The annual Great American Beer Festival (GABF) — a beer drinker’s Mecca. Each year tens of thousands of brewers, aficionados and brew-parazzi descend on Denver, Colorado to taste, evaluate — and of course, compete. For New Mexico homebrewer Ben Miller, 2009 was a lucky year, indeed, as he took home twin wins for the Samuel Adams LongShot competition and the GABF Pro-Am competition.
   
“They announced the LongShot first,” Ben said. “I essentially had a 50/50 chance, but I had a few months to prepare. It was awesome, but I kept it together.”
   
Later in the festival however, when they announced the awards for the Pro-Am, the second win caused his excitement to bubble over.
   
“They announced the awards for third, second . . . and I thought, ‘do I even dare hope?’” he said of possibly winning the Pro-Am. “When they did announce it I just lost it. I think all of the excitement I wanted to show at the LongShot awards came out just then. I was just in a complete haze for the rest of the day. I still kind of can’t believe it.”
   
A relatively new brewer, (he’s been brewing for about two and a half years), Ben pulled off the Denver double crown with two different beers that came about in very different ways.
   
“That was the first time I ever brewed a barleywine,” he said of the beer that took the prize at the LongShot competition. Working loosely with the recipe for barleywine from John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff’s book, Brewing Classic Styles, he formulated a simplified recipe of his own, pitched a good amount of his favorite Wyeast 1272 (American Ale II) and went for it. It was his 100th batch of homebrew, made to commemorate his two-year anniversary of homebrewing.
   
“I let it go for about two weeks and kegged it. It finished really high, which would have been fine but it tasted really sweet, so I figured it was my yeast,” he said. He racked the barleywine back into a carboy and pitched another yeast starter. It didn’t ferment much more, and only changed gravity-wise by a few points, but the resulting beer tasted less sweet.
  
“I didn’t actually drink a whole lot of that first brewing — it was really heavy and really strong,” he said. “But my friends just loved it so I entered it into a bunch of competitions.”
   
When the barleywine scored well in local and regional contests, he decided to take a chance on the LongShot, Boston Beer Company’s annual American Homebrew Contest, which sees some 1,500 entries each year.
   
“I figured they call it a ‘long shot’ for a reason,” he said.
   
The winning Pro-Am beer on the other hand, Herbal Joe’s Columbarillo IPA, had been in the works almost as long as Ben has been brewing.
   
“Ever since batch twenty-two I kind of became obsessed with tweaking that style,” he said of formulating and reformulating the perfect IPA over the course of two years. “The one that ended up winning was actually a simplified version born out of frustration.”
   
The winning brew included a fairly simple grain bill of regular 2-row and a small percentage of 5 °L crystal malt. He chose  Columbus and Amarillo hops and mashed in at 146 °F (63 °C) to make it dry. He liked the results enough to enter it into the local Enchanted Brewing Challenge at Albuquerque’s Chama River Brewing Company. Head Brewer Jeff Erway chose the IPA as the winner and brewed the recipe commercially, as well as collaborated with Ben to enter the GABF Pro-Am competition.  
   
So what’s next for this winning homebrewer and BJCP judge? More homebrewing — and maybe even a brewing career.
   
“I definitely would like to open up a brewpub,” he said, however, “I still feel like I’m kind of new and want to still enjoy the homebrew phase.”

    Editor’s note: Ben’s barleywine will be available as part of Samuel Adams’ LongShot variety six-pack, in stores in April.  

Recipes:

Herbal Joe's Columbarillo IPA

(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)

OG = 1.069

FG = 1.013

IBU = 114.5 SRM 6.77  ABV = 7.3 %

(assumes 80% efficiency)

Ingredients

12.86 lbs. (5.83 kg) American 2-row

0.71 lbs. (0.32 kg) Crystal 15

1.1 oz. (30 g) Columbus (Pellets, 14 %AA) boiled 60 min.

0.4 oz. (10 g) Columbus (Pellets, 14 %AA) boiled 30 min.

0.4 oz. (10 g) Simcoe (Pellets, 11 %AA) boiled 30 min.

1.4 oz. (40 g) Columbus (Pellets, 14 %AA) boiled 1 min.

1.4 oz. (40 g) Amarillo (Pellets, 8.5 %AA) boiled 1 min.

1.4 oz. (40 g) Columbus (Pellets, 14 %AA) used as dryhop.

1.4 oz. (40 g) Amarillo (Pellets, 7 %AA) used as dry hop.

1.4 oz. (40 g) Simcoe (Pellets, 4.75 %AA) used as dryhop.

0.71 tsp. Whirlfloc boiled 10 minutes. (not included incalculations)

0.71 tsp. Wyeast nutrient boiled 5 min. (not included incalculations)

0.71 tsp. Foam control boiled 1 min. (not included incalculations)

Wyeast 1272 American Ale II

Step by step

Mash at 148 °F (64 °C). Boil 90 minutes following the hopping schedule in the ingredients list. Chill the wort to pitching temperatures and pitch the yeast. Ferment at 64 °F (18 °C) 1 day, 66 °F (19 °C) for five days, and 72 °F (22 °C) until done. Dry hop at 72 °F (22 °C). Do not chill until kegged.

Batch 100 Barleywine

(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)

OG = 1.111

FG = 1.023

IBU = 138.9  SRM 17.72  ABV = 11.8 %

(assumes 80% efficiency)

Ingredients

15.33 lbs. (6.96kg) American 2-row malt

1.33 lbs. (0.60 kg) German 2-row Pils malt

1.00 lbs. (0.45 kg) crystal malt (60 °L)

0.33 lbs. (0.15 kg) Belgian Special B malt

0.33 lbs. (0.15 kg) American Victory malt

1.33 lbs. (0.60 kg) white table sugar (Sucrose)

2.0 oz. (56 g) Magnum hop pellets (13.1 % AA) (90 min.)

0.3 oz. (9 g) Chinook hop pellets (12 % AA) (90 min.)

0.7 oz. (18 g) Northern Brewer hop pellets (8.00 % AA) (15 min.)

0.7 oz. (18 g) Chinook hop pellets (12 % AA) (0.01 min.

1.0 oz. (28 g) Amarillo hop pellets (8.50 % AA) (0.01 min.)

1.0 oz. (28 g) Centennial hop pellets (8 % AA) (0.01 min.)

1.3 oz. (37 g) Chinook hop pellets (12 % AA) (dry hop)

1.3 oz. (37 g) Amarillo hop pellets (7 % AA) (dry hop)

1.3 oz. (37 g) Columbus hop pellets (15.00 % AA) (dry hop)

0.67 tsp. Whirlfloctablet boiled 10 minutes. (not included incalculations)

0.33 tsp. Wyeastnutrient boiled 5 minutes. (not included incalculations)

0.33 tsp. Foamcontrol boiled 5 minutes. (not included incalculations)

Wyeast 1272 American Ale II yeast

Step by step

Mash at 149 °F (65 °C) for 90 minutes. Boil 120 minutes, following the hopping schedule in the ingredients list. Chill to 64 °C (18 °C) Pitch at the yeast and raise to 70 °F (21 °C) by the end of fermentation.