The Competition was Haunting
In October Motor Row Brewing hosted Spooky Brew a home brewers competition for the Beer Judge Certification Program in affiliation with the American Homebrewers Association.
This full day competition involved a couple dozen judges hanging out for the day in our loft judging 159 home-brew recipes. The beer was divided into 20 different style categories and each style had 4-5 judges sampling the competing beer.
The judges included our very own brewers, Justin Lincoln worked as a judge in a couple categories and our Brew-master Frank Lassandrello was on the panel of four judges deciding based on the winners of each category who would become best in show.
After a day of delicious home-brews, MRB brews and beer cheese soup a winner had risen to the top. His prize, to scale up and brew his recipe in our brewery with our team.
Crimson Vienna Takes the Lead
The winning brew was a Vienna Lager by Jeff Landers! The beer he entered is phenomenal and we were so exited to get it scaled up and on tap at MRB.
Jeff’s recipe called for select German malts and Hallertau Mittelfruh hops. Brewmaster Frank was met with the math challenge of scaling this home-brew from a 5 gallon batch up to a 300 gallon project. After careful planning and a couple brew day visits from Jeff our Vienna was ready to ferment.
Crimson Vienna quickly has become a favorite here in our taproom. This beer is a smooth mid-malt that is flavorful and easy to drink. Going from an in house home-brew competition to taproom brew was a new project for us and we’re definitely looking forward to doing this again in the future.
Come by while Crimson Vienna is on draft, CHEERS!
