NHC First Round Stats - Gordon Strong going for Ninkasi #3

[TheRabidBrewer]

A break down of the numbers:

http://www.betterbeerblog.com/index.php/2010/05/24/nhc-first-round-stats

Brian

 

[Homercidal]

One thing that I noticed is that HBT is not present in the club listings. I think many people don't list them as their first club, or don't list it as a club at all. I never realized that I could put HBT as a club until very recently.

And Gordon Strong is not really a surprise. He's a brewing legend.

 

[Sedge]

These are pretty cool stat breakdowns. I did notice that my amber is going against Gordon's amber in the second round. Damn it.

 

[Sedge]

I just came across this site http://www.mindbet.com/ which has really nice breakdowns of all the individual styles, the point numbers for all advancing brewers, clubs, regions etc.

It is really useful. If you look at Gordon's advancing beers and compare them to the data for # of entries per style, you'll notice that he placed mostly in categories with few entrants comparatively. Others in the top tiers pushed forth a lot of lagers and ciders etc as well. That tells me that if I set aside some fruit beer, cider, mead, and lagers in addition to the normal amount of ales one might enter on a whim (not to mention the money for all those entry fees) it is quite feasible to beat him out.

Of course you still have to be brewing great beer, but its fun to look at the numbers.

 

[remilard]

I just came across this site http://www.mindbet.com/ which has really nice breakdowns of all the individual styles, the point numbers for all advancing brewers, clubs, regions etc.

It is really useful. If you look at Gordon's advancing beers and compare them to the data for # of entries per style, you'll notice that he placed mostly in categories with few entrants comparatively. Others in the top tiers pushed forth a lot of lagers and ciders etc as well. That tells me that if I set aside some fruit beer, cider, mead, and lagers in addition to the normal amount of ales one might enter on a whim (not to mention the money for all those entry fees) it is quite feasible to beat him out.

Of course you still have to be brewing great beer, but its fun to look at the numbers.

I think it is feasible if the following is true.

1. You can consistently brew very good beer/mead/cider (this is probably a few hundred people).
2. You like to brew a wide range of classic styles (now we lost all of the specialists in the group above).
3. You are willing to make the time and monetary investments to produce 40+ entries in good condition at one time.

The people satisfying all 3 conditions at one time number probably around 5.

Mead/cider and lagers get relatively few entries but those categories also have the most specialists. Kris England and Gordon Strong will have a lot of mead winners but they are mead experts (in addition to beer experts), not beer only guys who knocked out a mead or two just to increase their chance of winning.

Cider is definitely the soft spot in a lot of regions (the West region only got like 5 entries in one of the cider categories I think), but I think it is likely very hard still to win in the second round because you have some very good cider makers getting entries through from the northwest, midwest and northeast.

 

[Sedge]

Yeah I didn't say it was going to be easy. I definitely am interested in brewing all of the styles and brewing them well, and I think I have the space to save several styles for comps. I just started some cider trials and plan on putting some meads down in the coming weeks.

40 entries is a bit much for me, but I'm going to shoot for 15 next year. This year I was roughly 30% on advancing so I'm gonna make a run at it brewing like a madman this summer. Two batches are in the works for this weekend: a lager and a sour ale. Let the games begin!