Before I say anything else, I understand I’m talking about a beer I’ve never tasted.
I was baffled to be scrolling through zymurgy looking at medal winning recipes and seeing the gold medal winning APA used 12 oz of hops total and 6 oz of dry hops in a 6 gallon batch. I immediately went to the bjcp guidelines and looked at the exemplary commercial brews which includes SNPA, Mirror Pond, and Daisy Cutter. Thumbing through Sierra Nevada’s shared recipe and clone recipes of the other 2 they generally contain 3-4 oz of hops.
It must be said the posted recipe uses almost 16 and a half pounds of malt and an efficiency of 59% thus it would be very grainy offering far more balance than one would initially believe when looking at the hop bill.
My confusion here is how a competition holding up snpa et al as prime examples could give gold to a beer that would be so much bigger/bolder in flavor. I’m positive the beer was amazing I’m questioning the value of judgment. I realize the competition isn’t about cloning those style examples but I can’t believe this is a beer that falls within the style guidelines.
Clearly I’m wrong or missing something. There’s just a disconnect between this judgment and the examples held up as most representative of the style.
To the brewer, Jonathan Bacon, I mean absolutely no harm, you did your job very well and have the gold to prove it.
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