Incomplete thought...boiled crawfish and homebrew derailed the completion of my post. Did any BAers make it through 1st round?
Doesn't the NHC use the 2015 BJCP guidelines? The categories don't match up to this: http://www.bjcp.org/docs/2015_Guidelines_Beer.pdf
No, they made their own version of guidelines. I have a copy here but would have to Google the link to it. They did sort of a combination between the old 2008 and new 2015 BJCPs that makes a heck of a lot more sense in my own mind.
Very interesting that these two entities are not on the same page on this. I would think this is a source of frustration for the BJCP, given that the biggest homebrew competition has decided not to embrace their latest revisions. I've not been won over by the 2015 guidelines, either. Separating Czech lagers from other lagers, international lagers, having bock beers span multiple categories, pale commonwealth beers -there's lots of hairsplitting in there. I don't enter competitions much (it has been probably 5 years or more), but the 2008 guidelines helped me organize my thinking about beer (despite some historical inaccuracies), whereas the 2015 guidelines feel a little bit detached from my reality.
The guidelines are BJCP 2015. It says so in the entry rules. The guidelines on the table at each of the first round sites I judged were 2015 verbiage and specifications, but rearranged for the flight being judged. Look at Pilsners for example, I judged the 10P Czech, Premium Czech, German, and CAP in a flight. The categories are rearranged and collapsed for the completion, there the category groupings are between 2008 and 2015. If you read the BJCP completion rules, this can be done for any completion. Here are a couple of reasons this was done as I understand it. 1. that there will be a manageable amount to judge in the second round. Time and number of judges is a bottleneck in the second round. Two new categories are added this year, so two more sets of medals will be awarded. 2. Having manageable sized categories for handling of entries and judging.
Right. the guidelines for the styles remains intact but the grouping of styles gets rearranged for the sake of competition logistics. It does make me wonder if folding some of those categories together, as you describe, is likely to be the norm for any competition. If it makes sense to do it for NHC, I would think it will make sense to do it for smaller comps, too.
Smaller completions can and do collapse styles. Or they can have completions that are just Belgian styles for example, or just lagers, and so on. http://www.wahomebrewers.org/competitions/520-2017-brew-3nd-annual-lager-competition
Ok tks. I assume the difference is that the munich malt would make one a little stronger and sweeter.
