Hi Lads
I have been on the forums general discussion board and seen a load of other clubs doing competitions. So I thought I would kick this of on our board and discuss hosting our own.
Any thoughts? I would suggest starting off with an English IPA?
Cheers
Andy
yous can do it at the brewery one Saturday if yous want
Good plan! We could expand it a bit to include 14A: English IPA, 8: English Pale ales and 11: English brown ales?
Sounds like a great idea to me ( said very naively :) ).
If you'd be going for an english ale theme you could throw in milds, bitters 4A/4B/4C, or even old ale/barleywine 19A/19B. Or you could choose a German / Belgian beer theme. Or where anything is allowed that makes use of roasted dark grains. Could even do Clone Wars if you could guarantee entries wouldn't just be de-labelled commercial examples?
Either way there's probably a lot to think about
Judging (how many bjcp judges are in the belfast club?)
Venue
Date
Theme
Drop point locations / pick up / shipping
Cold storage
Entry fee
Entry numbers
Prizes
Scoring sheet returns
and probably tonnes more.
Bring it on, losers!
-Barry
:P
Not mandatory, but using the BJCP is a good idea as the nationals are being held part in Belfast in 2016.
It's no harm to get a feel for the process.
The final result is not necessarily based on the scores anyway.
Quote from: johnrm on February 18, 2015, 06:37:43 PM
Not mandatory, but using the BJCP is a good idea as the nationals are being held part in Belfast in 2016.
It's no harm to get a feel for the process.
+1 - would be good to get the practice/experience.
Quote from: Ciaran on February 17, 2015, 05:19:54 PM
If you'd be going for an english ale theme you could throw in milds, bitters 4A/4B/4C, or even old ale/barleywine 19A/19B. Or you could choose a German / Belgian beer theme. Or where anything is allowed that makes use of roasted dark grains. Could even do Clone Wars if you could guarantee entries wouldn't just be de-labelled commercial examples?
Re. Theme - an English/belgian/German theme is probably the way to go to maximise entries but I do like the idea of something like clone wars or dark roasted malt beers. Could get some really interest stuff.
Chris those themes are great, they will give us a good spread of categories. I suppose we need to kick this off by proposing some dates.
Venue wise Matthew has offered the brewery - if thats still ok?
Judging - I propose how we did our last competition, nicest beer?
Cheers
Andy
Let's keep the foot down on this. Dates? Are we settled on categories? Someone experienced want to draft something up?
Should we go with the English Ales then? Maybe 50-60 entries max. for 3 or 4 sub-categories?
BJCP Categories (http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/catdex.php)
1 - 8. English Pale Ales: A. Standard/Ordinary Bitter, B. Special/Best/Premium Bitter, C. Extra Special/Strong Bitter.
2 - 11. English Brown Ales: A. Mild, B. Southern English Brown, C. Northern English Brown
3 - 19. Strong Ales: A. Old Ale, B. English Barleywine
4 - (OPTIONAL) 23. Speciality English Ale
What does everyone think?
Re. judging, it might be good to use the BJCP format, scoresheets, etc.? I think people prefer to get some sort of feedback on their entries?
Re. dates, the Garden County brewers are holding their American Ale competition (http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.com/forum/index.php/topic,8856.msg110519.html#msg110519) in May. We'd need to avoid clashing with that and any other annual competitions e.g. Summer session, Rebel brewers, NCB competitions were all held in and around June/July last year. Maybe late August/start of September?
EDIT: We should probably be more flexible on the dates. Is it likely that people will have time to brew over the summer? What would suit everyone else?
So maybe aim for around September/October? Not that far away really and saying as we're including barleywines etc.
+1 for BJCP style and English ales.
Are we going for this?
If enough people are up for getting involved I think it'd be good to run something.
So, Belfast Homebrewers, and of course those in our nearby more rural communities.....
What do you all think?
Count me in ;D
Definitely!
Sent a PM re. this.
Let me know if I've missed anyone out!
I wouldn't mind getting in on this :-)
OK, seems most are up for this and running under BJCP.
What do we need to do?
Announce it? Let the rest of the club know a date and the categories? Then meet and discuss?
If we are going for it, we need just to get on with it.
Count me in
So.......
The Great Quintessential English Ales Competition
BJCP Categories
1 - 8. English Pale Ales: A. Standard/Ordinary Bitter, B. Special/Best/Premium Bitter, C. Extra Special/Strong Bitter.
2 - 11. English Brown Ales: A. Mild, B. Southern English Brown, C. Northern English Brown
3 - 19. Strong Ales: A. Old Ale, B. English Barleywine
4 - (OPTIONAL) 23. Speciality English Ale
What about a date? October?
Sounds good to me! October should be about right, maybe towards the end of the month? Means summer will be out of the way leaving more time for people to get brews on?
How many entries should we be looking at?
How about Saturday 24th October?
The following Saturday is the 31st and Halloween, so it avoids family commitments and conflicts of interest for those involved in the dark arts.
Quote from: Quiet_Man on May 25, 2015, 08:52:07 AM
How about Saturday 24th October?
Sounds good.
5 months to get something brewed and well conditioned ;D
Okay so, having been in the periphery of the planning of one wedding so far I've learned you need two fundamental details sorted, and everything else will fall into place: Date and Venue.
So:
Date: 24th October 2015 (Sorted!)
Venue: I'm guessing somewhere where there won't be a big screen showing premiership football
Any thoughts? Upstairs room in Spoons, perhaps?
-Barry
Date sounds like its a goer. Upstairs in Wetherspoons is also a good shout given how accommodating they've been for us before. Sounds like a good time to start a poll for dates for a June meetup and get chatting face to face ;)
Matthew had offered the brewery as a venue. Would need to check with him again as it was a few months ago now but that sort of area might be better suited, especially for storing and organising entries for judging.
Ah, sound. Even better.
Cheers,
-Barry
The choice of venue is really about one thing:
Do you allow entrants and the public to attend?
If you hold it in 'Spoons say (just like the Nationals are held in a pub/bar) you have closed doors until say 1pm or 2pm - its your call. Before that its judges/stewards/organisers only. Your local entrants can be there for the prize giving and the vennue gets a good cash return.
If you hold it in a Brewery then you probably don't want entrants and Joe public there at all!
After all for 60 beers the GCB comp had 10 judges, a couple of stewards, and a couple of organisers. Quite enough to fill a small brewery.
PS Many thanks to Wicklow Wolf for hosting the comp and letting us loose in the samples room.
HTH Will!
Pob and I are volunteering as consultants to handle
1. Entrants
2. Logistics
3. Handling of the entries
4. Venue
5. Judging
6. Prizes
Not to do it just advise and we can easily facilitate that on google chat.
Good points Will - we'd need to check how keen they'd be to hold the entries for us. Wouldn't be fair to transport entries on the day.
CH that's fantastic! Would really appreciate this. Are you thinking to arrange something on google chat soon?
Please give me a call tomorrow and I'll check with pob on his availability
No worries CH - will probably be afternoon if that suits.
Sub82.....did you talk with CH and pob?
What do we need to do?
I guess making an announcement this side of the summer is priority.
Q_M
We have been playing telephone tag sorry
Yeah last week was a hectic week sorry too!
If we can decide on the venue, as date seems to be sorted, I think most of the rest should fall into place.
Not sure if there are any update son this but I'd be in! Handy as I have a few English Ales already lines up for brewing this summer.
Hey Brew Billy - you started this thread. You on board for this comp?