First Contest Entry

So today is the day I bottle my very first homebrew contest beer. I have a 9% DIPA which is kegged, carbonated, and cold. I was planning on using my growlers filler to fill my bottles, which I was planning on sanitizing and storing in the keezer so the beer and bottles are the same temp to avoid excess foaming. Any input or recommendations for delivering the best beer to the judges would be appreciated. My main concern is the level of Co2 in the bottles after a week from the keg, but also wondering if beers are usually kept chilled post collection until the day of the event? I just want to ensure my beers are good upon testing.

Beers are not always stored cold. I’d say in my experience, it’s 50/50

Make sure to turn the CO2 down pretty low when filling.  Also, you may want to consider upping the CO2 level a bit in case they sit open on a table when judged.  This way they will still be at an appropriate carbonation level when they judge it.

Also, fill a couple extra in case something happens in transit or when the get to the competition.

Good luck in the comp!

As in send an extra bottle or two into the comp? This is perhaps something that had not occurred to me. Thanks for the advice. I planned on filling about a 6 pack and opening some the day of the contest since I cannot attend, just to see how they fair.

My only recommendation is to pick a less popular category.  ;D  DIPA is a very competitive category.

Only send in the required amount, but have the others stored cold for those times you get an email saying one of your bottles were broken and you still have time to send in another.

With NHC, I fill a 6 pack for each entry.  2 go to the first round, 3 for the second round if they advance and 1 for spare in case of bottle breakage.

As long as you bottle well and avoid loosing CO2 then, you should be fine having them stored for a few weeks. If you think about it, this is the same process that most commercial beer goes through. Even through sitting on unrefridgerated shelves it doesn’t loose carbonation. The caps should hold the seal.

You could ask the organizer how they’ll be stored.

Okay, so i just printed out my labels and entry form, and im noticing that i do not have nearly enough space on the hops table to list all my additions. should i simply group them by additions? as in group all my flameout and dry hop additions together? im not sure, its to small.

Most comps don’t actually expect you to fill out the recipe section.

I will comment that bottling off of a tap is not the ideal scenario for a number of reasons. The faucet isn’t exactly sanitary (which doesn’t matter for pulling a pint) and the O2 exposure isn’t easy to eliminate, even bottling on foam.

Somebody around here posted a method that is cheap and works well. Get a bottling wand and remove the spring tip. The tube fits perfectly into a picnic tap, giving you a bottom filler with a valve. If you push your beer with very low pressure (say 2psi) you should get very little foaming and an easy fill.

And if you put a small rubber stopper on the plastic wand, the size that fits into your bottle opening, then you can control the flow of beer by burping the stopper.

Yep, I used that setup for awhile before breaking down and getting a Beer Gun. Worked pretty well. It probably lost a little more carbing than a Beer Gun, but I just carbed the beer up a little more to account for it.

Yep… I use that method for quick beers that might be going to friends or  for a party.  Other than that, all comp beers get beer-gunned properly.  Even with the beer gun, I still don’t trust it for long-term storage (ie more than 4 mos).

I wound up just using my growler filler, i filled a total of 5 bottles, the first was the only real disappointment with excess foaming (I kept this one for myself), the other 4 came out quite well. 2 for the contest, 1 for my LHBS owner, and two for myself and father to try the day of the judging. Thanks to all for the advice, and I’ll look into fitting my bottling wand in the tap as suggested.

Keep those suckers cold until the very last day you have to package them and send them out.  Will help to minimize oxidation.

Mchrispen has a dunkel and a helles coming that I bottled this way. Drop serving pressure, purge bottles, fill with tipless bottling wand shoved into cobra tap. I fill till foam overflows to just beer. Then quickly cap on foam. Its hard to get a uniform propper fill level, but hopefully that wont matter. They are on the slow boat to china (Texas) so we’ll see how they survive the journey.

I have one of those growler filler type tubes that has a double o-ring stainless plug in the tap end and a ten inch or so tube that extends into the bottle.  It isn’t the way I would fill bottles for long term storage but it works well enough for comps or sending in a swap…

I did this for the current swap and Toby can vouch for how it goes.

As with many Homebrew issues - YMMV.

I need to grab one. I’m tired of wrangling the cobra just to fill a couple bottles.

Waiting to receive my score sheets in the mail. However, I cracked the extra two bottles i had the day of the comp and they seemed to have a nice level of carbonation. I’m hoping for good scores, but at least i know i can hold Co2 in bottles off the draft lines. Thanks to all, ill let you know how I score.