General question regarding Beer competitions

Hello everybody,

So, here I am thinking of enrolling my brew in a beer competition - my first competition so far!. The thing is that the organisers require that we state the complete recipe with all the details of the brew. I am a bit hesitant because I am intending in the near future to actually start up with a colleague a microbrewery-distillery, in which I am scoping to include this particular beer to our brew list.

Is it common practice to include the full recipes in beer competitions? Or am I just a tad paranoid?

Thanks!
andreas

Almost everyone in this profession and hobby shares their recipes. You can ask professional brewers for their recipes for beers they have on the market and 90-95% will be glad to give it to you. Most of the qualities of a prize winning beer is your processes, mash temp, ferm temp, water profile, how much O2 gets in during transfers, how much carbonation, etc etc etc, and a small percentage of your recipe. There are so many recipes out there, and unlimited potential recipes, that no matter how many people use your recipe, they will NEVER make the same beer as you. So relax, and don't worry about it.

Yeah, pretty much that ^^^^

Good chance your recipe already exists out there somewhere anyways. All about your process.

There are only a couple of competitions that require recipes, and only one that I know of that will publish the winner's recipes in their magazine.

The reason for the recipe and technique isn't to steal your recipe- it's to make sure that you made the beer.

In a BJCP competition, the judges don't see your notes or your recipe at all. If you enter, say, an American Pale Ale, your beer will be judged by the BJCP guidelines, which very specific on the color, flavor, mouthfeel, aroma, etc. Read here for the style you are entering: http://www.bjcp.org/docs/2015_Guidelines_Beer.pdf

As was mentioned, a good recipe is important, but since there are not really that many ingredients most recipes are very similar and a recipe itself is of little value. Still, if yours is special and you don't want to share it, that's up to you.

Thank you GaBrewZoo, Yooper and TreacherousTexan for your input. I thought I might of been a bit paranoid.. Its just that this competition is not in the US where homebrewing is super-active and advanced so it made me wonder a bit on what the level of expertise is here. In any case, you are probably right that the recipe is already out there..

akardam said:

Thank you GaBrewZoo, Yooper and TreacherousTexan for your input. I thought I might of been a bit paranoid.. Its just that this competition is not in the US where homebrewing is super-active and advanced so it made me wonder a bit on what the level of expertise is here. In any case, you are probably right that the recipe is already out there..

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Good luck on your entry!

I've seen a few comps where recipes are required where one of the prizes is a commercial brewing of the beer with the winner, presumably the recipe is only used for that particular selection to make sure the host brewery has the capacity to make it (beers with odd ingredients/processes may be disqualified from that prize). If it's a BJCP sanctioned comp, the judges would never see the recipe. And generally even with the pro-am beer prizes, they often specifically state in the rules what would DQ from that prize anyway (wood aging, Brett/bugs, and so forth are commonly DQed from pro-am prizes).