biertourist
Well-Known Member
Despite brewing all grain for a number of years, I haven't had the opportunity to enter competitions (lived in Ireland, traveled too much for work, and about 5% of my beers are brewed "to style"), now I'm considering it and I'm looking for tips on finding and entering competitions.
There's a few tips in BCS and "Brewing Better Beer" but I'm looking for more.
I'm not looking for brewing tips; but just a better understanding of how competitions work.
I live in Seattle and the Washington Homebrewers Association's website has a very dated design and it's pretty hard / impossible? to find competitions by date; you just get a list of competitions and have to click through them one at a time to find a competition that might be occurring soon unless I'm missing something. http://www.wahomebrewers.org/
The AHA website's calendar is just insanely busy and doesn't allow you to filter by region/state; are there any other options or does everyone just deal with the various homebrew association websites' limitations?
There is an upcoming competition in my area, "XBREW" http://xbrew.azurewebsites.net/ but it seems to focus on big versions of typically small beers and small versions of typically big beers. For the first time in a very long time, I find myself brewing to-style, properly German versions of German beers so I wonder it's even worth entering this type of competition as I'd guess that they're going to be picking out the beers that match the theme of the competition...
Another question: I've got a kick-ass modern German Oktoberfest in the keg right now, but I very much brewed it to be like the beers that you ACTUALLY get in the tents at Oktoberfest (as much or more Helles than they are Marzen beers), so its not the typical orange syrupy BJCP-style Oktoberfest; does this pretty much kill my chances?
A lot of my questions center around determining what category to enter a beer in. I've entered one competition EVER and it was with a bog-oak smoked, stronger-than-normal, hoppy oatmeal stout. -Needless to say this was a styleless beer (a great tasting one) and I got "dinged" for "phenolic notes" (yep, that's what wood smoking does), "too strong", and "too hoppy" (I'd call it "extra delicious"; an improvement on the style for sure; lol!). It seems that you brew strictly according to the BJCP style nazi guidelines or there's pretty much no reason to bother entering a BJCP competition - safe assumption?
Real example: Because I brewed an authentic modern German Oktoberfest vs. the orangy syrupy crystal malt-laden version (mine is NOTHING like Sam Adams' version) should I enter it as a Helles instead of an Oktoberfest? -If it actually has some hop flavor and bitterness left does that exclude it from both styles and I should instead chuck in some extra salt and call it a Dortmunder? (This whole judging against a style thing is mysterious and slightly strange for me.)
Thanks for any advice in advance.
Adam
There's a few tips in BCS and "Brewing Better Beer" but I'm looking for more.
I'm not looking for brewing tips; but just a better understanding of how competitions work.
I live in Seattle and the Washington Homebrewers Association's website has a very dated design and it's pretty hard / impossible? to find competitions by date; you just get a list of competitions and have to click through them one at a time to find a competition that might be occurring soon unless I'm missing something. http://www.wahomebrewers.org/
The AHA website's calendar is just insanely busy and doesn't allow you to filter by region/state; are there any other options or does everyone just deal with the various homebrew association websites' limitations?
There is an upcoming competition in my area, "XBREW" http://xbrew.azurewebsites.net/ but it seems to focus on big versions of typically small beers and small versions of typically big beers. For the first time in a very long time, I find myself brewing to-style, properly German versions of German beers so I wonder it's even worth entering this type of competition as I'd guess that they're going to be picking out the beers that match the theme of the competition...
Another question: I've got a kick-ass modern German Oktoberfest in the keg right now, but I very much brewed it to be like the beers that you ACTUALLY get in the tents at Oktoberfest (as much or more Helles than they are Marzen beers), so its not the typical orange syrupy BJCP-style Oktoberfest; does this pretty much kill my chances?
A lot of my questions center around determining what category to enter a beer in. I've entered one competition EVER and it was with a bog-oak smoked, stronger-than-normal, hoppy oatmeal stout. -Needless to say this was a styleless beer (a great tasting one) and I got "dinged" for "phenolic notes" (yep, that's what wood smoking does), "too strong", and "too hoppy" (I'd call it "extra delicious"; an improvement on the style for sure; lol!). It seems that you brew strictly according to the BJCP style nazi guidelines or there's pretty much no reason to bother entering a BJCP competition - safe assumption?
Real example: Because I brewed an authentic modern German Oktoberfest vs. the orangy syrupy crystal malt-laden version (mine is NOTHING like Sam Adams' version) should I enter it as a Helles instead of an Oktoberfest? -If it actually has some hop flavor and bitterness left does that exclude it from both styles and I should instead chuck in some extra salt and call it a Dortmunder? (This whole judging against a style thing is mysterious and slightly strange for me.)
Thanks for any advice in advance.
Adam