Dominion Cup Best in Show Goes to......

Dude for his honey wheat! Can you believe that? Plus his two other entries (pub ale and honey wheat) were first in their categories.

Congrats, man!!

Thanks Sam!

Here is the rundown:

I placed 2 firsts and a second, and BOS with B's Honey Wheat.

How, I will never know, but they did well. The best beer there IMHO was a porter (we think) that was entered in the ESB category. The judges gave it a 23 for the style but it would have been close to a 40 in the right category, they said. Another great one (far better than mine too) was an American Amber that was hopped up the yazoo but stinking awesome. I think it got deducted for too many hops, but that beer was killer.

The other first was my Pub Ale (I had the highest expectations for this one) and the second was my Honey Pale Ale in the specialty category. The same beer in the pale ale category did not advance.

Cleaned up with some nice brewing ingredients (15 lbs. of grain, yeast coupons), and some other stuff.

The best part of the day was meeting all kinds of great people. Even one from this forum (Grimace?)! The James River HB club really did a fine job with organizing something this big--and even though it was a long day, it was a blast. Yeah, especially for me. :rockin:

Hey that's awesome "Dude" those things can really test your pride I have entered a few in the past and was completly bumed out, I vowed to never enter anything again. Concrats!!!!!1

And so the crowd begins to chant - :rockin: - "DUDE, DUDE, DUDE..."

Way to go!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!
That is awesome.
Must be very gratifying.

Brewpastor said:

And so the crowd begins to chant - :rockin: - "DUDE, DUDE, DUDE..."

Way to go!

Click to expand...

Thanks guys!

And just think BP, it was your favorite style too.

Congrats man. I'd enter some comps, but getting my brew there just is too much a hassle for me. All the same I'd like to know how some of them would place.
Again congrats.

Great job Dude! This was the first competition I'd been to. I had the pleasure of stewarding at the table where your wheat and pale ale were judged. I agree with the judges, they were some damn fine beers! Of the 14 - 15 beers that I got to taste there was only 1 or 2 that were not really good and both of those just had no carbonation at all. Had they been carbed I think they would have been okay too. I think the best beer I had all day was the Kolsch. I don't know much about kolsches myself, but that was a great beer. It didn't score well because of the clove notes present (according to the judges), but I think that's what I liked about it.

All in all it was ...... interesting ..... to see how subjective these things are and how different some people's taste buds are.

Congrats Dude!

Congrats on the abiding success!

Nice work, Dude!

Great work Dude!

I also want to thank you for being so up front with your many recipes along with your fairly unbiased analysis of their resulting brews. I know I read on another thread that you are very down on competitions, but regardless, I have decided to enter a few of my brews in a fair here. I don't think any of my beers will place, but I did try and enter them in their approporiate categories (as you had mentioned before), but I had a question about the actual day itself - did you bring the beer chilled? Are all the brews sampled at a temperature decided by the judges, how the hell does that work?!?

On a side note (like this entire post), if you are so down on the way these judges are scoring - why don't we set up a competition for forum members, an online judging (or we could call it a "sampling") that should really get to what a good brew is all about. Sounds like fun!

Congratulations again!

BrewBee said:

Great work Dude!

I also want to thank you for being so up front with your many recipes along with your fairly unbiased analysis of their resulting brews. I know I read on another thread that you are very down on competitions, but regardless, I have decided to enter a few of my brews in a fair here. I don't think any of my beers will place, but I did try and enter them in their approporiate categories (as you had mentioned before), but I had a question about the actual day itself - did you bring the beer chilled? Are all the brews sampled at a temperature decided by the judges, how the hell does that work?!?

On a side note (like this entire post), if you are so down on the way these judges are scoring - why don't we set up a competition for forum members, an online judging (or we could call it a "sampling") that should really get to what a good brew is all about. Sounds like fun!

Congratulations again!

Click to expand...

This was my first time working/attending a competition, but I'll try to answer your questions and give my first impressions to THIS competition as a newby.

In this competition (and I suspect others are the same way) you had to submit your beers well in advance of the actual judging. In this case we kept the beer refrigerated at the LHBS that one of the members owns.

