Preparing to enter a competition

Hey guys,

So I was at a local Home Brew store, and there was a flier on the wall for a home brew competition. And even though I'm new to home brewing, I wanted to enter because I want the feedback from the judges whom I trust a bit more than my beer drinking friends. Because all my friends say its really good, but... I always think theres room for improvement.

So here is my question. I am about ready to rack from a secondary fermenter, into a keg or bottles. I would prefer to keg it, however, I do not want the beer to be flat for the competition. I do have a bottle filler for the keg tap, but I didn't want to risk it*

I also know that bottle carbing can have various results.

So I was mainly hoping to find out if anyone had experience keg carbing, then filling the bottle and sending it to a competition. Or if I should just suck it up and clean out all the bottles to bottle carb it.

Thanks guys

Bottle carbing is easy to do if you have the right formulas to get the volumes of CO2 you want. Keg-carbing, however, is even easier and I would use that - especially since you have a bottling gun. Just remember to bump a tad of CO2 into the headspace once you fill the bottle so that you remove any latent oxygen from the headspace . . . otherwise your competition brew could partially oxidize prior to it being opened.

thanks for the heads up, on the head I wouldn't have thought of that. I had done some reading about people that had the beer flat from bottling from a keg. I got a connector that fits into the Perlick faucet I have, and runs a tube to the bottom of the bottle. I'm hoping that I don't have a problem where it gets flat, but I guess we will see

It shouldn't be too much of a problem if you just bump a little bit of CO2 at the top.

Also if bottling from a keg without actually counter pressure filling it, it helps to slightly over carb the keg so that by the time you fill and cap your brew, you have the carbonation you need for the style you are entering.
Good luck with your first competition. I love them. Right now, I have two entries into the first round of the NHC as well as two Canadian competitions with one more to send to a pro/am in Ontario for our club.

I use a Beer Gun to bottle my entries with. Perhaps I should also mention that judges shouldn't mark an entry down because it was bottle conditioned, but you never know how any particular judge reacts to bottle conditioned beer and how the beer was actually handled before judging.

Good tip on the over carbing.

I am hoping to enter into the Mount Hope Homebrew Compeition in PA. Even though I just moved to Baltimore, its the closest one I've found so far.

Get ready for some HONEST (not that your friends are not) feedback. I got my first results back a few days ago from a competition. I got (1) very good, and (2) good ratings. However, my friends thought they were world class lol. Good luck!