I, for one, was immediately disappointed at this announcement. However, I promptly realized maybe it’s a great opportunity for clubs to come together and do this themselves.
I’d like to know what other clubs might be interested in continuing style-specific competitions limited to one-entry per club. In discussion with other Oregon Brew Crew board members, we’d certainly be interested in hosting a style “invitational.”
With the AHA no longer having Club-Only competitions, clubs would not receive NHC Club of the Year points for participation. I’d like to see if this would discourage club participation in something like this: how much of a motivator were these points?
Also, I’m curious if other clubs would interested in establishing a collaboration of “invitational” competitions toward some final seasonal outcome.
truth be told, I joined a club for access to Club-Only competitions. “I don’t care to belong to a club that would accept people like me as members” is more to my usual feeling.
having said that, I’d be interested in competing in what you propose, and would even push the local club to host one, once, you know, the state of Kansas makes them legal again. :
A sad day indeed, our club was hoping to be active in the Club-Only competitions this year.
I’d be interested Ted and I imagine many in COHO would be. I enjoyed participating in the Heart of Cascadia competition. I’ll chat with our president over the weekend about these changes and see if we can get you two connected.
The Barons host an all German competition and I know the Rock Hoppers host an all French & Belgian one. Belle City does a high gravity Winter Warmer competition. The COC was a great incubator but now there are plenty of other competitions out there that can serve this function.
Entrants declare their club affiliations when they register. It’s just a matter of coming up with a point system for awarding the winners based on number of entries, entries that placed, and club affiliation.
Our club has always scheduled our monthly styles competition/judging classes to coordinate with the Club-Only Competition calendar. We meet once a month (apart from the general meeting), review the style at hand, present commercial examples if available, and judge homebrew entries, sometimes with bjcp scoresheets, other times without (depending on the number of entries). The winning entry gets shipped for free to the COC. Of course we will continue to hold our monthly judging/style classes, but it would be nice to continue the COC, even without the AHA.
I’m not sure how it would work with established one-style competitions since they may have to limit the number of entries from any club to just one, but I certainly think we could start a new competition circuit to replace the AHA COC. I am sure we could post the schedule in Zymurgy. All we need is for 6 to 10 clubs per year to volunteer to host a style.
Like the COC before, we get 6 clubs to host with an announced style. One entry per club. Clubs are awarded points on the placement of the beer in the competition. (Say 1-10 ranked). Winning club has the most points at the end of the year.
Or… same setup, except the winning clubs (if you placed in the previous 5), get to send their best beer of anything to a final competition to determine the BoS for the year. And yeah, the beer they send doesn’t have to be related, otherwise that will cause issues with the styles you can choose.
ETA: If it isn’t clear - I think I just volunteered the Falcons to coordinate this.
I may be speaking out of place/turn, but I am pretty sure the Lincoln Lagers can host one of the comps. We were stoked about hosting the COC in 2015, but obviously this is not the case anymore. :-[
