Your First Homebrew Competition
Competitions can be a fun way to learn more about brewing better homebrews — and maybe earn some bragging rights as well. If you are interested in seeing how your homebrews stack up in competition, be sure that you and your beer are as ready as possible to compete before you send in your first entry.
Why enter?
There are two reasons to enter your beer in a competition. The first is that you believe you have made a great beer and you would like to see if trained, impartial judges agree. Your friends and homebrew club buddies might say your beer is pretty good, but to really get an unbiased assessment you need an outside opinion. The second is to get some objective feedback about a beer from people who know about beer beyond your normal circle of friends and fellow homebrewers. You may have brewed something that you know is somehow flawed, but you’re not sure why. Or you may have brewed a beer that is ok, but you’d like some feedback on how it could be better. Tasting notes from competitions can shed some light on what is going wrong in your beer that you might not detect yourself.
Be ready
Before you enter any homebrew competition, do some research on the actual event. Find out as much information about the rules, categories and regulations as you can, and be sure to double check the deadline. It is a good idea to plan at least a few months ahead to enter a competition in order to be totally prepared. You can easily make mistakes if you have to rush.
If you are sure that your beer is ready for competition, make sure that it is labeled properly according to the competition’s rules. Many great beers are disqualified from competitions because of improper labeling. Also, be sure to enter your beer in the category that you think it will be best represented by visiting the BJCP style guidelines at http://www.bjcp.org/stylecenter.php. (The BJCP also has many applications for checking from your mobile device.) For instance, if you have brewed a porter, be sure you enter it as either a brown, robust or Baltic porter.
Pack and ship
Be sure to pack your bottles of homebrew carefully before sending it off to be judged. This is true whether or not you are shipping or dropping it off at a location yourself as there is no way of controlling how your bottles will be handled in the lead up to judging day. Your beer may be a best of show, but it won’t matter if the bottle breaks before it gets to the judging table. Pack your bottles well with Styrofoam or bubble wrap and it is a good idea to mark the boxes as “fragile.”
Reading the scoresheet
When you receive the judging results, take in the information and interpret it in a way that will be helpful to your future homebrews. Often homebrewers read their scoresheets the wrong way — either by reading too much or too little into it. Don’t overreact to a low score, and don’t overestimate a high score. Some judges tend to score lower or higher than average, so if you want to know how your beer really fares, enter it into multiple competitions and see how it is rated on an average. Pay attention to any judging notes as they will help you brew that beer better next time.
