2018 LABBC Registration is LIVE!

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Hey PG!

I’m excited to announce that registration is officially OPEN for our 4th year of this very special comp. You can find all the information you need about the event on the competition website:  http://belgianbrewchallenge.com

Entry Fee: $8 per entry

Entry Requirements: (2) 12 oz bottles with entry label rubber banded to bottle

Registration Window: 2/23/18 thru 3/29/18    Entry Drop-off Window: 3/12/18 thru 3/29/18

Entry Drop-off Locations:
LA Ale Works, Culver City Homebrew Supply, South Bay Brewing Supply, The Home Wine, Beer and Cheesemaking Shop, and Eagle Rock Homebrew Supply.

Entry Shipping Location:

Culver City Homebrew Supply
4234 Sepulveda Blvd
Culver City, CA 90230
CCHBS@yahoo.com

Judging: April 8th, 2018 @ LA Ale Works

As always, volunteer judges and stewards are needed. Please indicate if you are interested in and available for either job during registration.

Looking forward to an exciting and fun competition, thank you for participating!  Reply back with any questions you have, I’ll do my best to get you answers.

Michael Musgrave – President

Deadline for AFC Homebrew Competition Thursday Noon 2/8 at the Culver City Shop

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Thanks to a generous offer by the Musgrave family, we will have personal hand-delivery service for America’s Finest City (AFC) Homebrew Competition.  Drop off your entries at the Culver City shop no later than Noon Thursday, Feb 8th.    If you haven’t already registered for AFC, registration is open at http://quaff.org/AFC-2018/#.   The Musgraves get to sample a couple of beers at Alesmith for their efforts.

A big thank-you to Keith Edie for stepping up to the plate to organize the Los Angeles Belgian Brew Challenge.  Look for fresh details on this competition in the next week or so.

For those of you who requested entry slots for AHA, you should be getting word in the next day or so as to how many entry slots you will have.  Your entry authorization and payment must be done by February 14th.  Physical entries will need to be shipped off to the regional entry point of your choice by the last week of March.  For those of you wishing to send beer to San Diego, we will be looking for a driver.

Coming up earlier than usual this year is the California State Fair.  Registration is already up and runs through February 12th at http://home.castatefair.beer/.  Entries can be dropped off of the Eagle Rock or South Bay Brew shops.

A new competition we are adding to the Brewer of the Year cycle is the Jeff Sanders Memorial Competition.  This is a small event run by Strand with a selection of beer styles enjoyed by Jeff.  Registration begins January 26th and runs through April 7th.  Details can be found at http://www.jeffsandersmemorial.com/bcoem/ .  The competition is limited to 100 entries, so don’t delay.

The balance of the official list of competitions for accumulating Brewer of the Year points is listed below.  Check back frequently as exact dues dates become known.

For those of you who are hard-core about entering competitions, here are some more local events. In addition to our official competition list, there are a couple of other local competitions you might want to enter:

  • Congratulations to Kingsley Toby who got Runner-up Best of Show for “Second Sleep” wood-aged beer in the Doug King Memorial competition.
  • The Romancing the Beer Competition, hosted  by the Thousand Oaked Homebrewers need judges Saturday Feb 10th.

If you are hard-core competition junkie, there are a bazillion other contests to enter.  The AHA has their master list at http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/competitions/aha-bjcp-sanctioned-competition/.

2018 Pacific Gravity Brewer of the Year Competition Schedule

Now:                    America’s Finest City registration open

February 8th      NOON Drop- off for AFC at the Culver City shop.

