Club competition for "Summer Session Beer finals"

[brenmurph]

Just bottled mine at 4.4%... count me out.

That's a pity. Is it all bottled? You could dilute it with boiled water. And if you're worried about losing bitterness, you could boil the water with some hops to add a few IBUs.

another idea is chill it down to near zero ( carefull not to go below) sanitise with spray (if u have it) all around the cap to be sure
Get a bottle of fizzy mineral water from lidl or aldi ( the stuff from northern Ireland)  because its highly fizzy. dilute down with 10 -15%, if u keep the carbonation u will keeep the bitterness fairly well. If u feel it has lost maltiness or hop aroma stick 1 aroma cone in the bottle for extra effect, thats a dry hopped bottle of beer.

If u have some spare bottles of the beer play around with above ideas as per here and previous post. If u have a good beer to start with it could be extra good with a tweaking

[fyodor]

Just bottled mine at 4.4%... count me out.

That's a pity. Is it all bottled? You could dilute it with boiled water. And if you're worried about losing bitterness, you could boil the water with some hops to add a few IBUs.

another idea is chill it down to near zero ( carefull not to go below) sanitise with spray (if u have it) all around the cap to be sure
Get a bottle of fizzy mineral water from lidl or aldi ( the stuff from northern Ireland)  because its highly fizzy. dilute down with 10 -15%, if u keep the carbonation u will keeep the bitterness fairly well. If u feel it has lost maltiness or hop aroma stick 1 aroma cone in the bottle for extra effect, thats a dry hopped bottle of beer.

If u have some spare bottles of the beer play around with above ideas as per here and previous post. If u have a good beer to start with it could be extra good with a tweaking

I already added the water in the secondary when dry hopping, simply didn't put enough in. All bottled now, reckon I'll bring some along anyhow. Thanks for the tips though!

[Dr Jacoby]

Have we decided on a date for this? It was suggested that we hold it on a Wednesday. Does that mean we're aiming for September 25th?

There have probably been discussions going on in the background about how to organise the judging session, but maybe it would be handy to list all the issues to make sure we don't forget anything important. We could get lots of entries so there's probably no harm thinking about the problems that might arise. Feel free to add to the list below if I've missed something (I've numbered the questions to make it easier to discuss them).

Practicalities
1. How many beers are likely to be entered?
2. Do we need to set a limit on entries?
3. If not, and we get lots of entries, should be schedule a second judging night?
4. How much beer should be brought along on the night for each entry? 1 litre? 1.5 litres? More?
5. What size samples should be handed out to give each judge enough to make a fair assessment of the beer?
6. How are we going to minimise palate fatigue?
7. Should we maybe judge half the beers, then take a break for some food, or do it all in one go?
8. Should we have a club prize on the night for the best beer? Or best 3 beers?

Judging
9. How much information should we seek about each beer? A full recipe? Just the ABV and maybe 1 or 2 other bits of info?
10. How will we judge the beers? Bling judging? Random order? Who will be responsible for this?
11. What size samples will be handed out to each judge?
12. Are we using a formal scoring system? Maybe Shiny's simple score card?
13. Will we assign extra weight to certain qualities given the nature of the comp? E.g. achieving good body in a small beer.
14. Do we individually assign a score to each beer and then count these up to determine an overall rank?
15. What if there are ties?
16. How do we decide how many beers to put forward to the nationals?

I'm starting to see how much shit the organisers of the main national competition had to consider!

[Shane Phelan]

Practicalities.

As it stands we have under 10 beers entered and we have been slow getting to that number so I don't see it going much higher than that? Either way it is worth having a rule that only the beers on this thread for example are brewers 'official' entries, we cant have people turning up unannounced on the night with a load of beer for entry.

In terms of amount of beer that depends on how many people are going to show up on the night. If only the people that are entering turned up then 1L would be enough although there will probably be more than that so perhaps 1.5L is a safer option. Each judge can just pour their own measure which usually ends up in the 50-100ml range. Like normal tasting nights we can have plenty of crackers and water which should help reduce palate fatigue. I'd say do it all in the one go unless we get a surge of late entries.

