I had a great weekend, the highlight of which was the Austin ZEALOTS annual Xmas party and chili cookoff. (The Austin ZEALOTS are the Austin, Texas homebrew club I belong to.) The party is hosted every year by Corey and Angela Martin and is always one of the highlights of the ZEALOTS calendar.

In the March 9, 2009 installment of my blog, I wrote about an attempt at recreating an ancient Sumerian beer, as described in "The Hymn to Ninkasi." Ninkasi was the Sumerian goddess of beer and the poem in her honor was found on 4,000 year old tablets written in cuniform. (See my previous blog entry for more info and a recipe.)

My homebrew club, the Austin ZEALOTS, recently held their homebrew contest, the Homebrew Inquisition. Judging occurred two Saturdays ago (July 18) and this most recent Saturday (July 25). For the past few years, club member Chris Rauschuber has hosted the judging at his house. Our Primary Fermenter, Corey Martin, organized and stored all the entries at his house, then brought them over to Chris's the morning of the judging. We had 210 entries this year, which is more than we had last year. Most of our entries came from within the club.