February 12        California State Fair

February 14       AHA Nationals confirmation deadline

Late March:        AHA Nationals entries due

March, TBD:       Los Angeles Belgian Brew Challenge

April 7:                  Deadline for the Jeff Sanders Memorial Competition

April                       Mayfaire
July                        Los Angeles County Fair
September         Pacific Brewers Cup
October              California State Homebrew Competition

 

 

 

Competition Corner – January 2018

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Well, a new year is upon us as well as a fresh brewing competition season.  Each year, Pacific Gravity honors the brewer (or team) with the most homebrew competition wins.  I’m eagerly awaiting someone to knock me off my Brewer of the Year perch! I hope you took advantage of the cool weather over the holiday season to get some batches fermenting.  I did!   We have a couple of competitions coming up right away, but you still have plenty of cool weather to brew for some of the later upcoming competitions.  Read more →

Rob Rubens Guest Brewer Competition

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At our recent First Saturday visit to Rob Rubens, Rob brought up a new opportunity: The Rob Rubens Guest Brewer Competition. The winner will get not one, but up to three opportunities to brew on their 15 BBL system in El Segundo, to be put on sale at the Smoky Hollow tasting room.  Participants must submit recipes for each entry, along with two 12-ounce bottles.    This is an excellent opportunity if you are looking to take the step up to commercial brewing.  Commercial brewing experience is a strong plus.   See the Rob Rubens Guest Brewer Competition flyer for more details.   Entry deadline is January 16th 2018.   Submit your entries to the Rob Rubens Brewery/Distillery at 909 E. El Segundo Blvd, El Segundo CA  90245.

While I have your attention,  the entry deadline for the Doug King Memorial Competition is January 12th.  This is a limited-style competition.  Complete details can be found at  https://www.maltosefalcons.com/content/2018-doug-king-memorial-homebrew-competition.

 

 

 

 

Pacific Brewers Cup Winners

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The Best of Show judging is complete and the winners have been announced!

Congratulation to Best of Show winner James Hilbing of Strand Brewers’ Club for his winning Wood-Aged entry Oaked Old Ale #2. As an eligible English style beer, James will get an invitation to brew his beer as a Pro-Am entry at Yorkshire Square Brewery.

Congratulations to Runner-up Best of Show winner Mike Neice of Brewluminati for his American Pale Ale, Tri-Centennial. Mike will get an invitation to brew his beer at Los Angeles Ale Works.

Congratulations to 2nd runner-up Best of Show winner Bart Schaefer for his Vienna Lager Cerveza Vienna.

Congratulations to all the winners. Complete results have been posted at http://comp.pacificgravity.com/

The awards ceremony will take place Thursday, October 19th at the Culver City Home brewing Supply Company, starting at 7:30 pm. Thanks to all who pitched in to make this an awesome competition. And thanks to all our sponsors too!

Pacific Brewers Cup Activities 2017

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Pacific Brewers Cup is almost here and I could use a hand from you folks to make sure it all runs smoothly.  The entry deadline has passed and we are ready for bottle organizing day.

Sunday September 17th, 11AM Bottle Organizing day at Los Angeles Ale Works
Many volunteers needed!  We need to borrow just about every ice chest this club can come up with.   Make sure they are well labeled.   If you have a cooler to lend, but can’t make it down to LAAW, drop me a line or swing by my place to this afternoon (Saturday Sept 16th).   We need about a dozen folks to come by LAAW to help sift through the 430 entries (860 bottles) and arrange them by category, and put them into the coolers until judging.  LA Ale Works is at 12918 Cerise Ave., Hawthorne, CA 90250.

Also NOW!  Volunteer to Judge or Steward!  We are looking to have 60 judges and 30 stewards and as of the moment we are only half-way there.  Signing up now will let us know how many preliminary judging sessions we need to run.  Links for sign-up are here:
http://comp.pacificgravity.com/index.php?section=register&go=judge
http://comp.pacificgravity.com/index.php?section=register&go=steward

Sept 18th – Sept 29th
Preliminary Judging Sessions.  Time is TBD with the location being LAAW, so check back for updates.  I’ll have updates on this in a couple of days.

Friday, September 29th, 5:00 PM, Beer moving Day.  Meet at LA Ale Works
We need a handful of guys with strong backs and couple of folks with trucks to help move the beer from Los Angeles Ale Works over to St. Bede’s Episcopal Church.  St. Bede’s is at 3590 Grand View Blvd, Los Angeles 90066.

