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morning i crawled out of bed not knowing which way is up i guess checking out miley cyrus on snl when i had to be up around 7am may not have been the best choice oh and the stout to keep me up during her performance i grabbed a quick breakfast with much coffee included and headed back to mystery brewing who was our host both days of the competition i was really excited when i saw the morning table assignments pilsners which sadly i do not remember very many nc brewed pilsners i have had before this day while judging through the entries i realized how big of a mistake this was there were many great pilsners that after it was all said and done i realized were available year round from some of the best breweries in the state i guess i have some catching up to do the quality and accuracy to style some of these beers had was indescribable a very eye opening experience what was next to follow though i thought i was already free from this pleasure the afternoon session was ipa s just like the start of my day hardly just 24 hours ago and there were 48 entries from breweries around the state the homebrew numbers were barely half of that there were a few extra sets of judges but that didn t help much at all coming down to the mini best of show looking at the 9 beers in front of us they all seemed identical in appearance several of the beers seemed to use nearly identical recipes i mean i don t know what was in them but the flavor and aroma were so similar that i thought my palate and nose were just broken the top 3 again were very difficult to come across they were the best of the best and again we go into best of show i thought judging best of show for homebrew was difficult i ve done it a few times since i received my bjcp rank but nothing could have prepared me for this this was not only my very first time judging commercial beer in a competition but my first time doing best of show in one as well talk about trying to find the best diamond in a sea of them it came down to the smallest details about each beer 23 set down in front of us and 3 selected as the best in nc the pressure was really on the results are linked above but these 3 beers from 3rd to 1st are the ones who went above and beyond this year also that pilsner that i was really embarrassed i never drank and is available year round from one of my favorite nc breweries umm yeah i should probably head to the store take a look at the list and drink some of the greatest beers nc has to offer edit information from the press release we had a record number of entries in both homebrewer 191 and commercial 362 categories we couldn t have done it without your hard work and support you can find all the results here www ncbeer org brewerscup and a press release is attached the top winners will be on display october 15 25 at the state fair in the education building cheers nc brewers cup the session 104 i am awake now october 2 2015 october 6 2015 allen huerta 2015 beer blogging friday the session leave a comment after a late night rambling session and passing out moments within hitting the submit button i came into realization that i may have started going somewhere but did not finish what i started or really even have recollection of where i was going but one thing still stands but with open eyes ones thirsts for knowledge with knowledge one seeks experience and with experience one realizes how little they really know and to some that is a problem that they must reconcile me during my time in los angeles actually when i was leaving the city is when i started my blog it was something i did to learn more about beer and share my adventures all of my post still sit over at the old url but the images that i think made them special all went away one day it kind of broke my heart not that they were great post or great pictures but a piece of what connected me to the beer world was forever taken away when i first heard about the session i was honestly really excited about it it introduced me to a lot of new writers and friends it showed me there was a lot more out there that i had to learn it is kind of what grounded me from the never ending spiral of badge and whale hunting many others that have come after me had similar experiences in both participating and reading would it do those of the future a disservice to discontinue the session quite possibly there are many new groups of writers out there i wonder if they have noticed the session or if they thought it was an exclusive club on a quick glance just based on the names involved i know some do not realize but if you know a name or two of the beer world writers brewers drinkers enthusiast not going to lie i knew about the session a few months before i first contributed it was kind of that feeling that kept me from posting earlier not that the club seemed intimidating it was always very welcoming but trying to find out how i could fit into it or maybe they just aren t interested there is no way to really tell if it were to end would another group pick up where it left off is it a matter of the topics becoming too deep do we just need a break a lot of people went on without posting for a long time and picked up where they left off like nothing happened i guess that is the freedom of not being paid to do something so what should happen i feel we should keep it going it was a while before i last contributed when i saw there was no host just a few months ago and made something up on the fly this last month the host was not even sure she was capable of hosting until she got some annoying little bug in her ear and this month well it could not die just yet a lot of people look to blogs for entertainment news ideas learning and various other reasons let us all breathe life back into this project cheers the session 104 i am awake now the session 104 goodbye american beer october 2 2015 october 6 2015 allen huerta 2015 beer blogging friday the session 1 comment no this is not my suicide letter it is also not me swearing off of beer that would just be stupid what this is is a reflection of myself over the past 6 years when i started drinking beer i do not remember the exact date but sometime within the next 21 days 6 years ago is when a friend i had in college took me into his home and opened up my eyes to a world that exist outside of the cheap spirits that my college self was drinking as well as the pbr it wasn t too long after that when i received a mr beer kit and my life was changed forev er though mr beer did not last long in my life on thanksgiving morrow 2009 i brewed my first all grain batch of homebrew and the next day i brewed another this may open up your eyes to more of the person i am today explain my views of the beer world and where i see myself i once was the person that i hate today but with open eyes ones thirsts for knowledge with knowledge one seeks experience and with experience one realizes how little they really know and to some that is a problem that they must reconcile when i started homebrewing i may have only tasted 20 different beers at a maximum i went to fred meyer and looked at the selection it was a great one and it has only gotten better but i was completely overwhelmed by the selection my way of combating that was to buy variety packs of beer and there weren t many the first pack i bought was a new belgium folly pack and for anyone who pays attention to me online this should be a red flag to the origins of my passionate and dedicated self i wish i