Gold Medal – Three Floyds Broo Doo
Silver Medal – Third Tier Pick Your Own
Bronze Medal – Town Hall Fresh 100
Other Participants – Surly Wet, Deschutes Chasin Freshies
Board of Director Vote
1. Three Floyds Broo Doo
2. Minneaplis Town Hall
3. Surly Wet
4. Chasin Freshies
5. Third Tier Pick Your Own
Personal Reaction
Take a look at this article on Wet Hopped beers if you are would like to learn more about the style. Since this beer is brewed with hops picked right off the vine, the key is to drink this beer as fresh as possible. I want to address the age of these beers, not to make excuses, but just to level the playing field a bit. The BrooDoo had hit the shelves the week of the event. The Town Hall brew and Chasin Freshies had been available for 2-3 weeks at the time of the tasting. Wet and Pick Your Own were ready around the same time and were both 4-5 weeks old at the time of tasting.
With that said, it was not even close, Broo Doo was just bursting with freshness and absolutely amazing. That beer is what this style is all about. It received a perfect 5 out of 5 first place votes from the Board of Directors. The other 4 beers were really interchangeable to me. All of them had some life from the fresh hops, but none danced on my palate like Broo Doo. It was actually quite difficult to rank them because when comparing head to head, certain aspects stood out in each beer. I can say from experience since Pick Your Own is a homebrew we made, this beer is a shell of its former self. This one had mellowed out pretty dramatically, which might explain why it scored so well. The Town Hall beer was actually the only APA so that might explain, why it actually scored a little better for those that arent as big of hop lovers. I had Wet last year and really enjoyed it, but it sounds like the changed the hop profile this year, not for the better. I had Chasin Freshies as my second favorite beer of the day with a bit more balance achieved.
Broo Doo was the Best in Show winner and had the highest score out of all entries for the event.