competition question

[tedearregardless]

Hey, folks - I have a competition question. I realize much of this is up to the judges, etc., but I just saw (in a comp I submitted to) that an "American Brown Ale" was the winner of the Category 8 (English Pale Ale). I wonder if anybody has ever seen this before? Maybe the judges combined category 10 (where I would imagine an American Brown would have been submitted) and category 8 if too few entries were submitted for these styles? There was no posted winner for American Ale (cat. 10), so maybe this is what happened. I'm just curious if anybody has seen this! This was my first competition, so it just caught me off guard. Thanks!

 

[Braufessor]

Pretty routine to combine categories in smaller competitions (under 200 entries) so that there are reasonable numbers of beers in each category. However, I can't say that I have seen American Brown Ale put in with English Pale Ales..... Generally, big categories (like 10) are broken apart, and smaller categories like 8, might be combined with scottish/irish ales or something like that. But, it is not at all uncommon to combine and break apart categories (in general) to make for reasonable flight sizes.

 

[tedearregardless]

Thanks! I just looked and there were only 128 submissions. Maybe it just worked out that fewer folks than normally would have submitted to category 10! I appreciate the input.

 

[Braufessor]

Was it an official BJCP competition? Sometimes if it is not, they do some really unusual things as far as categories. With 128 entries, they could have just done something like: Lagers, American/english Ales, Stouts/porters, IPA's, etc. etc.

 

[tedearregardless]

It was BJCP official

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Even some BJCP sanctioned competitions don't use standard categories. The Maltose Falcons here in SoCal are notorious for that. They have their own categories, which split things up in different ways than the standard BJCP and have a few extra categories of their own.

That said, I'm a *bit* surprised. In most competitions, categories 10, 13, 14, and 16 are typically overflowing, while others (most lagers) are nearly empty. So I'd be a bit surprised that category 10 was combined with 8...