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Previously in this series of articles on How to brew different Styles of Beer? we covered brewing a British Brown Ale, this time the Beer Style comes from Category 17: 'Strong British Ale' in the BJCP 2015 Guidelines and is an English Barleywine.

In this article I will cover brewing an Oatmeal Stout for competition and of course enjoyable drinking. For the National Homebrew Competition 2017 I set out to brew six beers and applied for the same number of entries, alas once the entries were accepted due to caps on numbers I was granted five out of the six so had to drop one of them.

Homebrew Con 2017 was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and following two days of exploring the many craft breweries within the city (see part 1) it was time to get down to the conference itself.

Homebrew Con, or the National Homebrewer's Conference as it used to be called, was held in the twin cities of Minneapolis / St Paul in Minnesota this year. This was a new state to visit for me personally so I decided it would make a good road trip even though it was a 15 hour drive from State College, PA.

For my fourth entry in the National Homebrew Competition for 2017 I brewed a Belgian Dark Strong Ale (BJCP category 26D). This was the second time I had brewed this style so I tweaked an existing recipe.

For my fourth entry in the National Homebrew Competition for 2017 was a Doppelbock (BJCP category 9A) based on Jamil's Mr Maltinator recipe.

For my third entry in the National Homebrew Competition for 2017 I brewed a Wee Heavy (BJCP category 17C) which was previously known as a Strong Scotch Ale.

For my second entry in the National Homebrew Competition for 2017 I brewed a Belgian Blond Ale (BJCP category 25A).

For the National Homebrew Competition 2017 I was granted 5 entries in the first regional round at Philadelphia which included a Saison (aka Farmhouse Ale).

With December approaching we decided to combine a trip to one of Germany's famous Christmas Market cities that is also famous for being the home of a beer style called Altbier.