Gold Medal – Third Tier Coffee Oatmeal Cookie
Silver Medal – Attwood Over The Line Brown Ale
Bronze Medal – JerBear Brown Hugs
Other Participants: Third Tier Cognac Oatmeal Cookie & Otsego
Cookie Squasher
Board of Director Votes (includes @jagatelife, @chadmeindl, @Badger_Alum1,
@ahrensjeremy and @rjjturner)
Gold Medal – Third Tier Coffee Oatmeal Cookie
Silver Medal – JerBear Brown Hugs
Bronze Medal – Attwood Over The Line Brown Ale
Analysis
Full disclosure, myself and a fellow Board of Director are Third Tier Brewing so were responsible for 2 of the beers submitted. All brewers decided to vote and were counted
towards the final tally based on an agreement amongst all of us. The two Oatmeal Cookie beers were variations
of the same beer. I am a little surprised
no one else went the coffee route because it was the most obvious addition to
the style I could imagine. The Cognac
version was definitely a mess and needed some time to come together, the coffee
was a crowd favorite. The other three homebrews took more traditional approaches. You could place all three on a spectrum: Brown Hugs was the heaviest and most
boozy, while Squasher came in just a hair thin.
Over The Line fell right in between these two, which is most likely why
it came in second. It had a nice solid
base which carried through the mouth
My Ballot
1) Brown Hugs 2) Coffee Oatmeal Cookie 3) Over the Line 4)
Cognac Oatmeal Cookie 5) Squasher
The Takeaway
We chose Brown Ales because they are a fairly non-descript style. I would almost never buy a brown ale at the store unless it had an interesting twist on the style. That is what we were trying to accomplish with the Oatmeal Cookie variants. I was very impressed with what the traditional approaches were able to accomplish especially Brown Hugs, which had such great balance with the booziness and just a touch a sweet to cut it off in the back of the mouth. Overall, a very impressive showing by all homebrewers.
We chose Brown Ales because they are a fairly non-descript style. I would almost never buy a brown ale at the store unless it had an interesting twist on the style. That is what we were trying to accomplish with the Oatmeal Cookie variants. I was very impressed with what the traditional approaches were able to accomplish especially Brown Hugs, which had such great balance with the booziness and just a touch a sweet to cut it off in the back of the mouth. Overall, a very impressive showing by all homebrewers.
