Kolacny's Page

	MCAB Brewer Profile


	Rob Kolacny	Foam Rangers
	Nickname	Redd Kneck
	Involvement	Former Foam Rangers president (Grand Wazoo) Former Dixie Cup coordinator Former AHA South Regionals coordinator MCAB X coordinator
	e-mail	rob.kolacny@gmail.com

	First brew: 1998	Mr. Beer kit!
	Got serious: 2000	Built all grain HERMS rig

	If I had to pick just one thing ...	My Mentor. The single most important advancement in my homebrew skills is my mentor, Jimmy "Stairway" Paige. After I joined the Foam Rangers, Jimmy took me under his wing and pushed me to be a competition brewer & BJCP judge.

	Most important piece of equipment	Fermentation temperature control. Can't do lagers in Texas without temp control. Once I got this variable nailed, my beers got good.

	Keys to success:	Read, read, read. I read everything about homebrewing I could get my hands on - and I don't like to read! 'Designing Great Beers' was my "ah-ha" moment. Ex: I read and studied the chapters on pale ale and IPA, sat down and created a recipe, brewed it in November and won Runner-up BOS with that first batch at the 10th Boston Homebrew Competition in February!
	History: Got a Mr. Beer kit for Christmas around 1996. It sat in a closet for a couple of years until I finally brewed it. The extract was so oxidized that the "light lager" recipe was brown. But back then I liked "dark beers", so I drank it. Oxidized and fruity is what I remember, but I drank it and kinda liked it (every parent thinks their child is beautiful, right?). I went right out and bought 6 more cans and brewed them - results weren't much better! Those Mr. Beer cans were getting hard to find, so I went online and found some homebrew shops out-of-state and placed orders - little did I know that Defalco's Home Wine & Beer was right in my back yard. After many batches of extract w/grain from Defalco's and a friendship with the staff, I attended my first brew-in at the shop, hosted by the Houston Foam Rangers and led by the Grand Wazoo, Jimmy "Stairway" Paige. I brought my rig and set up next to Jimmy and we started brewing. I spent months building the rig and thought I'd impress everyone - wrong. Jimmy is low-tech and uses a 10 gallon Gott cooler, a Cajun cooker and 15 gallon pot to create some of the best homebrew I've ever tasted. He not only put up with my newbie-ism, he took me under his wing and showed me which variables were most important and which could be gotten away with if they were just "close". That took all the fret out of my brewing and gave me new focus. That and all the brewing books Jimmy dumped on me! Jimmy loves to haunt Second Hand Books. Jimmy, from Portland Maine and retired from the Coast Guard, gave me my nickname: Redd Kneck. I could show him some rednecks, and never thought I was one, but the name stuck ... I never really got into crazy beers or real exotic-type stuff because I was raised a competition brewer. The natural progression of being a competition brewer is to become a BJCP judge. I am Certified and probably won't take the exam again - got no time. Judging beer is an excellent way to fine tune your own recipes and know which categories to enter them in. Opinions: Tip 1: Enter it how it tastes, not what the kit says it is. Tip 2: When entering Specialty Beers, call it what it tastes like, not what is in it. The only info the judges have is base beer and what you tell them, so if it's in there but it can't be tasted or smelled, don't mention it - that would be like reporting to the Police Station and telling them you sped on the way there. Tip3: Chocolate Stout is a way better Spice, Herb, Vegetable beer than onion beer. 9 out of 10 judges surveyed agree!!! Accomplishments: I was elected Grand Wazoo - The Most Powerful Man in Homebrewing - for 2006. That was a lot of fun and work, but worth every minute of it. I was once a prolific brewer, but that seems like another lifetime. Family and work take up my free time now. I have won Best of Show at Bluebonnet (the largest single-site homebrew competition in the World - some say "the Universe") and Dixie Cup (once this was the largest single-site homebrew competition), won a gold at the AHA National Homebrew Competition in American Barleywine with my buddy, T-Bob Daugherty, and this year won my first gold at MCAB. It's been a good run and there is little else left for me to accomplish in home brewing accept pass on the knowledge and wisdom given to me by my Foam Ranger brethren.
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