Round 1 of the Garage Brewers Society Iron Brewer competition brought out a record crowd to the November meeting.  Everyone was looking forward to trying the 16 mystery ingredient beers.  Was it possible that someone could make a good beer using Fruity Pebbles?  Iced Oatmeal Cookies?  Tangerines?  Piloncello?  Turns out the answer was yes, for most of the ingredients at least.  16 brewers entered their beers and the rest of the club judged them in a head to head tournament.  The 8 "mystery" ingredients were, tangerines, iced oatmeal cookies, honey smacks, fruity pebbles, frosted shredded wheat, piloncello (mexican brown sugar), maple syrup, and peaches and cream instant oatmeal.  The competitors did not know what they were going to get.  Once they got it, they had to concoct a recipe featuring that ingredient.  They could use it anyway they wanted, from adding it to the mash to dry hopping with it. 

 Most of the beers turned out really good.  As with anything, there were a few exceptions but most of the beers turned out to be pretty good session beers.  One beer really stood out.  Tim Hayes Iced Oatmeal Amber was the surprise of the tournament.  I could not begin to count the number of times I heard "wow, you can really taste the icing".  You can see pictures of Tim mashing the cookies in the Iron Brewer thread in our forum.  http://tinyurl.com/yhmxthm 

 The other winners for each round were as follows; Dave Blue won with his tangerine brown.   Andrew Wall took the honey smacks category with a wheat.  Jim Leabigs Amarillo Dry Hopped Fruity Pebbles Wheat advanced him to the next round.  Bryan Clauser won with Frosted Shredded wheat.  Bob Love's pilocello amber and Kent Critchell's Peaches and Cream Cream both advanced.  And Todd Richardsons Maple Brown also moved on. 

 With the match ups for Round 2 determined, it was time to hand out the ingredients for the next round. Dave Blue and Tim Hayes will be using a blue agave sweetener.  Andrew Wall and Jim Leabig will be going head to head with coconut extract.  Bryan Clauser and Bob Love have anise extract and Todd and Kent will be facing off with peppermint extract.  

 Good luck to all those competing.  I look forward to trying the next round of beers and hopefully we'll have just as many judges as last time.