Well that's it, everyone has different tastes. Myself, I like full-bodied German-style lagers best but there's a whole lotta other beer styles I like too.

Back in the day, I won a whole bunch of homebrewing competitions. I had a homebrew shop at my disposal, wins were good for advertising, and I ended up with a wall full of ribbons, mugs, and trophies - some from national competitions including the GABF.

One of my secrets (which I sure couldn't have told at the time) is that I lagered a lot of "ales". I won with a whole bunch of Pale Ales, Stouts, Porters, India Pale Ales, Russian Imperial Stouts, etc. - and though the ingredients belonged to those beer categories, I often cold-lagered them with liquid lager yeast cultures instead of ale yeast.

I got a kick out of it at the time - even professional brewers who were judging on the national scale never figured that out. I'd get scoresheet comments like "extremely crisp, clean, and clear". Well yeah - if you cold-lager a Pale Ale for three months, it'll do that.

So far as my recipes submitted with the beer entries, well, I might'a lied some on those. Now you know my big secret - my own little steroid scandal. Ya think I'll have to give those trophies back?