Preparing for a competition

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How do you carbonate bottles for competition?

  • Force carbonate

  • Bottle condition


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WildKnight

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What is the best way to carbonate your beer for a competition? Carbonate in a keg, then transfer to a few bottles. Or, bottle condition the ones you will be sending to competition? Do you risk deductions if the judge pours out yeast into the tasting glass?
 
The stewards who prep the glasses for the judges know how to do a perfect pour from the shoulder and leave the yeast behind. People involved with judging beer are usually homebrewers and beer geeks themselves and really aren't strangers to or afraid of yeast in bottles. It's not too far a stretch to realize that there are probably more homebrewers who bottle carb/condition that force carb and bottle, that it is pretty much a moot point, as to which is better. Besides a properly brewed, conditioned and poured beer should be just as clear as one force carbed.
 
I haven't submitted anything for judging yet, but from working with BIAB kits, I get them in 23L capacities, so I end up kegging most of a batch then bottle conditioning the rest. I've found with one of my pilsner beers that while the kegged version tasted great, there was something to the bottle conditioned beer that gave it a nice flavour that slightly edged out the kegged version. The bottle conditioned one had been sitting out for 3 weeks, but I've found this slight difference in flavour to be true for one of my oatmeal stouts as well.

I figure since bottle conditioning vs. kegging is like asking real ale vs. not quite so, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to go with a bottle conditioned beer.
 
I tend to force carb for a few reasons:

1. I can tune the carb to exactly where I want it before bottling.
2. No worries about disturbing the yeast dust while the beer is shipped.
3. I keg, and can easily bottle up a six pack for comp.
4. I tend to brew hoppy beers and can cut a couple weeks off the packaging cycle by not bottle carbing.

I do however bottle condition all Belgian style beers simply because I think it might lead something to the flavor development.
 
Cheier, that would be a great experiment to submit both verions into the same category of a contest (change the name) and see which scored better.

I agree that it would be interesting to do a side by side, but I see two problems with experiment via BJCP competition:

-Many comps won't let you enter the same category twice
-Even if you did, you may get a different set of judges for each beer so the scores would likely vary by a few points anyway
 
FWIW, I had a bottle conditioned beer that was noted on the scoresheet basically saying "clarity not that great, ok in this case as it was the 2nd pour from a bottle conditioned beer."

Like Revvy says, the judges know what they're doing (or at least they should...)
 
I have never bottle conditioned a beer, I don't even have the equipment to do it, so I just bottle off my tap and enter those in the comps.

I have seen many hazy, cloudy beers, and I have seen beers that had a bit of sediment stirred up, I can tell the difference between sediment and a clarity flaw and I would assume a judge could see that too and not ding a beer as a result of some sediment being stirred up from a pour.

Enter your beers however you bottle them and enjoy the ride. Most importantly, learn from your feedback!
 
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