So my homebrew club is hosting a competition in late July. We had a four week entry window with a 600 entry limit. We hit our limit in 10 days! Last year we had the same limit, but only reached 575 entries in our entry window. Another nearby club recently hit their limit of 325 in barely two days! Is this dramatic increase in interest in competitions local to Florida or are other clubs experiencing a similar dramatic increase in entries? I know it's great for our hobby, but it sure can put pressure on hosting clubs. There are a lot of new BJCP exam takers, but can interest in judging keep up with interest in competing?
The national comp hit its limits really fast. The hobby has grown faster beer judging, which I think is only natural. It would be weird if there was more interest in judging homebrew competitions than entering them, no?
Competitions nationwide have been setting records for participation, especially the National Homebrewers Conference, which was inundated this past year. It's the same pattern being seen at most beer festivals and beer releases and basically anything beer related. This trains a rollin. Choo choo.
I think comps should start limiting the amount of entries per person. I think that would keep the numbers down. People would have to put their best beer forward instead of throwing every beer they have in the comp, and sometimes one beer in multiple categories.
We have a limit of 7 entries per person. This has helped a bit. In the past we always had a few individuals who would enter 20+ entries! I suspect there was a lot of blending and/or entering the same beer in multiple subcategories. Another option we considered this year but didn't implement is to significantly increase the cost per entry above some modest minimum. Without doing a detailed analysis, I'd say close to half of the entrants had 5-7 entries.
I doubt judging will be able to keep up. It is a lot easier to enter a bunch of beers you already made than to spend one or two days out of your free time judging. Hopefully competition organizers are realistic about their resources and limit accordingly so quality of judging and feedback doesn't go in the shitter. It seems like competitions by me are always scrambling for judges at the last second.
Some competitions have cut back the number of entries by fewer announcements and fliers. Some have implemented a system where the entry price goes up progessively after the 5th entry. Yes, judging is the bottleneck. Spending 4 Saturdays a year judging is a lot for this guy. Some do more than that, but they are trying for more points to advance their ranking.
I wish I liked judging more and had the free time to help out. Somehow the competitions that need help are always on weekends when I am out of town, and I just cant get into it.
I love judging and wish I could judge more. For me it's the travel/time/expense that limits my judging. 3-4 comps per year is about my limit.
The one that our club runs had at least 2 week night sessions to get some categories out of the way. Mead and cider were done the weekend before at a soon to open Meadery in Ferndale, which gave us a chance to see the place before opening.
