So just like in 2013 I hadn't brewed in several months leading up to the deadline for the Beehive Brew-Off. I felt the obligation to defend my title so I dusted off the brew gear and got to work. But I didn't want to risk brewing a batch of YES until I had shaken the rust off a bit, so I brewed a batch of Worker Bee. I had planned to follow up pretty quickly with a batch of YES (Young's Extra Special) and then a batch of Brigham's Best. The English Style Pale ale has three subcategories; Ordinary Bitter, Best Bitter and Extra Special Bitter. You can enter a category multiple times but only once per subcategory. Everything went fine with the batch of Worker Bee. Then my sister came into town for a visit and I put off brewing the YES for a week. Then I put it off for another week. Then I finally brewed it with the absolute minimum amount of time I would need to have it ready by the deadline. Brew day starts off fantastic. Beautiful day. Blue sky. Everything is awesome. As soon as I drain the sweet wort into the boil kettle and get up to a boil it starts to drizzle. No biggie, really. But a few minutes later and it's raining. A few minutes later and it's a ****ing monsoon. I did my best but the volume (and therefore overall balance) of the beer is tied to an expected amount of boil off, which I didn't get. That's fine, I can live with a little extra volume and slightly lower abv and bitterness. I followed my normal and trusted fermentation schedule. I keg the beer in time to get it carbonated and bottled, but when I check the gravity it is very high. Expected something around 1.014 but got 1.021. 1.021 is the type of gravity you'd want on a 12%abv Russian Imperial Stout. 1.014 is a highish final gravity for an extra special bitter, but it was supposed to come out to 6.7%abv and I felt like it would be great. At 1.021 it was MUCH sweeter than I had planned and the abv was 5.5% instead of 6.7%. I seriously considered not even entering it as it was very far off from what I wanted and what I felt would be an award winning beer.
