johnlittle.com

Check out the CBI Bottle Shipping System designed for 12 oz longneck or standard 22 oz bottles.

I continue to very slowly move stuff over from my old blog at resipsaloquitur.auburnbrewclub.org. I just don’t spend as much time behind the computer nowadays. I don’t think I’ll be entering any more homebrew competitions, but I didn’t want to lose this info in the shuffle cuz it took me a long time to put it together over a few years time. I’m sure I missed a few and might update them if I ever spend the time looking through my files.

Two of these were my favorite: (i) a Cranberry Kolsch at the 2005 Music City Brewoff. This was my first ever award, and Priscilla and I drove straight home from Nashville to show the kids, then the next morning to my grandparents’ house in Athens, Ala. to show them.. I was so happy to have gotten a ribbon at all, and a blue one at that! Thanks to Todd Swearingen and John Tipton for their advice on that one, and (ii) a Best of Show American Barleywine at the Blue Ridge Brew Off in North Carolina in 2006. I remember Tom Meier on the phone with someone from BRBO at an RCB Big Brew announcing the results to us… I just couldn’t believe him when he said it.. I kept thinking the phone line was dead and he was messing with us.. it was surreal when it dawned on me he wasn’t kidding.. I jumped in the air.

Brewing through the BJCP and entering everything in multiple comps was alot of work (frustrating at times), alot of fun, and very educational. If you’re a homebrewer, you should give it a try!

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res ipsa loquitur (rayz ip-sah loh-quit-her)
n. Latin for “the thing speaks for itself”

Listed below are beers I’ve brewed that have received at least a 30 in BJCP sanctioned competitions. I’ve made it a long term goal to get at least a 30 for every BJCP style, indicating that the beer was “Very Good (Generally within style parameters, some minor flaws).” This is also in pursuit of completing the Brewing Program for Mastering World Beer Styles. Of course, I always hope they score even better, with a score of 38-44 indicating the beer was “Excellent (Exemplifies style well, requires minor fine-tuning)” and a score of 45-50 indicating the beer was “Outstanding (World-class example of style).”

I hope to eventually post all the recipes of the beers that have done well.
Read more…

posting this left over from resipsaloquitur.auburnbrewclub.org… just posting this because I don’t want to lose it. I’ll update the links sometime and do a new About page.

**** Last update June 2008

I love homebrewing. It is my only hobby, and I find that piddling around in the brewery, sitting in the recliner flipping back and forth between homebrewing books, planning my next brews or equipment tweaks are some of the only things that really take me away from work at the end of the day.

First Craft Beers
I was first introduced to craft beer in 2003 by a friend who lives in Memphis. He and I were hooked on the MMORPG game, Star Wars Galaxies, and used to talk to each other with headsets and microphones while playing. He’d always tell me what beer he was drinking, and it was always a good gourmet beer. He introduced me to ratebeer.com, which lists thousands of beers and allows users to rate and comment on the beers. I decided to give good beer a try and went to the Whip Inn in Austin, which carries about 400 different brands of beer, and began to pull singles off the shelf. I didn’t know what I was buying, I just wanted to get a variety of things. Each night, I’d get a few out of the fridge and look them up on ratebeer.com to learn what exactly it was I was drinking. I don’t think I would’ve ever been able to discern choclate, plum, banana, raisen, biscuity, fruity, citrusy, nutty, toffee or any other flavors without the power of suggestion I found on that site. I was immediately hooked. Later my friend kept talking to me about his interest in homebrewing. I was ambivalent at first but kept the idea in the back of my head. We joked about creating Star Wars themed beers and cool labels… Lokian Wild Wheat Ale, for example. And just to clarify, I’m not a Star Wars nerd, but the game was fun for a while after it first came out.

First Homebrew
I attended my first homebrew club meeting in 2004, that of the Louisville Area Grain and Extract Research Society (LAGERS). It was incredible. I loved the homebrew, and it wasn’t long before I went to the local homebrew shop and bought my first brewing equipment. (I still use some of this equipment, but my brewery has come a long way since then.) One of the guys in the homebrew club invited me to come over to his house for a brewday on a weekend soon afterward, and I brewed my first batch, an extract batch with steeped specialty grains. After bottling that batch, I just stored it away for a while, and around this time we relocated to Alabama for work reasons.

Rocket City Brewers
Right away, I discovered the Rocket City Brewers in Huntsville, a very active club with over 40 active homebrewers. The club has won Mid-South Homebrew Club of the Year several times. I began to attend their monthly meetings and received an amazing education at each meeting. Their format of tasting one homebrew at a time, with extensive discussion of each, including a discussion of the BJCP style guidelines where appropriate was very valuable to me over the next 2 years. I immediately upgraded to all grain brewing and have brewed somewhere in the neighborhood of 83 different beer, mead and cider styles (as of June, 2008). My original goal was to not brew the same style twice and to make my way through the BJCP styles until I had brewed them all, but I fell off the wagon somewhere around batch #77. Each new style has been a real educational experience for me. Some of them have accidentally turned out quite good too!! I got involved in entering the Mid-South Homebrew Series competitions, together with the other RCB brewers, and have managed to get lucky and win a few ribbons. The competitions have been exciting and have encouraged me to brew more often and to brew different styles.

