I have four beers to enter for each competition:
- Samoset 2009 - my barleywine into which I chucked some dried sweet orange peel
- Black Rose - a very dark Dunkelweizen, almost a wheat stout
- Old Baldy - a 65 IBU American IPA, dry hopped with Challenger
- Experimental Dark Matter - the peat smoked mild
It is the last of those four that is the root of my bafflement, or rather which category to enter it into. Given the style guidelines set out by the BJCP for Mild (11A), a starting OG of 1.052 is too much, though at 4.3% abv the alcohol content is within the given limits, as are the 16 IBUs.
However, given that I used a portion of Peat Smoked Malt in the grist should I enter it in the Smoked Beer Section (22B)? If so, then the question becomes, what is the base style? I have played with the idea that the base style closest to the beer I produced is a Robust Porter (12B), but the hopping is wrong for the BJCP's interpretation of Porter, though ideal for Mild.
There is of course the final option, to enter the beer in category 23, the anything goes world of "specialty beer". The problem there is that I am not convinced that my beer is that much of a specialty. Historically speaking we all know that "mild" doesn't refer to the alcoholic strength of a beer, but rather it was a young beer that hadn't yet become "stale" or "old", so from my understanding of Mild, that's exactly what I have made, just with a dash of lovely peat smokiness in there as well.
What to do, what to do?
Judges won't know the OG of the beer, so it will work in the mild category HOWEVER if the smoke dominates AT ALL it will be marked down for being in the wrong category. I would go with the smoked beers definitely. As for base style, go mild. Avoid the specialty beers... a beer like that will be crushed.
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