Judgement Days Cometh

The next couple of weekends promise to be awash with beer, for the very simple reason that I am judging at competitions on both upcoming Saturdays.

This coming Saturday is the Dominion Cup, Virginia's largest homebrew competition. As well as judging a couple of categories, I have entered 10 beers of my own:

• Bitter
• Best Bitter
• English Pale Ale
• Southern English Brown Ale
• Robust Porter
• Flanders Red
• Belgian Dark Strong Ale
• American IPA
• Specialty Ale - 19th Century Burton Ale
• Specialty Ale - 19th Century Czech Dark Beer

I am quietly confident about a few of these beers, in particular the porter, Burton Ale, and bizarrely enough the American IPA - which I have to admit I brewed mainly to avoid judging the American IPA category. If you've been following Fuggled for a while you'd know that beers hopped with the likes of Chinook, Cascade, and Centennial are not generally speaking my thing. I hopped my IPA with the classic triumvirate of Northern Brewer, Chinook, and Cascade, and I have to admit I am rather happy with the outcome, so much so that I can see me brewing it again at some point. The Burton Ale is my interpretation of the 1877 recipe which was brewed as the International Homebrew Project.

The following Saturday is the Virginia Craft Brewers Festival down at Devils Backbone, part of which is the Virginia Beer Cup. I judged the competition last year, the winner being Devils Backbone's magnificent Schwarzbier. This year's festival looks as though it will be bigger than last year, with more than 30 breweries involved and from what I have heard from the organisers, about 130 beers taking part in the competition. Looking at the list of participating breweries, that promises to be a very difficult task to decide on the beer to succeed the Schwarzbier.