Pleasantly Surprised!

So the annual picnic was last yesterday afternoon/evening, and damn it was a great time!  Some new faces, and some familiar faces, The weather was great as was the food and of course some excellent home brewed beers.  The time came for those of us in the Iron Brewery Competition to get our entries arranged and ready for the tasting/judging, and of course shortly after the fun began.  There were a total of 16 entries and the roots chosen included carrots, sugar beets, potatoes, ginger, galangal root, and styles varied from IPAs, a stout, a wheat, Flanders Red, and more.  This wasn't your "normal" competition with BJCP forms and standards being followed, this was your basic, "Crowd Favorite" style competition.  Each person in attendance was given a ticket, and each entry had a paper bag associated with it.  After tasting every beer, the 'judges' were to drop your ticket in whichever bag was associated with their favorite beer.  As you may have read in my previous entry, my Ninja was initially a bit heavy on the alcohol flavor at kegging, but this thing just keeps getting better and better!  Even when we got to the party, it seemed to have gotten smoother, and those who had tasted it were already giving me some really good feedback.

So the dust settled, and the votes were tallied.  Cori and Eric were ready to announce the winners, and coming in 3rd was the #2 entry; MINE!  I'm not sure if I've mentioned before, but there are some VERY good brewers in this club, and I was really eager to see what some of the usual heavy hitters were going to bring.  I was definitely not thinking that I would be able to compete with some of these guys and girls, but holy crap!  There's even a guy who is in the process of opening his own brewery in town and I beat him too!  As I said, I was VERY pleasantly surprised, and it was definitely a great time!  I'm looking forward to some more brewing and more brew parties!  So the second place beer was Mike's entry, and I'm sorry Mike, but I don't remember what it was.  And the winner was Adam's Flanders Beet Red.  I'll be honest, if I wasn't voting for my beer, it was going to be Adam's; what can I say, I'm a freak for that style!

Well, all this talk is getting me wanting to brew some beer; off to the homebrew store...

Cheers all...