I recently entered an American blonde ale in a local home brew competition and in addition entered into NHC. The local competition was about four weeks prior to NHC. The beer took first place in the local competition with a score of 38. At NHC beer only scored a 32. A lot of descriptors used on my score sheet from NHC were stale and sherry notes. I tasted along while reading score sheets and would agree with the evaluation from NHC, but also tasted beer when it was judged in local competition and would agree with their evaluation at the time it was tasted.
I am looking at ways of reducing time exposure to the air post fermentation and when packaging. Currently I am using glass carboy caps. I am auto siphon out of carboy into bottle bucket. I limit splashing and use corn sugar and water mixture for priming.
I do have the capability to keg and use the beer gun for bottling, but had bad luck with the beer gun the first time using it and went away from using it. Not opposed to trying again.
What would I need for a closed transfer to kegs from carboy? I have pin lock kegs.
Would stainless Anvil fermenter or Ss brewtech fermenter be worth the investment for ease of transfer?
Could the carboy cap be letting air in during fermentation and post? Is a bung a better option?
Could this oxidation come from the hot side? Stirring while chilling? Amount of time to chill? Mashing or stale grain?
I have been fighting some aroma and flavor degradation in my hoppier ales and IPAs for a long time. Seems that they peak pretty quick and lose freshness after just a couple of weeks. I’ve made some adjustments to my brew process using some of the advice at the link below. So far, I’ve started pre-boiling my mash water, carefully handling water to avoid aeration, mash cap, using a shorter and less vigorous boil, closed transfer from the fermenter. I’ve also reverted back to natural carbonation (varying levels) to help use the yeast to scrub any residual oxygen once the final product is in the serving vessel (corny keg). This has made a huge difference for me. I have some Brewtan-B on order and that may be the next step for longer freshness and staling prevention.
So, it all matters. Some things make a big difference (like the closed transfer), but the cumulative effect of others can be significant too.
Other thing I thought might be the culprit is my capper. It is the original that came my first beginners kit over 10 years ago. Maybe it’s not making a good deal.
Did they say if those flavors were low or subtle? 32 is still a pretty high score for stale and oxidized. Could be one of the judges was sensitive to it and got some low amounts but didn’t ding you too much? I happen to be really sensitive to oxidation and have to be mindful if I think it’s high and the other judges don’t.
Bottling will be your biggest culprit of course… do you transfer the beer other times? Do you do a secondary or lagering in a different vessel? I noticed a huge improvement in my beers as soon as I stopped doing secondary transfers. I’m sure it works well for some people, but in my experience it was one less time to expose the beer to air, one less risk to screw up the beer with a dirty siphon or a dirty carboy.
Like TeeDub, my beers tend to fade pretty quickly too. Four weeks is a long time in the homebrew world.