Jumping Back In!

Someone in the local homebrew club posted the deadline for the Western Washington State Fair's homebrew competition this past week. It's July, so like I posted the other day, it's kind of like my brewing new year... My wife knew that I was getting ready to brew, so she encouraged me to brew some beers for the competition.

Motivated by my new plan - to brew smaller batches - I dug out my brew log. As I thumbed through it, I jotted down a few notes. I figured if I was going to brew for the competition, I should start with some styles that had yielded past success. If lagers were going to be in the mix, I would have to get those cranked out first - so that is where I started. 

I decided on a Vienna lager and a German pils. The former was pretty easy, because that recipe has been pretty stable for me for a while now. However, when I was looking for a solid German pils recipe, I was only able to narrow it down to two - I could not figure out which one was the one I had liked better; I decided to try both... So I scaled those down, along with a dark mild recipe.

Armed with four prettty solid starting beers, I headed to my LHBS to purchase all of the ingredients...