You never know till you try - Peach State Homebrew Competition

ChefJoeR · Mar 18, 2011

Well entered for the first time one of my beers in the Peach State Homebrew Competition and you never know where you stand until you stand with others. The results were pretty much what I expected. I have only been brewing a year and have done a different style every time I brew. Just thought I would throw on in for fun and totally expected to get slammed to ground with comments. I got a 16 out of 50! Big ouch, but a learning experience. I have to say one of my favorite comments was "smells like sewer". Now most people will look at this and get pissed off, I look at it now I can truly start brewing since I know what people look for. I have changed my techniques, my sanitation process, my filtering and pretty much my whole process. Your friends and family can tell whatever you want to hear, but it's best to stand in front of a target of others and take your hits. It takes guts, but it's worth it. JMHO

Mikey_Dawg · Mar 18, 2011

ChefJoeR said:
Well entered for the first time one of my beers in the Peach State Homebrew Competition and you never know where you stand until you stand with others. The results were pretty much what I expected. I have only been brewing a year and have done a different style every time I brew. Just thought I would throw on in for fun and totally expected to get slammed to ground with comments. I got a 16 out of 50! Big ouch, but a learning experience. I have to say one of my favorite comments was "smells like sewer". Now most people will look at this and get pissed off, I look at it now I can truly start brewing since I know what people look for. I have changed my techniques, my sanitation process, my filtering and pretty much my whole process. Your friends and family can tell whatever you want to hear, but it's best to stand in front of a target of others and take your hits. It takes guts, but it's worth it. JMHO

Marietta? You are in my neck of the woods...

So does your beer actually smell like a sewer? I have made some beers so were 'just OK'... but nothing sewereseque. What is up with that?

Prob a good learning experience regardless...

twigboy2000 · Mar 18, 2011

MY neck of the woods too. I judged at Peach State on the last day. Doesn't sound like one out of my categories.

Did you get any feedback on areas to improve? Were your scoresheets filled out as much as possible or was there whitespace left? I personally had some very good scoresheets and one that I thought was a little lacking in depth.

I believe they did around 8-10 judging sessions over a week to handle all of the 518 entries this year.

-chuck

StrikeThree · Mar 18, 2011

Hmmm. Im from Marietta too. Sorry to hear about your comments, too bad you cant blame it on the water.

Hey any of you guys ever go to the tasting room at Red Brick?

ChefJoeR · Mar 22, 2011

the notes that I got were pretty consistent between the two judges. the main thing was sanitation. i believe that i got careless with the bottles and they both gave me some great pointers.

bmsteele · Mar 22, 2011

I had to do some hardcore forensics on one of my score sheets in order to even be able to read the writing (very light and good ol chicken scratch). I also enlisted the help of my former-teacher of a wife to decode some of the writing.

...of course I do realize the judges do a good bit of writing, so I understand that it's not going to be perfect

Lex82 · Mar 22, 2011

The peach state brew off was my first comp also. My brewing experience is just like ChefJoeR's, I've only been brewing since January '11 and I brew a different style everytime. I saw that the brew off was taking submissions so I said why not. I ended up placing 3rd in the brown porter category, and the judges notes were great. I loved that two different people had the same comments to make it better, that just shows that the judges were experienced and really knew what my beer was missing just by taste.

ChefJoeR · Mar 28, 2011

Lex82 said:
The peach state brew off was my first comp also. My brewing experience is just like ChefJoeR's, I've only been brewing since January '11 and I brew a different style everytime. I saw that the brew off was taking submissions so I said why not. I ended up placing 3rd in the brown porter category, and the judges notes were great. I loved that two different people had the same comments to make it better, that just shows that the judges were experienced and really knew what my beer was missing just by taste.

Hmmm, let's see you = 3rd place, me = score of 16 out of 50. I don't think the same experience. Hahaha, just kidding with you! Congrats on your placing. It's pretty cool to brew for fun and then to take place in a competition. I just brewed an oatmeal porter that was pretty tasty. Where do you brew? I am up in marietta and will be doing the sausage with some of my friends in may at 5 seasons brewery at the prado. I am brewing two beers that we will be serving with our entry.

Lex82 · Mar 29, 2011

ChefJoeR said:
Hmmm, let's see you = 3rd place, me = score of 16 out of 50. I don't think the same experience. Hahaha, just kidding with you! Congrats on your placing. It's pretty cool to brew for fun and then to take place in a competition. I just brewed an oatmeal porter that was pretty tasty. Where do you brew? I am up in marietta and will be doing the sausage with some of my friends in may at 5 seasons brewery at the prado. I am brewing two beers that we will be serving with our entry.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I meant I just entered for feedback and then I ended up getting 3rd. I live in suwanee, but I work about 2 minutes away from 5 seasons in the prado.

You never know till you try - Peach State Homebrew Competition

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