Homebrew Competitions

I love the competition aspect of brewing. Over the years I have entered well over 100 comps, and won my fair share of ribbons. I also enjoy judging, and do this at every opportunity. Cheers, and good luck!

 

About to enter my first with my brewing buddy. Prize is identical: beer gets brewed by a commercial brewery (which happens to be my favorite U.S. craft brewer). One thing I have heard is that we should enter one beer that we think is prize-worthy, and then another that is amped up, so that it doesn't get lost among the entries (the style for the competition is Classic Rauchbier). It kinda bugs me that you have to "go big or go home" to some degree, but I guess that's just the nature of the beast these days.

 

I have entered one competition and became jaded. Two beers, one had a legitimate flaw that was only realized by half the judges. The other was mildly not to style, yet superb and received a mediocre score.

So your judges only caught a classic flaw(Diacetyl!) in 50% of the score sheets, but my awesome beer that barely missed style gets points deducted? Bugger off.

 

This one does, too. However, we've been told to go to the very top of the permissible range, and to hit with as bold of flavors as possible, because we "wouldn't want to lose out to someone else by 2 gravity points." I, personally, am a huge fan of striking the perfect (IMO) balance for a style, so to do this goes against a lot of what I hold dear. That's why we're entering one "balanced" version and a big version...just to be safe. We'll see.

 

About 20-25% of the population can't detect diacetyl, so this should not be a surprise. That is why you want more than one person on a tasting panel - to help cover holes in the individual judges palates.

Part of competitions is to not have technical flaws. The other part is to brew to style. How did your awsome beer miss the style? Maybe you could have entered it in another style where it fit better?

 

I've entered a few. Done pretty well, though I haven't managed to snag a BOS. I'm not too upset about that though, given that they were pretty big competitions. Okay, I'm pretty upset about that. Seriously though, I think it's helpful to sort of look at competitions as competing against your own past scores/comment sheets. Everyone has room to improve, regardless of how many medals they have or haven't taken.

 

You can hope the judges like it. Your friends are getting free beer...

At the least you will get a score sheet(s) that will give you feedback. What you do with that is up to you.

 

What styles are you competing in? Are you, too, "going big" with any of the three?

 

You can go big. Some of the best advice out there is to hit the middle of the range of specs, adn really brew to style. Some others say just go a little over the middle.

See how you do, adjust next year if you don't win.

 

I entered my first competition in January. I had no expectations of doing particularly well, was just looking forward to some feedback on my beers from experienced palates. I was very pleasantly surprised when I ended up taking second place for fruit beers with my raspberry wheat.

 

Went straight down the middle with the one entry and big with the other. Hope we do well, as in all likelihood there won't be a next year in the Rauchbier category, as this brewery mixes it up from year to year....

 

It would be cool to win, but if they are going to lean one way or the other before the competition anyway, then I'm not sure of the point. The Longshot competition for example, The DIPA Tasty McDole won with wasn't very good (IMHO), and I have a hard time believing that is the same beer he won with. I guess that's two things, the brewers changing the recipe and the winners being predetermined to a certain extent.