Saturday, September 30th, 9:00 AM
Judging Day at St. Bede’s Episcopal Church  We need everybody out to help out on this one.   I want to see at least 60 judges and 30 stewards.  We will be doing both a morning and afternoon session, with a lunch break hosted by Master Chef Ian Fraser in-between.  Afterwards, we need help at the end of the day to make sure we pick it all up and leave the Church clean.  Many of the coolers will be empty by then.  If so, please take yours home.

October 1st – October 14th
Post-judging sessions and Best of Show Judging.    Time and locations TBD, so check back for updates.  If we are short of judges and we have a lot of entries, there could be a number of these.

Sunday, October 1st
Cooler pick-up day.  Come pick up your cooler, which will most likely have a present of several bottles of competition quality beer!

Awards Ceremony
Date TBD.

Competition Corner – September 2017

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OK, folks, we are coming down to short strokes here.  If you haven’t noticed, the bottle delivery window for the Pacific Brewers Cup2017 Pacific Brewers Cup is now open and runs through Friday, September 15th.  As I scan through the database, I see that many of you haven’t entered yet!  Now is the time!  The on-line registration page is up and running at http://comp.pacificgravity.com/.    If you can’t make it to the Culver City shop, the full list of sites you can drop off entries at any of the homebrew shops listed here.  Please check the closing time for the other shops.   Each entry requires 2 bottles, and has an entry fee of $8.00.

Also NOW!  Volunteer to Judge or Steward!  The very same registration page has a sign-up space for both.  We are looking to have 60 judges and 30 stewards and as of the moment we are only half-way there.  Signing up now will let us know if we need to run preliminary judging sessions.

Along the way, we have plenty of other tasks where we can use your assistance:
Saturday, September 16th, Noon(ish)Bottle Pick-up day.  Volunteers Needed!  We need someone to cover the Woodland Hills drop-off site.   Then, bring them over the to organizing session on the 17th.

Sunday September 17th, 11AM at Los Angeles Ale Works
Bottle Organizing day.  Many volunteers needed!  We need to borrow just about every ice chest this club can come up with.   Make sure they are well labeled.   We need about a dozen folks to come by LAAW to help sift through the hundreds of bottles and arrange them by category, and put them into the coolers until judging.

Sept 18th – Sept 29th
Preliminary Judging Sessions.  Time is TBD with the location being LAAW, so check back for updates.  If we are short of judges and we have a lot of entries, there could be a number of these.

Friday, September 29th, 7:00 PM
Beer moving Day.  We need a handful of guys with strong backs and couple of folks with trucks to help move the beer from Los Angeles Ale Works over to St. Bede’s Episcopal Church.

Saturday, September 30th, 9:00 AM at St. Bede’s Episcopal Church
Judging Day!  We need everybody out to help out on this one.   I want to see at least 60 judges and 30 stewards.  We will be doing both a morning and afternoon session, with a lunch break in-between.  Afterwards, we need help at the end of the day to make sure we pick it all up and leave the Church clean.  Many of the coolers will be empty by then.  If so, please take yours home.

October 1st – October 14th
Post-judging sessions and Best of Show Judging.    Time and locations TBD, so check back for updates.  If we are short of judges and we have a lot of entries, there could be a number of these.

Sunday, October 1st
Cooler pick-up day.  Come pick up your cooler, which will most likely have a present of several bottles of competition quality beer!

Awards Ceremony
Date TBD.

After all this hullabaloo, we can take a moment to look back at some recent accomplishments.  We scored well in the 2017 Los Angeles County Fair; winners listed below.  Congratulations especially to Carl Townsend, who captured Best of Show with his American Stout.  This is Carl’s second Best of Show at LACF; the first being in 1999. Complete results are available at https://www.maltosefalcons.com/content/los-angeles-county-fair-results.

