NHC Amber Ale adventures and NHC shipping

I initially sampled the NHC Amber Ale in mid-February. It went through a remarkable change from the first pulls that I took from the conditioning keg - about three days into the dry hop - to the final beer after 7 days of dry hopping (5 days at 68 degrees, 2 days crashing at 32 degrees).

She sure is beautiful, but with a nasty bite.

The resulting beer was abrasively hoppy and had a vegetal onion, radish flavor. I narrowed the culprit down to some really pungent CTZ hops that I got from Yakima Valley Hops. I don't know why they were so powerful or why they had the effect of making an off-putting beer. Interestingly, I found this forum post on the Brewing Network where someone else had the same experience with YVH CTZ hops. I contacted YVH about this and they sent me another order of hops on the house. Pretty amazing customer service. I will post back with comparative results with the old batch and the new batch. The representative said that they've never gotten an onion flavor from CTZ.

I decided two things for the re-brew dry hop: 1) I would lower the dry hop down to just 48 hours of hop contact at room temperature, then I'd crash the beer overnight, then transfer to a purged, sanitized keg with gelatin and let it condition. That's a total of 72 hours of hop contact. I figured I could capture the flavor that I originally had out of the bright tank at 3 days. 2) I would separate the batch and dry hop one like I did originally and dry hop one differently: Centennial, Simcoe, and Amarillo. No matter what, I'd have a control batch that I could ship if the onion flavor reared its head in the original.

I tasted the beer a day before shipping date and hands down, the one without the Columbus dry hop was the better beer. It still had a bit of the onion because I whirlpooled with two ounces of the hops, but it was completely toned down. Given my experience with the flavor, it would likely drop out by the time the beer was judged on April 4th. The rest of the beer was where I wanted it: great mouthfeel and sweetness from the English crystal malts, blazing amber color, balanced bitterness, and aggressive dry hop aroma of citrus and flowers. The dankness had to take a back seat, but I was just about satisfied with the beer. It definitely isn't where I wanted it to be, but I'm hoping it will score a 30 to get to the next round where I can hone in the flavors.

Competition Amber Ale

Cream Ale, Amber Ale, Kexxmas Ale, Hefeweizen, ready to go

All labeled.

Ready to ship

What do I think my chances are? I put out the best iteration of my Hefeweizen that I've done in awhile, switching back to WLP300 as opposed to burning up the Safbrew WB-06. The flavor was balanced like I wanted it. I could use more banana/clove personally, but it's much closer to say, a Weihenstephaner or Paulaner.

My Cream Ale will be a crap shoot. It has a great flavor. My gambit to bump up the flaked corn and to add a bit of Munich and Biscuit to give it a creamy malt complexity may have played off. It will be up to a judge's subjectivity to say whether it is too far out of the style or it has an edge over a cream ale that is comparatively boring. As far as drinkability, the cream ale finished dry (1.011) and the added malt flavor doesn't prevent having a pint or two or three. I had a few friends over for a True Detective marathon leading up to the finale and they probably put down 3 gallons of the stuff.

And my Kexxxmas Ale, well, I haven't actually had a bottle of this since Christmas, so I don't know exactly how it has aged over the last three months. I think the bold molasses flavor will set it apart from other Christmas ales and the balanced spice profile will give it a good shot of getting 30+. Talking to friends who have had bottles of it recently though, I'm hearing that the carbonation is a little low.