E.T. Barnette Homebrew Competition 2008

Before	After
There were 31 entries for this year's competition. The Before picture shows the packages that were waiting for us at Silver Gulch. The After picture shows all the entries after than were checked in. The colored dots indicate the judging round (yellow-first, red-second and blue-Best of Show). Of course, what you can't see at this scale are the random numbers assigned each of the entries which are written on the dots.

Pictures of the Judging:

A few years ago our local newspaper did an article about this competition and noted that judging looked more like people taking the SATs than most people's preconceived notions of a beer competition. The two pictures above do kind of look like that don't they? Well, except for the beers etc.
Our steward was once again Charles McNamee. Unfortunately, I did not manage to get a decent picture of him this time.

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The Winners of the 2008 E.T. Barnette Homebrew Competition:

Best of Show:

English Pale Ale:

American Ale:

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Porter:

Stout*:

The Medals:

	Medals for the E.T. Barnette Homebrew Competition: Best of Show - Gold colored medal with a blue and yellow ribbon First Place - Gold colored medal Second Place - Silver colored medal Third Place - Copper colored medal The First, Second and Third Place medals all have dark blue ribbons.
	A more detailed view of a Gold Medal.
The customized medals were produced by the Hermann Werks (http://www.thewerks.net/awards1.html) for a very reasonable cost.

The Battered Bottle Cap Award:

This year's winner of the coveted Battered Bottle Cap Award goes to Andrew Starsiak's Special/Best/Premium Bitter called Sister Dorothy's Bitter (I hope she doesn't have a ruler!). An honorable mention goes to another of Starsiak's beers called Spruce Moose which was a English Barleywine with spruce.

This year's Battered Bottle Cap Award wasn't hilariously funny as some of our past winners such as Guess Which One I Peed In or Poodle Piddle but it still made us chuckle which is all the really matters. So, please start thinking about hilariously funny titles NOW for the 2009 competition. Who knows, there just might be a few more prizes on the line......

The Club Spirit Award: The Club Spirit Award is given to members of homebrew clubs who show their club spirit by entering the E.T. Barnette Homebrew Competition. Three or more separate entrants specifying their respective homebrew club will receive this prestigious award. Individuals with five or more entries and, therefore, have plenty of club spirit all by themselves will also receive the Club Spirit Award. Although seven homebrew clubs were represented in this year's competition only one of them met the above criteria. Entrants from the L.A. Lagers homebrew club will be the only ones to receive this beautiful trophy. Way to go L.A. Lagers! The Spirit Award consists of an expertly crafted trophy made of genuine gold colored plastic and is nearly 13 centimeters tall.

Globetrotter Award: The winner of the 2008 Globetrotter Award is Phil Moore from Columbia, SC. His beers traveled a total of 3,446 miles (5,546 km) as the raven flies (we don't have crows here). The next furthest distances were entries from Mobile, AL (3,437 miles/5,532 km) and Semmes, AL (3,427 miles/5,514 km). One interesting fact I discovered while the furthest traveled entry that both Philadelphia, PA and Tellico Plains, TN are exactly the same distance (within the precision given by the distance calculator) from Fairbanks. Both are 3,268 miles/5,259 km away. The distances were determined using the distance calculator at http://www.indo.com/distance.

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Once again we have bottles of Homebrew Hot Sauce as prizes. The bottles of hot sauces with the custom labels were purchased from Mo Hotta Mo Betta (http://www.mohotta.com). We've been rotating in three different hot sauces for this competition. This year's flavor is Thai Tamarind. We hope you like it as much as we do.

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We received a total of 31 entries from eight states. A total of 55% of the entries came from outside of Alaska. The number of entries by state are summarized below:

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We received a total of 31 entries in the 2008 E.T. Barnette Homebrew Competition. The number of entries in the judged categories are as follows: Bock - 3, English Pale Ale - 3, American Ale - 8, Porter - 5, Stout - 1, India Pale Ale - 7, and Fruit and Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer - 4. Below is a more detailed break down of the number of entries we received of the various beer styles.