Best of Show Carl Townsend American Stout 17.6: American-Style Stout
1st Carl Townsend London Smog 4.3: Strong Bitter and Extra Special Bitter (ESB)
1st Carl Townsend American Stout 17.6: American-Style Stout
2nd Carl Townsend American Pale Ale 5.1: American-Style Pale Ale
3rd Carl Townsend Imperial Stout 14.3: Imperial (“Russian”) Stout
2nd Craig Corley 253 Kolsch #14 8.1: Kolsch-Style Ale
1st Parker Waechter …Only Soul In The World That’s Real 20.3: Belgian-Style Strong Dark Ale
1st Parker Waechter L’Estivale 26.2: Smoke Beers, Other
3rd Parker Waechter Senex 26.3: Wood-Aged Beer, Whiskey
1st Reuben Shah Mojo RIS 14.3: Imperial (“Russian”) Stout
2nd Reuben Shah Hefe-Why-Zen 18.2: Bavarian-Style Hefeweizen
3rd Reuben Shah Dos Mucho 9.1: Vienna-Style Lager

 

With the ribbons in LACF, Carl Townsend takes the lead in the Brewer of the Year, but parker Waechter is just 1 point behind.  Things could still take a dramatic turn with just 2 more competitions to go.

2017 Pacific Gravity Brewer of the Year Competition Schedule

Pacific Brewers Cup Activities:
•    September 1st –   Entry drop off begins
•    September 15th – Entry Deadline
•    September 16th – Entry pick-up, deliver to LA Ale Works
•    September 17th – Entry organizing  at LAAW 11:00 AM
•    September 18th – 28th Prelim rounds at LAAW (if needed, hopefully not many)
•    September 27th – Prelim Session at Woodland Hill, part of BJCP class
•    September 29th – Move beers from LAAW to St Bede’s
•    September 30th – Judging Day

October               California State Homebrew

If you are hard-core competition junkie, there are a bazillion other contests to enter.  The AHA has their master list at http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/competitions/aha-bjcp-sanctioned-competition/.

Competition Corner – July 2017

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As we approach the middle part of summer, I hope your Summer Party beer is just about ready for action.  Along the way, don’t forget to hold back a couple of bottles for the Los Angeles County Fair.  Entries are due Friday, July 21st.  Registration is up and running at http://competitions.maltosefalcons.com/.  Two bottles are needed for each entry.  Styles are based on the Maltose Falcons Style Guidelines.  Entry fee is $9.00 and must be paid via PayPal.  Entries can be dropped off at the Culver City Homebrew Supply Co.  They also need judges for the event.  Judging will be on Saturday, August 5, 2017 at 8:30AM at the  94th Areo Squadron, 16320 Raymer St  Van Nuys, CA 91406.  Judges and stewards for the LA County Fair Homebrew Competition receive two free tickets to the fair as well as a free parking pass!

Pacific Brewers CupWhile you are at it, put away a couple more bottles for the 2017 Pacific Brewers Cup. As soon as you know the carbonation is good, keep them chilled.  Our big competition day is September 30th and you’ll want to make sure your beers haven’t been impaired by the hot dog days of summer.  You also have just enough time to start a quick-maturing beer if you brew now.  If you haven’t already done so, check out the website at http://pbc.pacificgravity.com/ (or you can click on the “competitions” tab above.)  The entry rules have been posted, along with the all-important timeline.  You can already sign up to be a judge or steward.  You can register your entries starting August 1st, with the entry deadline of September 15th.  We’re gonna need a ton of help with bottle organizing and transportation, as well as judging and stewarding help in the latter half of September.   The main judging session will be at St. Bede’s Episcopal Church at 3590 Grand View Blvd in Mar Vista.  Depending on the number of entries we get, we may also be doing some prelim sessions at Los Angeles Ale Works.

