Deep Ellum Labor of Lov3 Recap

Beautiful, beautiful trophies. We'll get you next time my pretties!

Well, we survived! Deep Ellum's Labor of Lov3 Homebrew Competition was a blast. We were in fine company Sunday night with all of DFW's most skilled and flat-out craziest home brewers. We arrived at about 3:45pm, well ahead of the 6pm start time, and set up our meager display. Once we were established, we cruised around the brewery to chat with and sample some of the other brewer's ales. We quickly learned that we're going to have to step it up next year!

Snazzy banner!

Deep Ellum should have the winners of each category announced this week, so check back if you're interested. While we walked away empty handed, we did get to try most of the category winners' beer. The overall best in show and the beer that will be brewed on Deep Ellum's 30 barrel system next summer comes from Intrinsic Brewing (check them out on Facebook). They made a honey basil hefeweizen that was just phenomenal. Congratulations guys, and we look forward to drinking it again next year!

Announcing the winners in each category

Aside from the camaraderie among the fine brewers of North Texas, the best thing about the festival was having complete strangers try my beer and tell me they liked it. As a homebrewer, most of the time I brew for myself and my wife. We brew what we like to drink, and every now and then we try something new just to see how it turns out.

Getting ready to pour some beer!

However, I felt a new pride on Sunday when I got to pour my beer into a person's glass, tell them all about it, and have them honestly say they loved it. Each guest Sunday evening was given a wooden coin to give to the brewer that made their favorite beer. While we were definitely one of the smaller entrants and only received 8 coins, I can tell you that those 8 people's opinion means worlds to us. That's 8 people who tried our beer and decided they liked it better than all the contest winners and all the folks who have been at this far longer. To you folks who gave us your vote of confidence, we sincerely thank you. You made our night unforgettable.

Well, now that our homebrew is all gone, it's time to start a new batch or three. This fall will be a busy brewing season, and we have a lot of ideas coming down the pipeline. We will be establishing our house pale ale recipe, a blueberry variant of that recipe, pumpkin ale, porters, stouts, and all the fall & winter favorites. I will post one of our brew sessions soon for those of you interested in the process.

Til next time,
David & Amanda

Today's Main Break: Over 1.2 Million Americans call themselves homebrewers according to the American Homebrewers Association! That's a lotta beer!