Hello Fellow Home Brewers,
The 14th Annual Music City Brew Off – ‘ New Face, New Place’ has concluded and a great number of firsts for our annual event. Our first ever hotel event went off with great success and want to thank our special guest John Palmer, all the volunteer judges, stewards and staff, all the regional clubs who came for the club crawl and especially our very generous sponsors who made our raffle the best yet. We had a record number of entries this year at 401 including 7 HopGod Challenge Entries, up 155 over last year. We judged 45 Flights and awarded 28 1-3 in 24 BJCP Categories and awarded as follows:
Best of Meads: Vern Wolff of the Rocket City Brewers 24C – ‘Apple Blossom True Mead ,
Best of Ciders: John Tipton of the Rocket City Brewers 28B ‘Fruit Cider’
Best of Show: Guy Beck of the Brewmasters of Alpharetta 3A ‘Nearly Perfect Vienna Lager’
HopGod Challenge: Phil Kane of the Bluff City Brewers – ‘ 5 Times in a Row’
Congratulations to all the winners this year and all results can be found on our website. Score sheets will be mailed out by the end of the week, we will have to order a few more ribbons because of the extra awarded categories but winners that have not received their ribbons will be notified when to expect them. BJCP judge points will be posted no later than Sunday October 18th to the BJCP website.
I want to again thank our special guest John Palmer on his very informative talk on Ph and Residual Alkalinity after our ‘Beer Buffet Dinner’ as well as anchoring the judging in the largest two Categories of the contest; American Pale Ales (31) Entries and Specialty Beers (24) Entries. Was also great not to have our special guest pass out in a booth or table at the hotel, sorry Jamil.
I want to personally thank all the clubs who participated in the First ever ‘Music City Club Crawl’ which turned out to be such and excellent success. Participating clubs included the Antioch Sud Suckers, Clarksville Carboys, Mid-State Brew Crew, The Barley Mob, Bluff City Brewers, Insert Name Here Brew Club, Music City Brewers and Corsair Artisan Micro-Distillery. There were well over 50 beers available for the Club Crawl, but many didn’t even make it tapping, which was probably a good thing. Great thanks goes to Liz Snyder for her efforts in organizing and setting up the Club Crawl Room, excellent job Liz. Oh and we should never forget that even with all the people, over a 100, and only two bowls of snacks no one no matter how drunk they get, no one will ever eat more than one stale nasty pretzel before just giving up on snacks altogether as proven by the full bowl of nasty stale pretzels still left at the end of the night, yuck.
Our ‘ Brew-N-Greet’ should have been named the ‘The Greet N Blown Away Brew as it was shut down due to tornado warnings, just after mash in unfortunately. But plans are already underway to brew the Imperial Pilsner Recipe from John Palmer in the next few weeks possibly for ‘Teach a Friend To Homebrew Day’ so as it to be ready for next years event.
The Music City Pub Crawl was another first as we had over 50 participants riding in three buses/vans and attending (3) local favorites of Nashville Boscos of Hillsboro Village, Blackstone and Big River downtown. Thanks to Karen Lassiter, Adam Hargrove and Doug Williams of the MCB for their efforts in making that a great success.
I want to also extend my greatest thanks to all the volunteer stewards and judges this year event who without we could not do this event. Special thanks Travis Hixon of Blackstone Brewing and Chuck Skypeck of Boscos/Ghost River Brewing for their help in the judging. Also want to recognize our Best of Show Judges Phil Farrel Grand Master 1, Graham Cox Master, Paul Moss National and Tony Aiken Certified for the strong efforts in whittling down a 26 entry field to come up with our Best of Show.
My personal thanks goes out to all the members of the Music City Brewers who helped in all the various ways possible in making this a successful year. Extra Special Thanks goes to Jonathan Adams for all his work on getting sponsors, organizing the beer dinner and as Communications Director getting the information out there to all the participants and Clubs. For this he has been awarded the MCB Member of the Competition and will get a 1 year Membership to the AHA for his efforts, thanks BIG JOHN! Also for a close second in the running was Jim Craig who single handedly became the Head Cellarman at the last moment with no previous experience and took over the job like it was second nature, great job Jim. The Grey Hair Award needs to go to our President Bill Russell for keeping the entire event going smoothly amongst the chaos of the weekend, so thanks Bill, it is time to relax a bit.
Finally want to give a great big shout out to our sponsors this year especially Rebel Brewer for their more than generous contribution to our prizes and also great raffle gifts including a refractometer and stir plate set up, as well as our receiving point for entries, thanks much to Tom Gentry for his great support. Also want to thank MCB members Steve Johnson for his generous contribution to the Raffle of the Blickman Stainless Steel Burner and stand and Phil Snyder for his contribution of a inline aerator built all out of stainless steel with tri-clover clamps and site glass, nice job Phil. To all our other sponsors thanks again and here they all are:
Alltech Lexington Brewing Company
Big River Brewing
Blackstone Brewery
Boscos Brewing
The Brewing Network
Brewmasters Warehouse
Corsair Artisan Micro-Distillery
Flying Dog Brewery
Ghost River Brewing
Grand Cru Wine and Spirits
Great Divide Brewing
Hops Direct
Hop Union
Millers Honey
North Country Malt Supply
Rebel Brewer
Sierra Nevada Brewing Company
Stone Brewing Company
Tennessee Car and Van Rental
Terrapin Brewing Company
Victory Brewing Company
West Meade Wine and Liquor Mart
White Labs
Worm’s Way
Wyeast
Beer Contest Database (Online program used for the competition)
Holiday Inn Select Opryland
LT Saloon’s Professor Good Ales Beer Journal
Tony Aiken and the ‘Brewers of Central Kentucky’
Jonathan Adams
Steve Johnson
Bill Russel
Mike Shew
Phil Snyder
Vista Vision EnterprisesOnce again thanks to all and hope to see you all here next year.
Until then…
May The Hops Be With You,
Tom Vista
Music City Brew Off Coordinator