Get Your Homebrew Ready: Competitions and Homebrew Share

Homebrewers: get your best beers ready, a few local beer businesses are hosting homebrew competitions and beer and recipe swaps in the coming weeks.

First up is Escondido’s Holiday Wine Cellar’s 3rd Annual Homebrew Competition. You might remember last year’s winner, Indra Kunindra Curry Export Stout, which was brewed by Ballast Point and led to homebrewer Alex Tweet landing a job at the brewery. For this year’s winner will be brewedin collaboration with Iron Fist Brewing Company. There’s no entry fee, homebrewers are limited to three entries each and entries must be in by January 30th. So if you’ve got something good ready to go, read all the details here.

Next up is Bottlecraft’s homebrew share and recipe swap. This one isn’t a formal competition, just a friendly bottle share and recipe swap. There’s no charge, just bring some homebrew and recipes to share. It’s happening Wednesday February 15th at 7pm. Check Bottlecraft’s Facebook page for more info as the date nears.

Last but not least, Monkey Paw is hosting their first ever homebrew competition in February. Monkey Paw’s head brewer Derek Freese got his start as a homebrewer (in fact Monkey Paw is his first pro brewing gig). Entries are free and each brewer can enter two different beers. Beers must be delivered to Monkey Paw by February 24th. The winning entry will be brewed at Monkey Paw, check here for all the details.

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Ballast Point Indra Kunindra India-Style Export Stout gets Label Approval

Indra Kunindra Label

Update 9/23/2011: Holiday Wine Cellar posted on their Facebook page that bottles are now available at HWC. I’ve heard rumors bottles may be available at Ballast Point in the future, but have not confirmed that.

Update 9/1/2011: According to Holiday Wine Cellar’s Labor Day newsletter bottles should be released in early October.

I wrote about Ballast Point’s Indra Kunindra India-Style Export Stout, a stout brewed with curry spices, coconut, kaffir lime, cayenne and cumin, a couple months ago when it was first on draft in their tasting room. Indra Kunindra, the winner of Holiday Wine Cellar’s 2nd Annual Homebrew competition last year, seemed to have an uncertain future at the time, the folks at Ballast Point told me they weren’t sure if it would ever get bottled or not. This week Ballast Point got label approval for 22oz bottles of Indra Kunindra, which doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to bottle it, but chances are pretty good the beer will make it into bottles at this point.

Judging by the number of pageviews my previous post on Indra Kunindra received, there seems to be high demand for this beer. Putting it in bottles should help more people try it that can’t make it to one of Ballast Point’s locations.

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