Mini club competition ideas?

[TandemTails]

Our homebrew club is trying to do some more informal mini competitions within the club. We'll each brew a beer and then have a 'blind' tasting of the beers at one of our meetings and come up with what we believe the best beer is that meets the mini competition's theme. We want to do a couple of these each year and I'm wondering if you all have some ideas for some competition themes.

For our first competition (beers are currently fermenting / conditioning) was to brew any style of beer we wanted to using a london ale yeast that was harvested off an ESB from a local brewery.

I like brewing weird ****, but some of the guys in the group are more traditional, so I'm looking for some ideas of adjuncts, methods, etc that we could use as a theme for future competitions. Has anyone done this with their clubs?

 

[Kirkwooder]

Use a simple grain bill and let everyone choose their own hops and yeast, or better yet pull hop and yeast choices from a hat.

 

[dfess1]

Our club chooses a hop, a yeast strain, and an adjunct once a quarter. You can brew whatever you like as long as all three of those are in the beer. You get judged for how well you can pick those three out of the beer, as well as how well the beer is to begin with. It's been fun, and some beers have made it into brewers' "rotation" based on stuff they never thought they'd like.

 

[ProblemChild]

Our April meeting is "SMaSH around the world" - basically your yeast, hop and grain are from different countries...

Winner of that competition gets to decide the next one three months later.....

a previous meeting was best use of an adjunct or alternative grain

 

[NewJersey]

brew an ipa with only pilsner malt and 7oz of same hops. same yeast. same water.
hops to be used however one likes. temps of mash/fermentation up to brewer. packaging up to brewer.

 

[Andrew Hodgson]

To parlay brewing by the style guides with learning how to judge beers properly we have two styles bi-monthly and invite members to brew them and bring them in. Then we use the BJCP sheets and judge the beers and discuss them and the flaws etc. Kind of a competition in that everyone is discussing your beer so you could win some high praise from real judges in the club, but also a chance for newer brewers/beer judgers to hone their vocabulary, palettes etc. Kind of a cool idea.