Two for the Show

To the NHC, post haste!

Today I sent my two beers, Hobson's Choice (saison) and Plunder (Belgian Dubbel) to the National Homebrewer's Competition. Both were partial mashes, with Hobson's Choice being a one-gallon batch and Plunder being a 5-gallon batch. I tried both beers on March 5th and they were good but not as carbonated as I would've liked. I'm sipping on Tis the Saison now and it's a lot more effervescent than Hobson's Choice. The actual judging of the beers doesn't take place until the first week in April, so maybe the beers will age and carbonate in a month's time. I'll know more in mid-April...

I took a look back at my recipes and it looks like I might have followed tastybrew.com's priming calculator when I primed these batches. Normally, I follow Northern Brewer's calculator but I guess at the time I thought I'd try something else just to be safe. Well, it was safe alright. Safe and wrong!

It will be nice to get some feedback on the beer, though.

Bad picture, but here's the Hobson's Choice label

The Plunder Belgian Dubbel label...