you want, whenever you want, so seasons don’t really matter, so maybe I’ll try something else.  Apparently I’m getting pretty good at brewing Belgians, so maybe a nice Tripel or Biere de Garde!

I do need to take a quick moment to thank Shawn and the guys at Homebrew for Heroes for putting on an amazing event.  I chatted with Shawn for a bit during the event, and we're all hoping this is the first of many for this.  Also a big thanks to Shannon at Shannon Brewing for hosting us all, and giving all the homebrewers a quick, private, tour of the brewery before the festival started.  It was a great time all afternoon!