Competitions

America’s Finest City Homebrew Competition

It’s almost time for the 2013 America’s Finest City Homebrew Competition! There’s one week left to submit entries and have them dropped off/shipped to the Homebrew Mart on Linda Vista Rd.

The deadline for submission is Wednesday February 13th.

 

Entry fees are $7 each, and the info and rules can be found at https://quaff.org/AFC-2013/
While you’re at the website, you can sign up to judge or steward the competition which will be held at St. Dunstan’s Church in La Mesa on Friday February 22 and Saturday February 23rd.
Brewers will have each of their entries judges and evaluated, and they will receive detailed scoresheets completed by the judges after the competition. The awards ceremony will be held at All American Grill in Hazard Center on Tuesday 26th, during the monthly QUAFF general meeting.
So what are you waiting for? Get on over to the site, enter your beers, and sign up to judge or steward!
Categories : Competitions

Recap: QUAFF Strong Ale Challenge

After a very long hiatus, the QUAFF Strong Ale Competition has returned and hosted at The Lost Abbey.  This is a BJCP qualified event, which means not only can you obtain points toward your own rank, but any winners of the competition will be eligible to enter GABF as a Pro-Am if, of course, they can find a pro-brewer willing to make their beer on a commercial scale.

As a club, always arrive early, even though there is a competition staff, they always need help.  Many hands make light work, so arrive early and ask where you can pitch in, this will ensure the event starts on time and runs well.  The tasting room floor of a brewery was a new location to judge beers, but being a seasoned veteran of judging, you simply tune out the noise and get down to business.  Here’s a pro-tip: if you’re interested in winning awards, make a special effort to enter competitions with a small number of  entries.  The odds of your winning will increase dramatically if you’re not competing against 80 to 100 other beers (say IPA). 

My judging partners for the event were Cole Davisson and Liz Chism and we were assigned the Strong Ale catagory 19 with one entry from Strong Scotch Ale cat 9E.  To our absolute delight, the beers were all very well made and showing few signs of brewing errors, for the most part.  Having judged for the past 3 years, there has been a dramatic increase in the quality of homebrew.  The beer revolution is certainly on at all levels and with quality going up, competitions will become much more difficult.  Just because your beer didn’t place doesn’t mean it wasn’t bad, but on that day and at that time with all the little variables considered, it just wasn’t the best beer put before the judges.

Palate fatigue is a problem which both the competition committee and judges have to address.  The committee must insure you’re not sitting down to a flight that is too large and judges need to monitor their intake to avoid burning out their palate.  Which means, small sips and a detailed study of all the flavors per sip, trying to reduce the amount of time each sample has to make sure the last beer can be judged as well as the first beer.  It’s a very fine line of how much you need to consume and for each judge it’s different.  Practice and repeat judging sessions will help you tune in your ability.  This is also the very reason to advance within the BJCP you need judging points.  Nothing beats real world experience.

Being a judge, you never know what catagory you may be assigned to.  Sure you’ve studied and taken the tasting and/or written exam, but none of us drinks from the entire style regularly enough to always be spot on.  Well at least me anyway, I can’t speak for everyone.  One thing I do when I get my assignment is if I’m not as familiar with the category, for the 2 days before the event, I’ll go snag singles from the classic examples and have 2 a night while reading over the style description.  This allows me to re-familiarize myself with the style and the range within the style.  Thus when I sit down to judge it’s fresh in my memory of what I should be looking for and also detect what shouldn’t be there.

In all the event was fun, judges and stewards were given wrist bands for free samples after the event, which was an added bonus and we were served lunch as well.  Given the flights were small, the event progressed quickly and smoothly.  I had a great time and this was another really well run event.  I can’t help but think that QUAFF ought to host a competition strictly limited to Cat 14: IPA, given it’s popularity.

QUAFF Strong Ale Challenge Results

Larry Stein took a stop motion film of the competition, and yes, we do judge this fast!

http://youtu.be/u-QmvZzEV5o

Cheers!
EW

Categories : Competitions

Studying for BJCP Beer Judging Examination

Hello QUAFFers,

Having just taken the tasting portion of the BJCP exam I thought I’d put down a few thoughts to help those in the future who want to study and advance within the BJCP world of judging.  After completing the new 200 Q’s/ 60 minutes online entry exam, you’ll want to sign up for the tasting exam right away.  Why?  Because the list is very long and the test is given infrequently. 

I believe it’s about once a year in San Diego.  Hopefully, when the graders have caught up, the exam size and frequency will increase.  You’ll also need 3 to 4 months to prepare for the exam.  Which sounds entirely crazy, but if you choose to do it once a week, it will take that long to get through all the styles. 

Our studying for this most recent exam was two fold: Travis ran a special weekly class to help us prepare for the exam.  Beer review, test mechanics (grading, focus etc…) and practice judging and a practice exam.  The other was 6 to 7  of us met weekly on Wednesdays to supplement Travis’ course with more focused study on beer subcategories.  We’d pick a main cat and attempt to find 2 classic examples of each sub-cat and taste them side-by-side. 
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Categories : Competitions

QUAFF Strong Ale Challenge

Registration is now open for the QUAFF Strong Ale Challenge!

The QUAFF Strong Ale Challenge is open to all classic styles with OG > 1.080,
specialty categories with OG > 1.080, and all mead categories.

This is a BJCP sanctioned competition with an entry fee of $7 per entry.

You can register your entries, or register to judge or steward at:

http://quaff.pairsite.com/strongale

Registration will be open from 9/16 – 11/1.
Entries can be shipped or dropped off between 10/17 – 11/1 at The Lost Abbey
in San Marcos.

Judging will take place on 11/17/12 at The Lost Abbey.

Winners will be announced at the November QUAFF meeting where judging
score sheets providing feedback will be returned. Ribbons will be awarded to the
1st, 2nd, and 3d place entries in each category. There will be a grand prize for the
Best of Show.

Categories : Competitions

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