Auburn Brew Club
I moved to Auburn in May, 2007. There wasn’t a homebrew club here; and, after asking around, I wasn’t having any luck getting any names. I was beginning to get worried, because there’s nothing like getting together regularly with good hombrewing friends. So I put up a website, registered the club with the AHA, and posted messages about the club on the brewboard, beeradvocate, morebeer and northernbrewer. That helped tremedously. The club has 20 active brewers so far (as of June, 2008) and another 60 or so on our announcement list. We hope to have 30 active brewers by the end of the 2008. I commute to Montgomery for work, and I’ve been listening to podcasts from the Brewing Network and Basic Brewing on the way to and from, which has been very rewarding and makes the drive not only tolerable, but enjoyable.

Brewing and Work
Since 1992, I’ve worked exclusively on healthcare and public health issues. My online resume is here. I became licensed as an attorney in 1997 while pursuing a Master of Science in Public Health and have primarily worked for hospitals, physicians, residential care facilities, medical equipment companies and the like. Over the past few years, because of my involvement in the brewing community, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to answer questions from homebrewers and commercial brewers and retailers. I’ve always tried to maintain a focus on healthcare and public health issues, and I don’t think my forays into alcohol manufacture and serving issues takes me away from my focus. These are public health issues after all. So it has been a real pleasure to answer questions from beer brewers, consumers and sellers. There’s nothing like being able to combine work and the issues you get most excited about.

My Memphis friend never followed through with his interest in hombrewing, but I picked it up and ran with it. It has been a blast!! Thanks, Dany!

Alabama has a long way to go.

A pic of him in front of a small portion of awards won over the years, and a pic of him expressing his opinion about Free the Hops (aka Fuck the Homebrewers).

I received my scoresheets from the 9 entries I submitted to the AHA First Round (South Region) and am happy to add a few entries to my Mastering World Beer Styles attempt records.

• 31.5 – Spiced Belgian Dark Strong (10/28/2007)
• 31.5 – Traditional Bock (11/11/2007)
• 30 – Schwarzbier (12/8/2007)
• 37 – Dark American Lager (11/4/2006) – Third Place
• 40.5 – Black Cherry Cider (8/15/2006) – First Place

Thanks to BrewTa2 for putting together a list of former AHA NHC Ninkasi Award winners and posting it on the Brewing Network.

The Ninkasi Award is the prize given by American Homebrewers Association for the brewer who gains the most points in the second round of the National Homebrew Competition judged at the National Homebrewers Conference. Points are gained from the brewer’s winning entries in the 23 categories of beer and several categories of mead and cider. At least 2 points (1 bronze placement) must come from a beer entry. The winner of the Ninkasi Award is widely considered the best homebrewer of the year.

Ninkasi Award Winners, 1992-2007

1992 – Steve & Christina Daniel
1993 – Walter Dobrowsky
1994 – Michael Byers
1995 – Rhett Rebold
1996 – Tom Bergman & Chas Peterson
1997 – George Fix
1998 – Art Beall
1999 – Tom Plunkard
2000 – Joe Formanek
2001 – Brian Cole
2002 – Curt Hausam
2003 – Curt Hausam
2004 – Jamil Zainasheff
2005 – Paul Long
2006 – Joe Formanek
2007 – Jamil Zainasheff

Here’s a good article about one of the 2007 Sam Adam’s Longshot Competition winners. Thank you Sam Adams for recognizing how important homebrewing is to the craft brewing industry. And congratulations Rodney Kibzey. more info here.

Sun Journal (Lewiston, Maine), April 6, 2008 Sunday, Pg. B5

Give that man a beer
Joe Gray, Chicago Tribune

Rodney Kibzey of Lombard, Ill., got hooked on making beer during a brewery tour in Milwaukee a few years back.

“The aroma hit me,” said Kibzey. For six years he has been home brewing in his garage and entering contests. Last year his efforts paid off in liquid gold.

Kibzey won the Samuel Adams American Homebrew Contest with his weizenbock, a dark, German wheat beer. The beer was recently released as part of Samuel Adams LongShot six-pack, which includes three bottles of Kibzey’s beer, emblazoned with a stylized image of him, and three bottles of a grape pale ale created by Lili Hess, a Sam Adams employee.

Read more…

I was just discussing Stephen’s background with some friends and thought I’d post some pics I have of him to point them to.

Obama, Paul win N. Nevada beer caucus

Posted: 1/19/2008
While many Northern Nevadans argued for their candidate of choice or filled out an official ballot, others cracked a cold one and participated in another type of preference polling: beer caucusing.
At Great Basin Brewery Brewing Co. in Sparks, the rules for caucusing were pretty simple: One ballot for each beer you ordered. In all, about 1,800 voters cast ballots in the Great Nevada Beer Caucus.
And after a week of voting, the Democratic winner was U.S. Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Congressman Ron Paul.
“I think this shows the independence and individuality of those who imbibe in fine American beer,” said Bonda Young, co-owner and Nevada Beer Caucus chairwoman.
Both winners were ahead all week, said spokesman Don Vetter. He said that while caucuses generally attract political groupies, this caucus probably better represented the average, non-political person’s vote.
Great Basin plans to hold another beer vote this fall for the general election, Vetter said.