Anyone heard if the entry limit will remain at 15 for the 2014 NHC? Given how quickly entry registration filled up for 2013, I could see them wanting to lower it even more.
I can’t imagine coming up with 15 comp ready beers. But that’s just me.
When are the first round entries accepted usually?
I have no inside information on this but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it drop to the 5-10 range on limit. Even with the 15 entry limit, the whole thing filled up in no time.
I am also curious about this since I have a very tight brew schedule for the next 5 months to get beers ready for the first round. Right now I am at 12 entries I’m planning, but may change that depending on how a couple do in upcoming competitions.
if we include mead and cider I had at least 40 things to pick from last year. Getting it down to 8 (as much $ as I was willing to spend) took weeks of intensive taste testing. ;D
Even if they don’t have the information now, it would be great if the AHA could give us some dates on when certain decisions would be made/information would be released. limits, costs, first round locations, 2015 NHC site, etc. Or even just release some results of the various surveys they’ve taken.
…just my two cents.
cheers–
–Michael
I’m surprised the location hasn’t been rumored yet. I hope Asheville is on the list soon…
Yeah, pretty quiet, some searching shows that the contract has probably not been signed. If you filed out the question survey, potential cities were on that list.
Pure speculation is back to the West Coast, or the South. Rumors a few years back was that Austin was working on it, but ran into some roadblocks. Would like to go there for personal selfish reasons.
At 4000+ in future years, the conference becomes attractive to big convention hotels and conference centers. The downside is that many places will not have an NHC again, due to the size of the conference.
I believe in the next couple days, Jake Keeler intends to post reports from the AHA GC subcommittees about what they’re working on. I think the comp subcommittee will outline some of the ideas they’re considering.
One thing I worry about is the entry fee. I know some want it to be $30 so people limit their entries. I was fine with the increase last year but much higher and I’ll just not bother sending entries.
I know they were working on NHC last year, but I hope Philly is a 1st round site this year. Two years ago, they did an excellent job!!
IMHO, that’s how it should be. You advanced 4 out of 8, right? I entered 4, advanced 2. But I’m also not crazy enough to just enter as many beers as possible to “increase my chances”. If you have 15 EXCELLENT beers, then great - enter them. But I cannot tell you how many entrant envelops I stuffed from our regional that had 12-15 entries with not only none advancing, but also some pretty low scores for most of the beers (mid 20s). I can’t imagine paying $15 per entry on a beer I didn’t think was world class.
Even if the cap was 5-10, I’d still maybe enter 4-5 beers a year.
Okay, soap box rant over. 8) Carry on! ;D
In 2009, the fine folks in the Philly region didn’t even judge my first round beers. I was pissed at first but then was given a pass to the second round for their mistake. I won two medals that year and got to go to beer camp at Sierra Nevada. This is why I enter a lot of beer to NHC. That beer camp trip was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
I entered KC last year and got my scoresheets back in about a week. I’ll likely enter there again if they host a first round site.
I believe I responded to the survey that I thought a modest decrease in max entries to about 12 was OK. One of the questions they’ve asked in the last year was how important Ninkasi is. I think I responded that it was fairly important right now. But it is only important when meaningful, and I don’t think low limits on entries make Ninkasi very meaningful. No one wants a 23-way tie.
I guess we’ll see how important the rest of the membership thinks Ninkasi is.
Janis acknowledged in the latest Zymurgy that there was now room to grow the Final Round from a judge standpoint, and thus add more First Round regions. Ignoring for the moment whether she can find more crazy dedicated clubs to organize a region, I think competition growth coupled with no more than a modest decrease in max entries/person would do for at least one year.
cheers–
–Michael
P.S. - thanks for the info Denny. There’s some very passionate people here and we really appreciate any updates.
HEY! Who you callin’ crazy? Oh… wait… 
Wow! Would someone actually send in entries if it cost $30 each? That is steep, but clearly the demand is high and the amount of support the AHA can provide to the judges is limited. $15 may be a little low, but $30 is really pushing it. I do think that pricing should be increased to help moderate the demand and allow the AHA to better support the judges that otherwise donate everything to do this ‘service’ to their fellow homebrewers.
Another thing that I would like to see are incentives for judges to participate in the first round competitions. Incentives such as: reserved entries in next year’s competition or reservations to this year’s convention (you would still have to pay for them) might be more prized by the judges given the difficulty in getting those slots. These are NO-COST incentives for AHA and they could have an effect on getting more and better qualified judges to the competition sites.
I recently found out that this is how the Iron Man competitions are handled. If you volunteer one year you get early registration the next.
man I hope not. It was $12 this year and I think $15 is about as high as I’ll go. $20? - yeah I’m out. Maybe $20+ makes sense to me if we ever have to go to three rounds.
I totally agree. the problem with using price to marrow entry is that you narrow your entries with no regard to general quality of the entry. Unless there is solid evidence that the quality of beer goes up with the income of the brewer.
actually sure, make it 30 bucks but limit to 1 entry per person.
Subcommittee reports, including one from the comp subcommittee, are posted here…
“Due to the overwhelming demand for the competition, drastic changes will be required for the next year.”
well that seems rather ominous, but I guess we’ll see.
I’ll wait until we’ve been given at least, say, 35% of the new information before I freak out. ;D
good luck guys; keep up updated!
cheers–
–Michael
You beat me to it Denny.
We are working on several options to enhance the competition for next year and the years to come. The committee has been hashing out details for many months now. We believe we have some viable modifications to help improve the ever increasing demand for the competition.
While I don’t know the financial state of the AHA, it seems to me that the NHC is a cash cow. If this is true, I would think that a limit of the total entries per participant would be a fairer method. Significantly increasing the cost of entries would hurt those with less monetary resources.
The opportunity to compete in the NHC should be open to as many as possible.
Mac