On Saturday March 12 the 2011 American Homebrewers Association Rally was held at the Stone World Bistro & Gardens in Escondido. Different from other AHA Rally events, a competition was held between homebrewers for the privilege of brewing their winning beer with Stone and a brewery of their choice. Past winners Ken Schmidt and Kelsey McNair were on hand for the event, sampling the 40 entries along with hundreds of fellow AHA members. If you couldn’t make it, check out my 20+ minutes of video event coverage.
Taking the top five vote-getters, a team of Stone judges that included CEO/Co-Founder Greg Koch and Head Brewer Mitch Steele gathered together to pick the winning brew. Half of the field of 40 consisted of pale ales and stouts. Kelsey McNair nearly repeated last year’s win with his American IPA “Hop-Fu!” but was narrowly edged out by Jason Fields’ “Cherry Chocolate Stout”.
Jason and his brewing partner Kevin Sheppard have been brewing the chocolate stout recipe for a few years now but decided to add cherries to mix for their first homebrew competition. Still in shock by their victory, the two forgot their recipe when Mitch Steele asked them what yeast they used in the beer. They assured Mitch the recipe is written down and in the next few weeks will be getting together to brew the winning beer in time for the National Homebrewers Conference being held in San Diego in mid June.
As of Saturday Jason and Kevin are unsure of what brewery they would like to collaborate with so stay tuned for the announcement on the latest Stone collaboration brew.
