It can’t be too soon to start planning yet? What are you entering this year. For me, I got a 40 (38/42) on my Scottish so I’m going for it again. The National level judge picked up oxidation and gave it a 42. The rank pending said it was lacking peat earth. So I’m going to change one thing. I’m bottle conditioning instead of bottling off the keg. Fingers crossed.
Then I’m cheating. Entering my peat earth lacking Scott as a Northern English Brown since my wife can’t tell it apart from New Castle Brown. Then I’m doing one with more hops to enter as a Special Bitter.
Depending on how my NW Wild turns out I might enter it as am American Mixed Fermentation 28b in new guidelines, if they decide to use them this year.
I had hoped we’d see the new styles, even if we were stuck with the existing 28 categories, or a similar number. Going to 40 categories would seriously limit the number of First Round regions, and thus the size of the competition.
curious how they’ll eventually switch to 2014 guidelines for 2016. Combining some small categories?
hmm…
I seem to be winning more medals in Cider and Mead than beer recently, so I may just enter those this year. Of course it all depends on how the selection process goes with the comp too. Last year was relatively stress free, but who know what this year will bring. You never know, it may be limited to just 1 or 2 entries.
I’m going to be moving across country soon so I’m not going to get the chance to brew much for the comp this year. So that means It’s going to have to be pretty much all aged beers this year. Maybe a mead that I’ve had sitting around for 4 or 5 years too.
The proposed 2014 BJCP Style Guidelines will not be finalized soon enough to use in the 2015 National Homebrew Competition (NHC). We will use the 2008 BJCP Style Guidelines for the upcoming 2015 NHC, and we will transition to the new BJCP guidelines for the 2016 NHC.
Every year I think about entering NHC or some other homebrewing competition but then I never get around to designing something to fit the competition styles.
Kick off tomorrow! I have 1728 on the stirplate now. Boiling the first gallon down to scary. And tryin to be meticulous with everything else. Then Sunday I think I’ll throw together an APA just for fun and tap variety, not for competition.
most of the regions and dates are on the BJCP calendar, just fyi.
bummer no KC region, but they deserve a break. Also sucks Easter is in the middle there and so many regions are on one weekend, but I suspect there’s nothing else that could be done - the spring gets awfully busy with events/comps. Still, those 4/10 regions are going to have to store entries for 5 weeks or so before they ever judge them. :-\
Yeah, the competition dates for 2015 are March 13 to April 12, 2015. Easter (4/5) and also the Craft Brewers Conference in Portland (4/13-18) kind of hurt the schedule a bit, but there isn’t anything I can do about that. I have 2 more competitions to register; Austin, TX and Saint Louis, MO. I don’t have dates or shipping/judging info for either right now.
Effectively, the only ones we are allowed to choose are 1, 4, and 5 on the 5-pt scale…
I would request one of the following in order of preference:
A software change that lets us enter all 5 sweetness levels present on the scoresheet.
A smaller change: change the middle of the 3 from “semi-sweet” to “medium” so that at least we can enter the actual midpoint of the 5 levels: 1, 3, and 5. Note this would fit perfectly with the mead scoresheet which uses Dry Medium Sweet
A request that all organizers tell their cider judges that entrants were not allowed to enter 2 of the 5 sweetness levels.
…it sounds like a non-issue but I’ve gotten hammered in each of the last two Finals for “You entered this as semi-sweet but it is really semi-dry.” :
What is the rationale behind requiring all entries to arrive at the same time, regardless of when they are going to be judged? That makes very little sense to me, but I could be missing something. Why couldn’t each regional accept entries by a date most reasonable for them. Bottling a beer 6 weeks before it is going to be judged is not at all in the best interest of the beer. Plus, I would think the regionals would rather not have to find a place to store them for that long either. Seems a simple fix would be to simply have a “beer must arrive by” date that is 2-3 weeks before each regional competition - just like every other competition all year long.