I think beer competitions can be backwards. What I mean is the judges look for faults to eliminate beers until they have a ‘least worst’ winner. That’s a fairly negative based scenario in my mind.
Couple that with some judges expecting beers to be a clone of their favorite in the style (regardless of whether that beer meets the guidelines or not) vs following the guidelines and you may have some skewed results.
I do think guidelines are important to categorize beers to organize a competition. But limiting creativity outside a competition probably shouldn’t be the outcome.
Again, it’s kinda backwards where instead of letting brewers use imagination and to encourage creativity, the guidelines tend to box homebrewers into a left and right range fan. However, most of the best beers I’ve had probably don’t meet the guidelines in one respect or another.
Routinely at least one of the little dots in BeerSmith is a little too this or a little too that with my beers. I used to adjust my recipe to align the dots but decided that’s BS. As a result, I try to select a style that fits my design fairly close vs fit my design to a strict style guideline. …but I don’t worry too much about competitions either.
To all here I agree.
I always brewed for my own preferences but decided to join competitions to get some feedback. After several entries received mixed comments I had a burning desire to focus on the style parameters.
Deep thought and hard work, which included trial and error, led me down the path of creating beers with the numbers for SRM, IBU’s/ratios and gravities right down the middle. My following entries scored well enough to secure the top spot '17 Homebrewer in NJ.
Now I’m back to brewing for my own preferences.
Amen, brother. I have had many beers (from others and maybe a time or two of my own) that don’t fit a BJCP category well, but were extraordinarily well made and very enjoyable.
The other thing not mentioned in the string is that packaging for competitions can be the source of the beer not doing well in the competition. My lagers are often wonderful on tap, but don’t travel well when bottled from the same tap.
Along the same lines, I entered four beers in a Florida competition a few months ago and all of them were infected. Turns out my beer gun had an issue. It was kind of embarrassing for me, but at least I was able to fix it.