All Grain & Extract brewers competing against each other?

[apeltes]

Good thread. It's all about where you lie on a spectrum.

--At one end: purchase an awesome beer and enter it into a competition.

--At the other end: grow and malt your own barley, collect and propagate your own yeast, etc.

Both ends are silly, but do extract and AG brewing lie at the same point?

 

[IL1kebeer]

Fermentation plays a way bigger role on a beer than all grain or extract. You can get Mr. Beer kits (or similar) to come out good if they are fresh and if you know how to ferment correctly.

 

[AnOldUR]

Good thread. It's all about where you lie on a spectrum.

--At one end: purchase an awesome beer and enter it into a competition.

--At the other end: grow and malt your own barley, collect and propagate your own yeast, etc.

Both ends are silly, but do extract and AG brewing lie at the same point?

Agree with you about the two extremes. On one end you have cheating. On the other, just silliness. We're homebrewing. In other words, we're trying to do what professional brewers do, only doing it at home. They do exist, but very few craft breweries grow and malt there own grain. Bringing those types of arguments to the debate is pointless. The other extreme is where the questions come up. How many of the processes that professional brewers actually do can you skip before it's cheating? According to the BJCP anything up to relabeling commercial beer is allowed. The beer just has to be good!

So, the real question is, what are you comfortable with? If you feel using extract is cheating, don't do it. But don't try to impose your personal values on someone else.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Agree with you about the two extremes. On one end you have cheating. On the other, just silliness. We're homebrewing. In other words, we're trying to do what professional brewers do, only doing it at home. They do exist, but very few craft breweries grow and malt there own grain. Bringing those types of arguments to the debate is pointless. The other extreme is where the questions come up. How many of the processes that professional brewers actually do can you skip before it's cheating? According to the BJCP anything up to relabeling commercial beer is allowed. The beer just has to be good!

So, the real question is, what are you comfortable with? If you feel using extract is cheating, don't do it. But don't try to impose your personal values on someone else.

+5000

As long as you're actually brewing the beer yourself, however you get to the end result is irrelevant.

If someone enters a Mr. Beer kit brew into a competition and beats my all grain brew, I'll tip my hat to them as a brewer, not get pissed cause they took the easy way.

Besides, while I certainly enjoy winning medals, the biggest reason I enter comps is to get better as a brewer. While half the feedback I get may be self-contradicting garbage, I'll usually get at least SOME decent (and objective) suggestions for how to make a subpar beer a good one, or how to make a good one an excellent one.

I've had beers get praised highly, score highly, and not medal. I've also had beers with some rightful comments on flaws, and a fairly low score, but still medal. I was happier with the higher non-medal than the medal.

And with that in mind, the beer someone else brews, or how they brew it, is irrelevant to me.