Greetings everyone… Thinking ahead to the 2015 NHC, as well as other events where we are allowed to serve home brew, our club has been discussing how we pick home brews to be served. Some would like a tasting panel, some would like any beer brought to the event to be served, some want a representation from a limited number of the different styles… I’m looking for some input from other clubs that have a process/system for selecting beers in place to help guide us.
Thank you!
How does your club select beers to serve at events such as NHC etc?
Our club doesn’t serve at events
Tasting panel that decides
If you make it and bring it, it will be put in the rotation and served
every event our club has poured at so far it has been an issue of managing to fill out the taps. We have not had to refuse any brewer who wished to pour his/her beer.
Our club is small and informal enough that any beer brought will be served. We set it up where each homebrewer pours his/her own beer. That way, the tasters can directly interact with them. It has worked well so far.
We learned this past year that we will only be bringing as many kegs as we have taps. Our club has 9 taps and brought 15 kegs. Needless to say, some of them didn’t even get tapped.
For NHC next year, I would imagine that we would limit it first to people who are attending, then to vote by tasting panel at the May meeting. We have so many events around the KC area, that whatever doesn’t get to go will likely find a pouring spot at a local festival in the next month or so.
There were a few questionable beers and one awful monstrosity poured by my club at a festival last year. It’s a tough line to walk. On one hand you want to put the best foot forward to impress, while on the other hand you don’t want to stifle a club member’s excitement.
Steve - thank you…that’s basically the dilemma we see also. We’ve had some…some…“interesting” beers served by club members at events in the recent past. But they were so into it, that we didn’t want to crush their enthusiasm and cause hurt feelings/embarrassment by pulling the keg. While they received some honest feedback after the event to help them improve, the beer was still served at the event. It was painful to see some of the faces of people that tasted it.
We saw that at NHC this year too. While there were some really great home brews served, there were some pretty mediocre beers (which is to be expected…you get that with pros too). There were some pretty bad ones, and there was a couple of totally undrinkable ones, which we were kind of surprised at.
My sweet little wifey never cusses except once in a while to be funny/for effect, or when she is truly really mad and is ready to bring her German out. When she had one of those really bad ones, she let out a crowd stopping expletive followed by the question, “did anyone taste that before they tapped it???” While some laughed, she also got a few “I know…we were thinking the same thing”.
While I don’t want to do this whole tasting panel thing that is going to surely cause hard feelings, and I don’t want to see us squelch anyone’s enthusiasm, I also don’t want our club to serve bad beer.
It may sound like you’re being mean/rude to tell someone their beer isn’t that great, but you’re really doing them a disservice if you let them think their problem child is a good thing (people serving at a festival generally think their beer is great no matter the actual quality).
Our club provides two main styles of feedback: anonymous during the meeting with the group, and one on one with some of our high ranking BJCP judges - a segment called “If you really want to know”.
Our club members’ beers quality have improved markedly in the past 2-3 years because of this practice. Some brewers of those " interesting" beers are now brewing some fan-damn-tastic versions of those same questionable beers. It’s a pretty neat transformation!
As others have stated, my homebrew club is relatively small and sometimes struggles to get homebrews to serve. Anyone willing to serve their beer has had the opportunity to do so. With that said, the beers we have served have been good to great. I can definitely see the cause for a tasting for an event though.
Edit: I have encountered beers from other groups that were questionable.
I would rather be honest with the brewers and them know if the beer is good enough or not. But on the positive side, they all have about nine months to perfect one recipe.
IF I were in a club and they were bringing beer to NHC I would vote for the taste panel idea. Two or three good judges, blind taste and score. If we were bringing X amount of kegs, then the top X beers go on the road but nothing under a 35. For local stuff you could relax the requirements, and for club meetings anything goes. If someone threw a fit because their 28 point beetweisen didn’t cut it… well, bottle it and serve it to victims on your own.
One of the funniest things I ever heard -
I was at club night a few years ago and walked up to a booth and I said to the guy “Give me something you made that’s really good.” His reply: “If it was really good I wouldn’t have brought it!”
Our rule of thumb is don’t bring anything that you wouldn’t be proud to serve. We typically only serve as a club for relatively large festivals (~1500-2500 attendees) since our serving setup is not something that gets carried in (it’s a canoe converted into a 32 tap jockey box).
The other case is when we do Iron Brewer events, and then it’s a matter of each team brewing 20-25 gallons to win over the crowd, so everybody brings their A game anyway.
So I suppose tasting panel would be the closest, but none of them exactly fit. This is one of our big events:
