National Brewing Championships 2016

[Leann ull]

I second cathal, knows his beer too in fairness. Imho mc hughs is the best offy in the country

I believe where somebody has a business and is busy on a Sat we tried not to bother them, but I think it would be nicer for them to decline.

[Leann ull]

Lots of useful crap online these days...

From and including: Thursday, 5 November 2015
To and including: Sunday, 31 January 2016
Result: 88 days
It is 88 days from the start date to the end date, end date included
Or 2 months, 27 days including the end date

[Bubbles]

Lots of useful crap online these days...

From and including: Thursday, 5 November 2015
To and including: Sunday, 31 January 2016
Result: 88 days
It is 88 days from the start date to the end date, end date included
Or 2 months, 27 days including the end date

<starts heating strike water>

[bachus]

for mead just submit 1x 500ml as 2 judges 100ml first round then 100Ml each BOS

You sure? What about mini-BOS? I'm not convinced one 500ml bottle will be enough, even for high ABV mead..

It should be minimum two bottles:

Number of Bottles Per Entry
At minimum, two bottles will be needed for judging; one for the initial round where the entry is tasted and given scores and a second for the Best
of Show (BOS) round, where the top beers from each category meet head to head and an overall  winner is chosen (assuming there is a BOS for the competition).

2 x 0.33ml bottles?

Bottle Size
10 to 14 ounce bottles are standard so as to increase the convenience of storing them in standard beer case boxes. Any size or shaped bottles that do not easily
fit in standard caseboxes are generally not allowed; oversize bottles are difficult to store and may lead to breakage. However, large (16 oz., 22 oz. or 750ml) bottles are often accepted
for meads, ciders and some beer styles.

http://www.bjcp.org/docs/SCPCompHdbk.pdf

[Bubbles]

I think these are just guidelines laid down by the BJCP. The number of bottles is at the discretion of the competition organisers.

[DoubleG]

Would there be a possibility to submit strong beers 10% or over in 330ml bottles? I believe this was done during the English Ales competition in Belfast. Some of those stronger beers tend to be in smaller bottles.

[pob]

Apart from the Mead & Wine sections, all entries are to be in 500ml, non-identifiable, clean bottles.

[Will_D]

The main reason for multiple bottles of beer in a comp. is to do with carbonation and temperature.

Need I say more?

A bottle of wine/port/mead/sherry will not disimprove if the cork is put back in for an hour or so.

If its a white or a champers then cork it and back to the fridge.

I would suggest that 750 ml (overkill) or best 330 ml of the above cats. would be ample for the judges.

Remember that brewers bottle say 40 bottles and submit 2 (5% loss), Wine/Mead/Port/Sherry makers may bottle 6 so to submit and loose 1 out of six is a16% loss, is not very condusive to entry!

[Dr Jacoby]

Apart from the Mead & Wine sections, all entries are to be in 500ml, non-identifiable, clean bottles.

I'm not sure that's right, unless something has changed since this announcement? 

[Leann ull]

It was flagged up for the last 2 years don't make me find the posts from last year and it was flagged up again in July.
http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.ie/forum/index.php/topic,10268.msg125963.html#msg125963

The following needs ammending and I was wrong to repeat it!
"*750ml or 1l will be disqualified, Exceptions may be made where aged or specialist categories or say very high ABV beers in a different format like a lambic in a champagne bottle etc with prior approval from the organisers via PM."

If you have champagne or lambic those require high pressure bottles and of course for safety reasons may be in a 750ml.

The reasons are practical for transportation handling labelling and judging, so to put the topic to bed once and for all the only bottle that we can accept is 500Ml, I'm sorry if that impacts on some of you but we have let it go for the last 2 years we have to draw the line somewhere.
 
We are not trying to be miserable bastards but we need to make the whole events as easy to run as possible, as soon as exceptions start appearing it creates confusion for everybody.

We are also looking at flip tops for 2017! the reason is simple they sit proud of the bulmers crates and don't allow us to stack the crate snugly on top of one another one popped off in moving a crate last year, the entrant was contacted and we replaced the entry.  Some of them are also marked

There will be a separate side competition for "club barrel aged beers" outside of the nationals if anybody is interested and it will be posted later as its outside the main comp and more a bit of fun, those beers go back 3 years there may be an exceptions as to their format.

[Dr Jacoby]

Thanks John.

So just to be clear (or just to add more confusion  ) if someone has, say, an aged beer like a barleywine in 330ml bottles can they get approval from the organisers? With some beers the 330ml size is not so much a consequence of brewing a high ABV beer but about the fact that the beer was bottled years ago (before these guidelines were drawn up) with the intention that they would be aged.

[Leann ull]

I know there will be a few Barleywines from SCD and GCB to name a few in this years comp and they will all be in 500's 
I have pm'd you. 

[tipp brewer]

Quick question, I know the deadline for entry is Jan 31st, when is the beer actually judged then, I've just done a brew (fermentation hasn't even kicked off yet - should have used a starter  ) It'll be pretty young on the 31st Jan but come March should be about getting there - its an american pale ale so shouldn't need huge conditioning me thinks!

[irish_goat]

Judging will be on the 20th February and 5th March so it should be well conditioned by then. 

[tipp brewer]

Great Thanks for that! Now to go cheer on those yeast cells!