Reducing categories of beer for contest

This is just theoretical exercise, but it seems to me to hold a contest with the BJCP styles you need a lot of entrants.

In contests how have others categorized beer?

The styles I would present are
1. Murky ales.
2. Dark ales.
3. Bright ales.
4. Crisp Ales. (trying to be a pils)
4. Dark lager.
5. Pilsner.
6. Adjunct Lager.
7. Wheat ales.
8. Sour/wild ales (I've never tried these)

Hope I am not offending anyone.

wait...

what?

Wtf?????

Okay, you know when they have big dog shows, they have "best in breed".

Then they narrow down to categories like hounds, working dogs, toy dogs, etc.
And then they finally have best in show.
I am trying to narrow categories at the second level.

Homebrewtastic said:

wait...

what?

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This is not a real thread. Troll.

You know there are plenty of small contests (like those put on by hombrew clubs) that manage to use the bjcp style guidlines with just a handful of entrants without needing to re-invent the wheel. Not every contest has 800 or more entrants like some of the bigger ones in Michigan. Some clubs may only have 10 beers entered.

Most folks only brew and enter a handful of styles. Like, Ipa, Stout, Barleywine, hefe, and spiced beers for instance, there usually won't be a lot of other single beer in a category entries.

And some contests just choose which category/categories to host in a given year. I know of some contests that are only one style for a year, like Barelywines.

I don't know where you're getting some of your categories, what's murky beers? Beers that haven't been secondaried or long primaried?

And Adjunct lager? What about a Belgian Golden Strong Ale that has sugar added. Or a Cream Ale that uses corn in it, or a Kentucky Common, which is another form of a cream ale?

You can hold a contest on any basis you want.

The BJCP categories or styles don't have to be how you group beers for judging if you use the guidelines. People specify which style they are entering, and you can have the same judges judge all of the lager categories if you only get a few of those and give awards for only the top three lagers.

You can also hold a contest without any defined styles (well defined beyond murky ale) but those tend to become hedonistic people's choice type things.

My next beer is definitely going to be a murky ale. No, I'm going to try to make a murky lager.

Well that's good it won't be up against my murky sour, then.

Yeah but my Brite Ale has a +4 on a D20 die against murky ales.

remilard said:

but those tend to become hedonistic people's choice type things.

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...my favorite kind of contest.

ReverseApacheMaster said:

My next beer is definitely going to be a murky ale. No, I'm going to try to make a murky lager.

Click to expand...

weirdboy said:

Well that's good it won't be up against my murky sour, then.

Click to expand...

Homebrewtastic said:

Yeah but my Brite Ale has a +4 on a D20 die against murky ales.

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These categories remind me of the ones on here from an old thread of mine;



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