I posted this on reddit.com/r/homebrewing and it w.as well received so I thought I'd also post it here for posterity
I spent the past few weeks compiling all of the
gold medal winning recipes that are posted on the AHA website from 2000-2014. I
put them in a spreadsheet and calculated the recipes based on percentage of
grains, hops used, OG, FG, mash temp and yeast used.
I'm not sure why I did this to begin with, but
I certainly did learn some things from doing it.
There are some proven gold medal winning
recipes that you can see from some people copying the exact recipe from the
year before and winning gold. It was interesting to watch a category such as
Pale ale or IPA progress in the last 10 years.
Some things I noticed for success in
competitions:
--In hoppy beers, complex hop bills were almost
exclusively used (No single hop beers won)
--Also in hoppy beers, Simcoe and Amarillo are
almost always in the winning beer. Centennial and Cascade a close second. A lot
had all 4.
--For big ABV beers, a complex malt bill was
frequently used (>6 grains)
--Almost every Fruit beer that won used extract
at bottling and not real fruit
--There are certainly categories that seem to
win more often. You have a better chance of getting gold with a RIS than an
American Stout (6 wins vs 1)
--Ingredients matter. For example, british
style beers almost exclusively had british malts, yeast and hops.
--Don't even try to win gold with an IPA/DIPA
because this guy Kelsey McNair or something has won the last 3-4 years with
virtually the same recipe. (Kelsey, you out there? Want to trade? ;))
Anyways, those are things I noticed. I don't
brew a lot of the categories so the subtleties of some are lost on me. Take a
look if you want and I think this could be valuable if people can use this to
determine how to be successful brewing different styles.
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