Argh! I went to bottle from the keg and 5 bottles in, my keg blew! So my back up keg needed to clear a little out…needless to say, I have now drawn about a quart off and let the keg sit for 2 days and am hoping for the best. 3 clean bottles from Flying Dog, Two Brothers, and Ithaca and all three are different from the other! So these will be used for the upcoming NHC first round and I will need to get a couple more, if I get lucky and advance! Bottling from keg is not always a sure thing…
I had to pull a keg from the fridge so I wouldn’t drain it. Gotta plan ahead. And hope.
I would like to thank everyone for their input.
I’ll throw in one thing that hasn’t been mentioned:
I’ve twice come across high-ranking judges in the second round who first look for sediment before opening the bottle. If it wasn’t there, they said out loud, “counter pressure filled”, and proceeded on the assumption that the beer would be oxidized. Both of these guys really ticked me off, as I felt none of the beers were oxidized, but they wrote it and scored it down.
Because I’m sure that there are more judges like this, I prefer to enter bottle conditioned beers.
I judged Pilsners with a famous person who extrapolated that the beers with sediment weren’t as likely to be oxidized as beers without sediment. I asked him to try to keep that to himself until after the judging so that it wouldn’t influence any opinions.
George cluney?