Competition Question

[Armen_Tamzarian]

About to enter my first competition and I was wondering, do I really need to write out the entire recipe? It says only name and category are required, but is there any advantage/disadvantage in writing out everything else? Thanks!

 

[Revvy]

Unless the instructions for the contest expressly say turn in a copy of the recipe, then you don't do it at all. I've never had a contest ask for one. Contests are done blindly, just the barest info on your registration label, that's why they don't even want any writing on the bottle cap, and want only the label they say they want which usually just has the brewers name, name of the beer, and bjcp category on it. And that is rubberbanded on, not even glued. And only certain sized bottles. They want nothing to stand out, except the beer.

If it isn't expressly asked for in the contest entry info. DON'T DO ANYTHING ELSE, you'll probably just get tossed out of the contest otherwise.They won't accommodate you by covering your cap, or remving your fancy glued on label, they'll just disqualify you...

 

[Armen_Tamzarian]

Gotcha. Thanks for the useful info and speedy response! Super pumped, only wish I had a few more saved from past batches!

 

[Bert1097]

I had a similar question. I'm entering my first comp as well and there is a section to describe things. I felt if I left it empty it would look bad? I wasn't sure what to put so for instance on my Roggenbier I put: Grist was 55% rye malt; Fermented with German wheat yeast..... not sure if that was a good idea to write or maybe I should have left blank.

 

[Wayne1]

The more information a judge has about your beer, the better decisions they can make.

Today I was involved with judging a competition with over 400 entries. This afternoon I judged the Herb, Spice and Vegetable category. There were some beers entered that had little to no information. It was really hard to give feedback when you don't know what the brewer really intended to do.

BTW, the winner of the category was a toasted pumpkin seed old ale. The beer was phenomenal, but the base beer was not really an old ale It was more of a big amber ale.

The category had 26 beers entered. It was split between 4 judges. Myself and another judge had 13 beers and picked the top three. Another pair of judges did the other 13. When we judged the final 6 to pick the top three in the category, there was some dissension about the toasted pumpkin seed beer. While it was, by far, the best brewed beer, the fact that is was entered as an old ale was held against it.

The beer ended up winning third overall in the competition. I really think it could have challenged for first if the brewer had described it correctly. It was kicked to third because it did not have enough of an old ale characteristic.

Moral of the story is to take your time and give the judges lots of information, describe your beer correctly in the more open categories and enter your beer in the correct category.

 

[Bert1097]

Wayne, thank you for your response. It is certainly understandable to put a lot of information down for the more 'open' categories like you were describing. This is my first competition and would like to know, if I'm brewing in the more traditional categories, and am simply trying to brew to style, should I add much more information? FWIW, I'm submitting a Roggenbier, a Bohemian Pils, Munich Dunkel and an Altbier. I did my best to brew them to style and didn't add much information in that section of the entry card.

My question is: Should I add more? And if so, what kind of info should I add if I'm brewing to style?

 

[boo boo]

If you are brewing to style, then the info you gave should be enough. If you did some unusual procedure to do it, then mention that. If you used an unusual ingredient, mention that also.