On the day of the competition all of the beer was transported to the restaurant where the competition was held and stored in their refrigerators. An hour or so before a category of beer was to be judged it was removed from the restaurants refrigerator and placed in picnic coolers (without ice) to warm up to serving temps.

Grimace said:

This was my first time working/attending a competition, but I'll try to answer your questions and give my first impressions to THIS competition as a newby.

In this competition (and I suspect others are the same way) you had to submit your beers well in advance of the actual judging. In this case we kept the beer refrigerated at the LHBS that one of the members owns.

On the day of the competition all of the beer was transported to the restaurant where the competition was held and stored in their refrigerators. An hour or so before a category of beer was to be judged it was removed from the restaurants refrigerator and placed in picnic coolers (without ice) to warm up to serving temps.

Click to expand...

Yep.

Also the judging coordination should have some kind of rules that you should find. The beers have to be in specific bottles and caps, and sometimes a certain number that have to be submitted, and also an entry fee.

This is the last comp I'll be entering. While it was REALLY cool to get the 2 1st place ribbons and a BoS, it did not confirm my suspicions of how subjective the comps are. My scoresheets prove that.

I am 100% honest when I say I'd rather have my buddies come over and say "damn, that's good" vs. a couple of stuffy "beer experts" trying to find something that isn't there. I know beer well enough to detect a problem--if it tastes like **** I don't drink it, plain and simple. I look to see what I did wrong and improve on it next time.

Also, the online comp is a good idea but damn would that be hard to coordinate. We kind of did it with some mebers here--we all swapped beers and gave reviews. It was a good time. I learned we have some pretty awesome brewers on here.

Wow, I must have missed that when Swami posted this a few days ago.

But, congratulations Dude. Looks like a job well done.

Kai

Thanks for the input guys, the rules only state that we should bring our beers between 9:30 and 12:00 and that the judging begins at 12:30. Didn't sound like a lot of time for chilling, so I was planning on bringing mine already chilled, but I wasn't sure if that was against the rules. Oh well, a day filled with a bunch of homebrewers and their concoctions can't be all that bad - I'm looking forward to it!

dude.... your beer sucks.

-walker

just kidding. I felt the need to be an iconoclast. nice work, man...

Dude,

Congrats!

My money says you will enter another competition one of these days...

BTW: how did the LWPA do after it advanced in the other competition? I missed reading about that....

Lounge Lizard said:

Dude,

Congrats!

My money says you will enter another competition one of these days...

BTW: how did the LWPA do after it advanced in the other competition? I missed reading about that....

Click to expand...

We'll see....

It hasn't been judged yet. The NHBC judging is the 22nd and 23rd.

That online thing could be cool. For instance we could have a battle between Carolina and Virginia. Theres enough of us here in VA to duel it out with Carolina peeps. We could send our bottles to each other with only a number (like your last 5 ssn or your last winning 5 lotto #'s)and categorey on it. Just swap with each other and pick a winner. (it might be easier to just pick a best of show.) Or just decide on one style, like apa, and everyone sends one of thiers...It wouldnt be impossible to coordinate.
Of course you need to standardize the bottles and labels for as soon as you get the package youll know where it came from, but would quickly forget if all the bottles were the same...

then maybe do a poll to determine the winner? Like "vote for #23454"

Bjorn Borg said:

That online thing could be cool. For instance we could have a battle between Carolina and Virginia. Theres enough of us here in VA to duel it out with Carolina peeps. We could send our bottles to each other with only a number (like your last 5 ssn or your last winning 5 lotto #'s)and categorey on it. Just swap with each other and pick a winner. (it might be easier to just pick a best of show.) Or just decide on one style, like apa, and everyone sends one of thiers...It wouldnt be impossible to coordinate.
Of course you need to standardize the bottles and labels for as soon as you get the package youll know where it came from, but would quickly forget if all the bottles were the same...

then maybe do a poll to determine the winner? Like "vote for #23454"

Click to expand...

Count me out...we can't even organize a "beer of the week" and that doesn't even involve sending beer! I'm all for beer swaps, but......