Maduro Homebrew Competition

Sunday, Huck and I attended the Maduro Homebrew Competition at Bx Beer Depot. Maduro is a popular Brown Ale brewed by Cigar City. The requirements for the competition: submit one traditional brown and one altered brown ale.

A few weeks ago, Huck brewed a basic Brown Ale. Once fermentation was complete, he bottled half the brown. I wanted to make a Cinnabon beer. I mixed together Cinnamon, Vanilla, and almond extract. We had no idea how much to add to each bottle, and we winged it. I used 1CC (I used a kitchen syringe) in each bottle. We did half of the leftover beer as the Cinnabon and the other half as Vanilla Coffee.

Huck tried the beers a couple of nights ago and didn’t like them. He actually poured them out. I personally thought they were fine. He gave them to a few of his beer buddies who all agreed it was to style.

When we woke up this morning, he still wasn’t sure if he wanted to enter the beer. He packed them up but told me he still wasn’t sure he’d enter them.

See, this competition was a little different than other beer competition we’ve attended. This was judged by actually brewers. Local Florida Brewers. People Huck idealizes.

The judges included Fran from Tequesta Brewing Company (I’ve known Fran for a while from our regular trips to TBC), Mike from Due South (I met Mike a few weeks ago at our Barley Doll meet-up.)

And Wayne, the head brewer at Cigar City Brewery in Tampa. Cigar City is highly regarded in the craft beer world.

I can understand why he was nervous. We arrived to Bx Beer Depot around 11:30 and Huck turned in his beer. Still thinking it sucked. We entered the Brown Ale and Coffee Vanilla Brown.

The guys judged the beers while we handed out Huck’s AMAZING IPA for the open, peoples choice, category.

Greg and Karl were there today with a Black IPA and a Pumpkin Porter, too.

Holly and I spent most of the day handing out beer while the boys socialized. They like making us do all the work ;)

And then it was time to reveal the winner of the Maduro Brown Competition. Huck had walked next door to grab a sandwich. I called him to hurry back. They called the first place winner right when he was walking in…

My husband won first place!

I think he was in shock. His “crappy beer” won. Wayne from Cigar City told him it was spot on and the best one to style.

We had to make more room around our station for his head!

I was so proud of him. He had the biggest smile on his face the rest of the day.

He won some cash, a Cigar City t-shirt, and a bottle Honey Boo Boo. Now we have two, and we didn’t have to travel across the state to get it!

We hung out until 4PM, and headed home. I had a mountain of laundry to do. I didn’t actually do any of that laundry through. I sat on the couch and didn’t move until it was time for bed. Entertaining a 3 year old all week was hard work.

I’ll be back this week with a recipe. I PROMISE!!

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