Whats Blue and Red and a big surprise!?!

I entered a few beers in the BABO Homebrew Competition at the Alameda County Fair. I don't really have much interest in competitions as they require entries to follow pretty strict style guidelines (I'd rather brew "to taste", not "to style") but I thought it would be interesting to get some objective feedback from BJCP certified judges about some of the strengths and weaknesses of my beers. After reading through the descriptions for each style I figured that YPA fit well in class 10A- American Pale Ale**see note below** , ASB fit the profile for 8B- Special/ Best/ Premium Bitter, and La Rouge (which I hadn't even tried yet) would have to go into the broad 16E- Belgian Specialty Beer.

The judging happened last weekend but Kelly and I had better plans, so I just figured I'd wait for the results via mail. But curiosity got the better of me so I went to check the results online, and MUCH to my surprise....

YPA got "Best in Class" for American Ales out of 24 entries, and ASB placed 2nd out of 9 entries for English Pale Ales! La Rouge didn't place, but I'm not surprised after this weekend's first tasting of it.

Check out the Official Results.

I'll post the judges notes for each when I get them, along with pics of the ribbons ; )

**Note: Some folks on BA that are into competitions suggested submitting entries on the bigger side of a given style- hence the choice to enter YPA as a Pale Ale instead of an IPA.... It just barely qualified size-wise as an IPA, so I thought it would stand out more a bit more as a big Pale.**

YPA Scored 35.5. Judges comments Focused on the huge hop aroma but lack of malt backbone or
supporting bitterness.









ASB Scored 33. Both judge seemed to love it, and had nothing but good to say bug good about the malt profile, but couldn't justify a higher score because the hop profile was "too American" and not to style.  I should have entered it as an APA.

La Rouge bombed with meager 27.5, but still took 4th. Comments were encouraging, but both judges were looking for more charachter form the yeast and Brett. I agree, but am hopefull that time will mellow out the Citra hops and let the Brett develop.