Beer Style	No. of Entries
Bock	3
Maibock/Helles Bock	1
Traditional Bock	0
Doppelbock	2
Eisbock	0
English Pale Ale	3
Standard/Ordinary Bitter	0
Special/Best/Premium Bitter	2
Extra Special/Strong Bitter	1
American Ale	8
American Pale Ale	3
American Amber Ale	1
American Brown Ale	4
Porter	5
Robust Porter	2
Brown Porter	2
Baltic Porter	1
Stout	1
Dry Stout	0
Sweet Stout	0
Oatmeal Stout	1
Foreign Extra Stout	0
American Stout	0
Russian Imperial Stout	0
India Pale Ale (IPA)	7
English IPA	0
American IPA	7
Imperial IPA	0
Fruit/Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer	4
Fruit Beer	1
Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer	3

The Styles for the 2009 E.T. Barnette Homebrew Competition will be:

Pilsner (2A. German Pilsner, 2B. Bohemian Pilsner and 2C. Classic American Pilsner)

English Pale Ale (8A. Standard/Ordinary Bitter; 8B. Special/Best/Premium Bitter and 8C. Extra Special/Strong Bitter)

American Ale (10A. American Pale Ale; 10B. American Amber Ale and 10C. American Brown Ale)

Porter (12A. Brown Porter; 12B. Robust Porter and Baltic Porter

Stout (13A. Dry Stout; 13B. Sweet Stout; 13C. Oatmeal Stout; 13D. Foreign Extra Stout; 13E. American Stout; and 13F. Russian Imperial Stout)

India Pale Ale (14A. English IPA; 14B. American IPA and 14C. Imperial IPA)

Fruit/Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer (20. Fruit Beer and 21A. Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer)

As usual all the folks at Silver Gulch Brewing and Bottling Company have been great!

The entries were received by the kind folks at Silver Gulch and they stored them in their nice walk-in cooler. If that were not enough, they also provided us a great place to judge the beers and helped fill our prize cache.

We would like very much to thank all the wonderful folks at Silver Gulch for helping make the E.T. Barnette Homebrew Competition a success.

THANK YOU!!!

We would especially like to thank Glenn Brady. Thank You, Glenn!!!!

 

Prizes for the 2008 E.T. Barnette Homebrew Competition were donated by the following organizations and businesses:

Adnams PLC/Sole Bay Brewery	Laurel Wood Public House and Brewery
American Homebrewers Association	LOGIC, Inc.
Anchor Brewing Company	Manneken-Brussels Imports
Arctic Brewing Supply	Merchant du Vin
Avery Brewing Company	Midnight Sun Brewing Company
Big Sky Brewing Company	Mo Hotta Mo Betta
Boulder Beer Company	Moose's Tooth Brewing Company
Briess Malt & Ingredients Company	New Belgium Brewing Company
Bushwakker Brewing Company	Okells Brewery
Eel River Brewing Company	Port Brewing Company
Firehouse Brewing Company	Pyramid Breweries
Frederic Robinsons Ltd./Unicorn Brewery	Redhook Brewing Company
Fuller, Smith & Turner PLC/Griffin Brewery	Sequoia Brewing Company
Full Sail Brewing Company	Silver Gulch Brewing and Bottling Company
Georgetown Brewing Company	Snake River Brewing Company
Gold Hill Imported Beers and Fine Wines	Siebel Institute of Technology
Goose Island Beer Company	Sierra Nevada Brewing Company
Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant Group	Starr Hill Brewery
Great Divide Brewing Company	Summit Brewing Company
Greene King Brewing Company	Stone Brewing Company
HopUnion	Tree Brewing Company
J.W. Dover & Heartland Vineyards/Black Box Brewing Company	White Labs
Kassik's Kenai Brew Stop	Wild Goose Brewery
Kenai River Brewing Company	Willimantic Brewing Company
Kodiak Island Brewing Company	Wychwood Brewery
Krogh's Restaurant and Brew Pub	Wyeast Laboratories

 

We would very much like to thank to all of the organizations and businesses listed above for their support of the 2008 E.T. Barnette Homebrew Competition!!! Their support has made this competition a success!

We would also like to thank our judges! You folks are great! Thank You!!!

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Last but certainly not least I would like to thank my wife, Chérie. Her organizational and logistical skills are the true key to what has made this competition a success.

She endures my obsessing about every little detail of the competition with finesse and extreme patience.

Chérie works to make this competition a success and she doesn't even like beer. She does all of this because of her love for me.

Thank you, Sweetheart!!!

Below are pictures of the prize packages before we took them to the Post Office to mail them off. Note that number of packages shown here would be quite a bit larger were it not for several local folks who graciously picked up their packages to help save on shipping costs. Shown on the right is Fuggles the cat "helping".

 

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