BaltiBrew wins its first homebrew competition!

Well folks, the effort we put into making that Ginger Snap Cookie ale a couple months ago has paid off. We got together as a club after the Baltimore Washington Monument Holiday Lighting at co-founder Paul Capestany's excellent home this past Thursday to taste the versions of the beer, and decided upon the slightly less attenuated version fermented at co-founder Kevin Berry's house.

At last night's Free State Homebrewer's Guild Holiday Party, we took first place in the annual hedonistic homebrew competition!!!

For a very young club, in its first year as a guild member this is a big deal, and some of you helped make it possible. We'd LOVE to have more of you involved next year.

The guild represents the collective interests of all of the associated homebrew clubs all over the state of Maryland. As members of the guild our members receive a 10% discount at the two better homebrew shops in the state — Thirsty Brewer, and MDHB — and the club is eligible to take part in a number of guild events. There's an annual picnic at Patapsco State Park in the summer, the Zymurnauts Crab Feast in September, Mashout — a camping trip to Western Maryland with campsite brewing — in August, and most spectacularly, the annual holiday party held within the Clipper City Brewery.

The holiday party involves support of a variety of charities through donations and fund raising events held during the festivities — a raffle, silent auction, and the hedonistic homebrew competition. This competition involves a different style of judging from most homebrew contests. Instead of judging to style, those attending the event submit a single vote for their favorite beer served at the party. BaltiBrew's Ginger Snap Cookie won by a margin of three votes over about 25 other beers. No small feat for a club that barely boasts 10 members.

Kevin, Ryan D, Paul, and I collectively believed that our beer was a winner, and we know that our triumph makes a big splash in the eyes of the guild. Remember, this competition lets the rest of the clubs — and more importantly US — know that OUR beer was the favorite at a party full of beer afficionados.

For our efforts, we won a box of holiday themed beers hand-selected by Guild President, Les White — some from his personal collection. So here's where you come in:

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Now a bit more about us and the Guild:

As guild representative, I attend a meeting every other month to represent YOUR interests as a club taking part in the guild. In the first meeting I attended back in July, we spoke about the upcoming holiday party and it was BaltiBrew that took the bold step to propose the Indian/Mediterranean dinner theme that was served. There were some representatives of other clubs who were nervous about this. To our great credit, this was also the first year there were no leftovers to be carted home.

Guild events are excellent opportunities to network, learn more about beer, wine, mead, and brewing in general, and also to get involved in the friendly competitions that help us to check our progress as brewers.

We are the youngest, most diverse, most tech-savvy, design-forward club in the guild, and we need to make sure we show all of that off in addition to our skills as brewers. Next year it's our goal to have as many members in attendance as possible, and more beers entered into the competition. Kevin and I attended and were the lone representatives of BaltiBrew despite also belonging to other clubs in the guild. With one of our club's stated goals being to avoid being yet another club composed mostly of older white dudes, we need to make sure it's not just the older white dudes in our club showing up at guild events.

Despite the newness of our club, we're definitely already making some big waves. Let's keep it up.