When people first start brewing beer, they want everyone to try it. Sometimes it takes some effort to get people to have that first glass but you’re just looking to get some feedback and hey everyone wants to hear that their beer is good, great, excellent, right? Once they try your beer it can be difficult to get honest feedback. Maybe you made a stinker and they don’t want to hurt your feelings, or maybe its just ok and they only have that one glass. So, unless you have someone who can be brutally honest when sampling your beer, you might be left guessing what to do next. Entering your beer into homebrew competitions might be the answer. Before I started entering competitions, I used to pretty much wing it when coming up with my recipes. I didn’t pay much attention to the hops I was using and in general didn’t much care about style. My beer was ok, yah just ok. Some batches were a hit and for the most part it wasn’t difficult to get people to try it. But honest criticism was not available, in fact my only clue that they really liked it is when they would pour a second glass.
After joining a local homebrew club a number of things happened. I learned that some of my technique needed improvements. I also discovered that some of the members had been entering their beers into competitions. Up to this point I hadn’t considered doing this and if you’re like me you might be in the same boat. I’m hoping to change your mind or at least get you thinking about it. Making some changes to my processes and learning about the BJCP style guide I began to take more care in recipe formulation. I started thinking about competing to see how I was doing, I really wanted to know. I was hoping to get some detailed feedback and possibly earn a medal. So, I registered in my first competition and sent in the well packaged bottles and waited. I’d like to say I won a medal on my first try, but that wasn’t the case. What I got instead was some pretty awesome score sheets. Oh, the score wasn’t awesome, but the level of detail was. They scored on aroma, appearance, flavor, mouthfeel and overall impression. There’s also a section for entry issues (astringency, diacetyl, and other off flavors). Each section is scored and then the entry is given a total out of 50. In my experience beer judges generally give feedback whether the entry was good or bad. The most important part is to take any criticism and use it to improve your beer for the next competition. To me this was the only reason to compete. After a few more competitions I finally got my first medal, it was pretty cool, and of course it gave me bragging rights. If you want to take your homebrewing craft to the next level, you really need to start entering competitions. Take the suggestions or issues identified, make some changes and enter again. And repeat. There are a lot of competitions out there. In Canada we have breweroftheyear which lists a lot of competitions, their sites and registration pages. Good luck, have fun and go get some swag!
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