Enter Your Beer, Not Your Plan
The first thing you do when entering a homebrew contest is to decide on what category to submit your beers in. When doing this, forget what you intended to brew and examine how your beer actually turned out. Did you miss the target OG on your IPA? Then consider if it might score better as a pale ale.
Homebrew judges will not know what style of beer you were trying to make, what your ingredient list was, what procedures you used or anything other than the category you submitted your beer in. Evaluate your beer from this perspective when deciding on which category to enter. Read the style guidelines looking for any beer style that seems to describe what your beer tastes like. If you know someone who has judged at contests before, ask them for their help.
There are a few “oddball” categories where it really pays to think about this. For example, if you added smoked malt to a beer but you can’t taste any smoke in it, don’t enter it in the smoked beer category. Likewise, if you made a fruit beer, but the fruit flavor is MIA (which can happen in dark styles like raspberry porter or cherry stout), don’t enter it in the fruit beer category.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
In some categories you are instructed to tell the judges about any special ingredients you used. In the fruit beer category, or the spice, herb and vegetable category, for example, you are supposed to indicate which fruits, spices, herbs or vegetables are in the beer. Before simply listing everything on your recipe sheet, taste your beer and see what ingredients you can detect and which you can’t. If you made a holiday ale with cinnamon and nutmeg, but all you can taste is cinnamon, don’t write “nutmeg” on your entry sheet. If the judges are expecting a dark ale with cinnamon and nutmeg and they can’t taste the nutmeg, you will be “dinked” for not having nutmeg in your beer. On the other hand, if they are expecting a dark ale with just cinnamon, this same beer will score much better. Don’t give the judges information that will only work against you.