Great Taste of Cottage Grove 2014 – Homebrew Brown Ale Results

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.