In early April we shared the recipe of our Delta IPA to the world. We also called on homebrewers to have a shot at brewing their best homemade version of this flagship Saison IPA.

Since then, we happily received 25 colorful & different homebrewed Delta IPA’s in our Taproom by early July and were truly impressed with the tasting experience in judging these entries!

The jury is now getting ready for the final on July 30th to pick the best Delta IPA homebrew. Eric Boschman (award winning Belgian sommelier), Sébastien & Olivier (our BBP founders), Dimitri (BBP Geek-in-Chief) & Antoine (BBP brewer & Quality Master) will be tasting the 6 finalists live on our Instagram page from 18:30.

How to judge a homebrewed Delta IPA?

To judge any beer, you focus on every single aspect of the beer, starting with its appearance.

Delta IPA has golden orange colour, a soft haze & beautiful off-white head. The aromas are balanced between an IPA & Saison. This means we are looking for both tropical hop notes and a phenolic & ester yeast profile in these homebrews. It’s a fine line to walk on but some of the homebrews nailed this balance! Then we move on to the taste, again we look for that balance between the two beer styles it brings together.

There’s a little maltiness, a pleasant fruitiness and a bit of spice. It finishes with a sign of drinkability, a pleasant bitterness that teases you into a next sip.

How did we pick 6 finalists out of the 25 contestants?

First of all we made an initial screening of all 25 beers with members of our production team. This first selection was made to filter out beers that fell out of the Delta IPA spectrum and beers with brewing or fermentation errors. Beers were taken out of the competition because of certain off-flavours but also a few beers that were great but unfortunately not a Delta IPA recipe.

Then, over the course of 3 days, we made a second round of tastings with people from the team and a crowdfunder. People who know our Delta IPA very well!

A blind tasting of 5 beers per day, not knowing which beer was from which contestant, with the daily goal of picking 2 finalists. Each taster made notes for every beers and at the end of the session, a discussion was initiated to get to a consensus which 2 beers would go through to the final. Some sessions an easy decision, some not!

We now have 6 finalists going to the final. You know who you are 😉

See you all next week Thursday July 30 @ 18:30 to find out the winner.

Cheers!