Iron Brew 2012 Home Brew Competition

On Saturday, March 24th I was able to participated in the 2012 FOAM Iron Brew competition. The event took place at Haikey Creek Park in Broken Arrow, OK.

Iron Brew is a home brew competition where teams of 2-5 members are given a quantity of ingredients and the teams have to create a recipe and brew the beer during the day. All brewing must take place during the event and the only ingredients that can be used are the ones given to each team.

What makes it really interesting is that included in the ingredients are some "special" ingredients. If the teams are able to use any or all in an effective way, then they are given "bonus" points at the judging that will take place at the June or July FOAM Club meeting.

This year there were 10 teams competing which is the most ever this event has had. The special ingredients that were made available were, rose hips, lemon grass and cardamom.... mmm, can you say potpourri beer?

Anyway, I was a member of Team Flying Dog, which consisted of Jeff Washbourne (Team Captain), Steve Mueller (my brother-in-law), Stephen Handley, William Loyd and myself. We between 9:00AM and 10:00AM and setup our equipment and began to prepare. There was a bustle of activity all around with all the teams and their various equipment configurations being assembled. I was very interested in seeing all the different equipment.

At around 10:30AM all teams where given their ingredients and rules gone over. Then the activity began. Our team proceeded to evaluate all the ingredients and Jeff and I pulled out our portable computers and began formulating recipes. Stephen had brought a good source of reference materials and so Steve, Stephen and William went through a library of recipes looking for anything that might be close to the ingredients that we had.

Finally, we settled on creating an American Brown Ale style, similar to Pete's Wicked Ale. We decided that with the special ingredients that we had this style might work the best. All of the special ingredients have a citrus character attributed when used in beer.

This is the recipe that we finally settled on:
Iron Dog 2012 - American Brown Ale

Malt & Fermentables
12lbs Light Liquid Malt Extract
4lbs American Two-row Pale Malted Barley
1lb 4oz Crystal 60L
1lb Chocolate Malt

Hops
2oz Centennial for 60mins (9.9AA)
1oz East Kent Goldings for 10mins (6.1AA)
and we will dry hop 2oz Cascade for 10days

Yeast
Wyeast American Ale (1056)

Adjuncts
1oz Cardamom for 10min
1oz Lemon Grass for 10min
1oz Rose Hips for 10min

OG: 1.058, FG: 1.015est., SRM: 21 (Brown to Dark Brown), IBU: 33.3, ABV: 6.0%

This was a recipe for 10 gallons. The brew will be divided up among team members and we will be kegging a portion to bring to the FOAM Meeting in June or July for judging. It is currently in the primary and will be racking it over to secondary soon.

I will let you know how our brew fares in the final judging!