As we get caught up in the fray of Pacific Brewers Cup,  we will be approaching the deadline for the California State Homebrew Competition.  On-line registration is already working at http://castatebrewcomp.org/.  Entries will be due on October 12th and need to go up to San Francisco.  If you happen to be going that way in early October, we are looking for a driver to drop our entries off.  Drop me a line and the club can reimburse a portion of your gas money.

 

 

Competition Corner – April 2017

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Friday April 7th is the last day to enter the 2017 Mayfaire competition. Entries can be dropped off at the Culver City shop. 2 bottles per entry are needed. The Falcons will need help with judges and stewards as well. There will be two main sessions: Friday evening April 21, and Saturday morning, April 22. Both will be at St Martin in the Fields Church 7136 Winnetka Ave, Winnetka CA, 91306. Registration for all of the above can be found at http://competitions.maltosefalcons.com/ . In addition, we will be trying to set up a preliminary round several days earlier at the Culver City shop. Check back here for details.

Congratulations to all the winners of the 3rd annual Belgian Brew Challenge.  Awards will be handed out at the club meeting April 20th at Los Angeles Ale Works.  Top honors within the Club goes to Parker Waechter with his L’Estivale, a Belgian Specialty Ale, which took 4th place in the Best of Show round!  Way to go Parker!     Overall, Pacific Gravity earned the most ribbons.   A complete list of winners can be found at  http://belgianbrewchallenge.com/.   Best of show this year was a Belgian Dubbel, brewed by Joe St. John of Yeastside brewers.  His beer will be brewed at Los Angeles Ale Works.

I would like to thank the dozens of folks who helped make this the smoothest LABBC ever.  Brian did an outstanding job as head organizer, Kip stepped up with the facilities of LAAle Works, Michael collected a bunch of sponsors and arranged the tee shirts.  Dean made sure all the beers were cold, and Tim kept track of all the entries and scores.  Finally, keeping with the Belgian theme, Ian kept us fueled with an awesome batch of Beef Carbonnades.

Speaking of volunteering, we will be running Pacific Brewers Cup this September and will need everyone’s support.  The balance of the official list of competitions for accumulating Brewer of the Year is listed below.  Check back frequently as exact dues dates become known.

If you are hard-core competition junkie, there are a bazillion other contests to enter.  The AHA has their master list at http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/competitions/aha-bjcp-sanctioned-competition/.

2017 Pacific Gravity Brewer of the Year Competition Schedule

Now:                   Entries due for Mayfaire competition, Culver City shop
April, TBD:          Preliminary judging round at Culver City shop
April 20                Awards Ceremony for Los Angeles Belgian Brew Challenge at LA Ale Works
April 21, 22         Mayfaire Judging, Winnetka up in the Valley
July                       Los Angeles County Fair
September          Pacific Brewers Cup
October               California State Homebrew Competition

Competition update – AHA NHC, Jeff Sanders Memorial

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For those of you who have been allocated entry slots for the American Homebrewers Association National Homebrew Competition in the San Diego region, I have successfully negotiated beer transportation to Alesmith Brewery.  You can drop off your entries at the Culver City shop by close of business Tuesday, February 28th.   You can think of this as giving up beer for Lent!

For all other locations, you are on your own to ship entries to the respective sites.  If you miss this deadline, you will need to ship your entries for arrival no later than March 8th.

Also now hitting the radar is the 2nd annual Jeff Sanders Memorial homebrew competition, hosted by Strand Brewers. This small competition celebrates the beers that Jeff loved. Registration and complete details are now available at http://www.jeffsandersmemorial.com/ . This is a limited styles competition, so check the rules carefully. Entries are due by April 1st, and can be left at the Culver City or Southbay brew shops.

 

March 17th:      Drop-off deadline for Los Angeles Belgian Brew Challenge
March 26th:      Judging for Los Angeles Belgian Brew Challenge
April 7th            Mayfaire entries due
April 22nd        Mayfaire Judging
July                     Los Angeles County Fair
September        Pacific Brewers Cup
October              California State Homebrew Competition