remembered all 4 of the beers that were in that pack but 3 of the 4 were fat tire 1554 hoptober fat tire was my first look into the world that we call malt i loved it it touched me in a way that a spirit never had before on my fist sip of 1554 i could not contain myself it was the best beer i have ever had ok at this point i have not had many but today it is still my favorite beer i will drink it anywhere anytime anyplace when it came to hoptober i hated it honestly i hated all hoppy beers that i had i would tell everyone about how horrible ipas were and that they never should have been made this is quite funny looking forward in my life one thing i am actually happy about this year new belgium re released hoptober and i was able to actually assess it with a more mature palate sometime around the aha learn to homebrew day 2009 i received a mr beer kit i had a lot of fun with that process but it was by far the worst beer i have ever tasted to that point now i highly endorse mr beer you just need to know what you are doing in order to use it there are a few out there that can give great tips something made me want to continue to make beer but i decided if i was going to do it i was going to do it the way it was meant to be done i did some pretty crappy research and bought a coleman cooler red a turkey fryer and a couple of kits that i thought would fit my taste world wide lager heineken clone an american wheat beer and catch this i was not sure what the difference between milled and un milled was so i bought one kit one way and the other well the other one thing i was happy about is that i found out the grain had to be milled before i brewed with it great right well i had a rolling pin and a gallon zip lock bag for over 10 pounds of grain that was the worst ever but the beer didn t turn out all bad even though i knew nothing about lagering or using lager yeast pretty sure it fermented in the mid 60 s under my kitchen sink the american wheat beer came out horrible i had no idea what happened with that kit probably everything but it did not discourage me i bought two more kits and brewed those just over a week later i hardly had the results back from my first beers which well i would never try to turn around beers that fast today as time went on i bragged to everyone that i made beer and shaved the 13 hairs on my face with a straight razor a co worker wanted to come over and see me brew i showed him what i knew playing it up like i was some kind of expert and eventually went on to teach him how to make beer my first year i probably brewed around 40 batches let s not talk about how many of them were good i stopped using kits about 6 beers in and decided i would write my own recipes because i knew all that there was to know about beer looking at old log books i have no idea why i am telling anyone about this the next year i graduated from college and moved down to los angeles i met a lot of cool people and this is where i lost complete control of myself there was this cool new app called untappd i saw a lot of people using it and i created an account if we were to talk about the capabilities of it back then vs now your head would spin most users today have no idea how hard life was i thought i was cooler than i was so my account went unused for several months but once i did start using it i met so many more people and so many more venues i would travel across and outside of the city to go to specific places to drink as many beers as i could and earn as many badges as possible multiple events rare beers for the sake of saying i had them and places just because my untappd friends were going to be there this was a chapter in my life that i am glad that happened but looking back i am glad something snapped me out of that path remember how i hated all hoppy beers and verbally destroyed all ipa s etc well in this time there was also a period where i drank nothing but ipa s for 2 3 months and i mean a lot of ipa s the ipa that set me down this course dogfish head 120 i was given this beer on a set of a film i was working on and it opened my eyes to what an ipa could be not all ipa s were the initial spitfire and palate wrecking bitterness that gave me the bitter beer face in all of those keystone light commercials i snapped out of this phase right before the inaugural ipa day i realized that a majority of the ipa s i guzzled didn t stand out at all there was no deciding factor between them all i talked about how much i loved them but if it wasn t for untappd i would not have known what i had very few stuck out and to this day they are still classics and renowned by drinkers everywhere because of my hatred of what this style had done to me i opposed everything ipa day was about it was not the style that got me into beer and the fact that they were using it to try to convert the masses which i was so about back then i thought it was unfair to force their ideals on potential new beer drinkers drink what you damn well please day was born though i probably wasn t the first to use that phrase and i still checked into untappd to make sure i got the badge i could not pass that up a few more years past and i was still fighting the good fight converting macro lager drinkers into craft beer drinkers of all kinds when i realized i knew quite a bit but i did not know a lot this is when i started looking into the beer judge certification program not seriously at this point but a few of my friends became judges so i partly looked to them to learn and did a lot of my own research this is also when my homebrewing took a turn for the better i was making some good beers before this but after the number of batches i have done if i didn t improve that would have been ridiculous at this time i was learning about other styles what made them defined them the characteristics of each that is what changed my brewing i made subtle changes or focused in beers that i liked and were good before in order to make them moreso fit into a guideline that quickly led into me doing some serious studying for the exam and with a little forceful encouragement from a friend i took the online entrance exam and the cicerone certified beer server exam the cicerone program was not something i intended on doing but somehow i passed that on my first attempt even the bjcp online entrance exam i knocked out the first time kind of made me regret paying the extra money for three attempts at the exam a major jump in studying and judging competitions took place almost as much so as my crazy la drinking adventures i traveled city to city state to state to judge though this seemed way different from before i was able to experience every cities beers and also their local homebrew scene i guess it paid off due to my decent score on both the bjcp tasting exam and the certified cicerone exam though i messed up a bit too much on the tasting portion so that is coming up for me again i am not sure when the urge to not take beer so seriously hit me i don t mean beer as a whole because that is very important but maybe it was in the craze of all the selling and buying i realized business is business and those decisions do not affect me or the quality of the beer i drink and brew at this time there were only a couple that have broken the hearts of the nation others would follow after me some never cared to begin with but everyone had to make the journey they made on their own with everything above we haven t even started getting into my ...
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