Results: Pacific Brewers Cup Winners!
Brains & Brawn of HomeBrewing: Couple strikes a winning combination!
Dr. Tricia Gallant and her husband, Jamie, recently won the Pacific Brewers Cup, besting 500 homebrew entries to take the Best of Show with their 2013 Rye-Barrel Aged Old English Ale. With just 3 years of home-brewing experimentation (18 months since converting to all-grain brewing), they seem to have struck a perfect balance when it comes to brew day: Tricia "the brains" applies her talents in the books of style guidelines, water chemistry, techniques and ingredients while Jamie "the brawn" handles sanitization, lifting heavy things, and following Tricia’s directions and calculations from mash-in to fermentation.
Getting up to speed quickly, they’ve brewed up dozens of styles with strong results. Tackling everything from a gentle English Bitters (Gold at PBC), a Schwarzbier (Bronze at PBC) to their adventurous 8 gallon rye and bourbon barrel efforts that took, what Jamie referred to as, "two crazy Saturdays producing 4 x 5 gallon brews each day". The hard work seems to have paid off, netting 2 Golds, 1 Silver and 1 Bronze for bourbon barrel beers, and now this impressive rye barrel Gold and BOS! In total, since deciding to take brewing for competitions seriously they’ve entered 4 competitions and won 1 Best of Show, 4 Gold Medals, 2 Silver Medals and 2 Bronze Medals in a variety of BJCP styles. About winning Best of Show Tricia said, "We're both honored and excited! Having this prize (conical fermenter) will definitely make our next barrel project easier to manage!"
Recipe for success? At PBC they not only won Best of Show for their Category 22C Wood Aged brew, they were also the Highest Point Homebrewers. They credit their recent brewing accolades and accomplishments to a strict regiment of brewing only recipes from scratch (no clones), referencing indispensable brewing books from Strong, Palmer and Daniels, the BJCP style guidelines, 3 years of great education and support from George and the team at North Park’s The Homebrewer, and being active in a strong home brew club, the Mash Heads. Other Mash Heads entries won Gold, Silver and Honourable Mention in the PBC competition.
Cleaning up! Brewing at home is not the only hobby that they’ve taken up a notch since relocating to the US from Canada. Expanding on their brewing creativity, they started using their homebrew byproducts in a commercial effort called the Beer Can Soap Company. Repurposing home-brewed beer, spent hops and grains, they handcraft some very cool soap products. And, as you’d expect, the 5 different beer inspired and ingredient-infused soaps make the shape of a full-sized beer can.
We look forward to many more exciting brews from this couple. And check out their soap company (www.beercansoap.com) if you’re interested in washing with some Award Winning beers!