The final four of the Iron Brewer competition was last night.  The brewers proved why they were the last men standing as the four beers in the final did not disappoint.  On one side of the bracket we had Tim Hayes vs Jim Leabig in the black pepper category.  Tim did a belgian blonde ale and went up against Jims black pepper rye IPA.  Both beers were done very well.  The blonde had a lot of pepper in the nose and right up front while the Rye IPA had quite a bit of spice on the back end that seemed to increase the more you drank.  The voters spoke and while they really liked the IPA, they thought the black pepper blended a little better on the blonde and Tim moved on to the finals in a closely contested battle.  On the other side of the bracket we had Kent Critchell's terregon blonde up against Bryan Clausers terregon saison.  After much debate as to what the actual flavor of terregon was, the best definition we had was a 'minty, green tea'.   Kents research (re: email blast) paid off as his blonde won and he moved on to the finals. 

 The final mystery ingredient was given out to the last 2 men standing.  They were given 5 pounds of russset potatoes, 1 box of rice, and 4 sweet potatoes.  There was also a couple of restrictions given for the championship round.  1) only 60% of the total fermentables were allowed to come from malted barley.  The rest has to come from the potatoes and rice.  2) No spices could be used for flavoring. 3) no pumpkin beers (not letting them get off that easy with the sweet potatoes.  The competitors have one month to complete their beers.  Check back after the February meeting (Feb 16) to see the results of the finals!  Good luck to both brewers.  May the best beer win.