Judging.

I think the most important piece of information to include about every beer is ABV. I don't think a full recipe is required unless you are placing in the top 2 or 3 beers on the night. In terms of judging it should be blind and random given that we are all technically brewing to the same 'style/theme'. I was thinking that every beer could be decanted into a pitcher so there is very little way of identifying who owns the beer other than flavour or ABV. I was hoping that someone who was coming along on the night but wasn't entering a beer could be responsible for giving everyone/every beer a number and pouring the pitchers.

With scoring I think we should create a custom score sheet to suit the theme and list out qualities that the judges should be looking for as a means of prompting what to look for. In this case body/mouthfeel might have a higher weighting than other scores?

If everyone is judging then that is a lot more score sheets to keep track of. I would suggest taking an average (rather than sum) of all the scores so that means if people are late/missing for a flight then it doesn't really matter as the score will be an average of the amount of sheets submitted. If we take this average to one or two decimal places then there wont be any ties either.

[Dr Jacoby]

That all sounds good to me. So let's say each entrant should bring roughly 1.5 litres of each beer they want to submit for the comp (or 3 x 500ml bottle or 4 x 330ml).

Pouring the beer into pitchers might affect the carbonation but then again pouring from the same yeast filled bottle into sample glasses has its downsides too. I suppose I'd favour the pitcher, plus it's easy to work with.

Averaging the scores is a good idea. Nice and simple.

[Cathal O D]

Oh it's going to be tight. I only have 4 bottles of each beer left. It was a small batch I split in 3. I had to sample a few from each.  one isnt as good as the others but ill enter it anyway . Do u think 1L would be enough?

01. Shiny - Belgian Wit - Expected to be ~3.7% (Still fermenting)
02. Dr Jacoby - English Ales (1 base recipe dry hopped 3 ways) - estimated ABV 2.8% (fermenting)
03. CARA - American Style Pale Ale - 3.8% PROVISIONALLY-it's not quite finished yet :S
03. beerfly - pale ale - 4% or just under
04. Cathal O D - Belgian Wit 3.8% x 3
05. Rossa a couple 3.4% ales. One all Vienna the other all Munich.
06. Fyodor - should we really be putting up the descriptions of the beer here?

[Rossa]

Don't forget that the selected beers will have to be ready to be judged again in Oct.

[Cathal O D]

I know.
I was budgeting on 2 bottles for Capital and 2 for Finals. I figured if 2 was enough for the National competition in March as well as most tastings it would be enough here. 
Anyway 4 is what I have of two and 6  of the other. We'll see how it goes.

[SlugTrap]

Up to an including 4%?

I have a 4% honey weizen I can throw in, if it's not too late...

[Shane Phelan]

Nope not too late, throw your name onto the list. I don't know when the closing date is either but I imagine we will close it to entries a few days before to give us a chance to get sheets printed etc..

[SlugTrap]

01. Shiny - Belgian Wit - Expected to be ~3.7% (Still fermenting)
02. Dr Jacoby - English Ales (1 base recipe dry hopped 3 ways) - estimated ABV 2.8% (fermenting)
03. CARA - American Style Pale Ale - 3.8% PROVISIONALLY-it's not quite finished yet :S
03. beerfly - pale ale - 4% or just under
04. Cathal O D - Belgian Wit 3.8% x 3
05. Rossa a couple 3.4% ales. One all Vienna the other all Munich.
06. Fyodor - should we really be putting up the descriptions of the beer here?
07. SlugTrap - 4% honey weizen

So 4 bottles all together? Two for sampling, two for competition, correct?

[Shane Phelan]

Overall you will need 4 bottles. You will need 2 for the club competition and another 2 [at a later stage] if your beer wins our round and is put forward to the finals.

I wouldn't bring separate beers for the tasting as everyone will have already tasted your beer for the competition, the tasting after the competition is for beers that people bring that aren't in the competition. I will scan all the score sheets (see attached) allowing you to find your beer number to see what comments, scores and feedback that everyone gave your beers.