Did anyone participate in Homebrew Alley VI yesterday, 1/29/12 in Brooklyn?

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sheeshomatic

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This was the first homebrew competition I've entered and I managed 3rd in the specialty category for my oaked vanilla whiskey porter 'Muddy Dumptruck'. I was pretty ecstatic about it overall. Also a little peeved that I didn't read the categories closely enough. I entered the 3 beers I had ready - My hefeweizen moved on to semis, scored well, but didn't place, but the IIPA I had high hopes for scored very poorly because it was oaked. I should have entered it in 22 instead of 14. The overall comments were that it was a great beer, but didn't belong in the Imperial IPA category.

In any event, proud to win something out of the 650 entries in the competition! :tank:
 
sheeshomatic said:

Thanks. I got a 29.5 on my maple rye stout. I think it would have done better it the maple flavor shined through more, or if I didn't mention maple on the entry. Also, my beer was too carbonated for a stout. Seeing that it was my first entry I am happy with the results an cant wait to brew more and enter competitions again in the future.
 
Still waiting on mine. Really wish I was there for the prize ceremony...

Yeah, I was kind of surprised at how disorganized it seemed to be, especially since this was the 6th year. They screwed up on the website. The schedule was posted in military time, and they said we were all welcome at 16:30 and that winners would be announced at 17:00. I got there promptly at 4:30 and no one knew what the heck I was talking about. One of the brewery people went in back and came out and told us it was supposed to say 6:30 and awards at 7pm. We had to leave the brewery at 6 because that's when the normal tour hours ended. Went to a place down the street to hang out, then back again at 6:30.

FINALLY, they started announcements at somewhere around 7:30. When it was all said and done, we waited another half hour or so for them to bring out the score cards. It would be great to have those at the beginning of announcements to compare with other brewers. At that point, I just wanted to go home. It was a LONG day.
 
sheeshomatic said:
Yeah, I was kind of surprised at how disorganized it seemed to be, especially since this was the 6th year. They screwed up on the website. The schedule was posted in military time, and they said we were all welcome at 16:30 and that winners would be announced at 17:00. I got there promptly at 4:30 and no one knew what the heck I was talking about. One of the brewery people went in back and came out and told us it was supposed to say 6:30 and awards at 7pm. We had to leave the brewery at 6 because that's when the normal tour hours ended. Went to a place down the street to hang out, then back again at 6:30.

FINALLY, they started announcements at somewhere around 7:30. When it was all said and done, we waited another half hour or so for them to bring out the score cards. It would be great to have those at the beginning of announcements to compare with other brewers. At that point, I just wanted to go home. It was a LONG day.

Yeah? That's too bad. I have had good experiences with this competition, but have never been able to attend.

You should probably cut them some slack because I'm sure they got way more entries then they were expecting.
 
They do tend to be later than expected in announcing the winners, but this is definitely one of the best organized competitions I have ever participated in. The HBT one was #1, but this is easily #2. Both times they ran slightly late, but that's minor considering I've seen competitions cancelled after already accepting entries, and have had sheets take WEEKS to arrive.
 
Airborneguy said:
They do tend to be later than expected in announcing the winners, but this is definitely one of the best organized competitions I have ever participated in. The HBT one was #1, but this is easily #2. Both times they ran slightly late, but that's minor considering I've seen competitions cancelled after already accepting entries, and have had sheets take WEEKS to arrive.

Did you enter NHC round 1 (northeast region) last year? Now that was crazy. They needed like a month somehow to judge 750 entries because they pushed it back several times and even then they didnt judge two of my beers. I was furious.
 
Yeah? That's too bad. I have had good experiences with this competition, but have never been able to attend.

You should probably cut them some slack because I'm sure they got way more entries then they were expecting.

Fair enough. I didn't mean to sound like it was a cluster-eff, just that it could have been better organized with better information to those of us standing around. It was still a great competition. They got about 50 more entries than last year - I just attribute it to intoxication after judging beer since 8:30 in the morning. :drunk:
 
sheeshomatic said:
Fair enough. I didn't mean to sound like it was a cluster-eff, just that it could have been better organized with better information to those of us standing around. It was still a great competition. They got about 50 more entries than last year - I just attribute it to intoxication after judging beer since 8:30 in the morning. :drunk:

I'm definitely heading down next year. I'll buy you a round if I see you, bro.
 
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