For those who may be behind in blog reading, a while ago I decided to do a little yeast experiment.  I brewed one batch of beer, divided it into three fermenters, and added different yeast to each.  You can read more about the exploits in my previous post - Yeast Experiment: Episode I. I decided to brew a pale ale, since that is a recipe I would like to have as a staple.  Everyone should be able to brew a nice pale ale, right?  This project would give me a good head start on what yeast to use in that staple recipe.  I played around with malts and hops for a while, settling on a recipe heavy in late hop additions.  But I wanted a little more flair in my beer so I added a pound of orange blossom honey at knockout.  For the three yeasts, I used Wyeast 1968, Wyeast 1450, and White Labs 051. I fermented and bottled, and this past week I took three bottles of my yeast experiment over to some friend's house (shout out to Kate and Dave!) to get their...

One of the best things about making your own beer is drinking your own beer.  And, if you are like me, when you drink your own beer, it will either be horrible or the best beer you have ever had in your life.  Ever.  You put your own effort into this beer which you are now drinking.  You want it to be good, and if it is good, in your mind, that is great!  But classifying your beers into one of two categories ("horrible" or "great") is not very helpful.  So, today I want to talk about objectively rating your own beer. There are many ways to rate beers, but a good way I have found is to just use the Beer Judge Certification Program 's method.   They provide a nice score sheet (which the judges use in competition).  I'm not a BJCP judge, but why reinvent the wheel?  The sheet is helpful and can help you be a little more critical of your own beers.  And as an example, I am going to use my IPA which finished up a couple of weeks ...