Serendipitous Stout – Part Two

I did something with this blog that I haven’t done before. I went back and edited a post. I’ve gone back before and fixed grammar errors or made clarifications of what I said. But I’ve not gone back and made big changes to a post.

The post that I changed was my Serendipitous Stout post from a last month (http://www.timkwrites.com/blog/serendipitous-stout). I wrote the post and focused mostly on what I had done wrong in the brewing process. Which unfortunately is typical of everybody. We focus on our errors and not on what we’ve done right. It’s like having a popcorn kernel stuck in a tooth as soon as you notice it, you’re working on it with your tongue trying to work it loose and it becomes your focus.

We all spend too much time worried about our weaknesses instead of our strengths. It’s almost as if a concert pianist decided to not practice and work on cooking instead because she wasn’t a good cook.

So, I went back to my earlier post and added what I had done right. When I won the competition with the beer, I felt a bit as if I were a major league baseball pitcher who had just hit a home run. I know there are homebrewers out there who are more knowledgeable than me, that have better equipment, better processes and more experience. And some of them might be miffed that I won. But, as it turns out, when a pitcher hits a home run the runs scored count in the final score.

An update on my Serendipitous Stout. I entered it into another competition, The Minnesota Mashout. This is a bigger competition with more entries. My stout won first place in its category.

The American Homebrewing Association sponsors a national homebrewing competition. I signed up for that. It’s a process just to get into the contest, so we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, I’m nearly out of bottles and will need to brew another batch in case I get into the contest.
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What the heck, when you’re on a roll it’s ok to swing for the fences.