well, I am glad that the first comp I entered was Upper Mississippi, as Shadetree suggested.
a very helpful and positive experience.
my SWIPA scored a 39 and moved to the mini-BOS round.
and to humble me, my coffee porter got a 20, they thought maybe infected, ouch.
but all good to know.
and kinda cool to have someone else taste my beer besides friends and family.
that’s all
[quote=“paultuttle”]The judges’ comments were insulting and didn’t help me learn anything at all. I figured that if my friends love my beer and I really like it, I don’t need to go any further. I was encouraged to submit so that I could get some helpful feedback from some experts, in hopes to improve my brew. I’ve learned more from just doing it, and reading forums such as this. I don’t need an “expert” to tell me my beer sucks.
My biggest reward is hearing “Man, that is the best beer I’ve ever tasted”.[/quote]
your going to need a thicker skin than that if you plan on entering again. You got told once that your beer sucked in a comp and then stop?
I only enter a few of the big ones each year, I know the judges are great on those, goes up against a lot of great beers, great feedback.
UMMO
MN State Fair
DC
NHC
your going to need a thicker skin than that if you plan on entering again. You got told once that your beer sucked in a comp and then stop?[/quote]
I stopped competing, not brewing. But, I’m seriously thinking of entering another one and see what happens.
I stopped competing, not brewing. But, I’m seriously thinking of entering another one and see what happens.[/quote]
your still going to need some thick skin. Competitions are brewing to style, just because you think a beer is great doesn’t mean the trained judges will. Take the comments as they come and learn from them you may get a bad judge here and there on some small comps. I have never had bad feedback but heard of some poor feedback.
I stopped competing, not brewing. But, I’m seriously thinking of entering another one and see what happens.[/quote]
your still going to need some thick skin. Competitions are brewing to style, just because you think a beer is great doesn’t mean the trained judges will. Take the comments as they come and learn from them you may get a bad judge here and there on some small comps. I have never had bad feedback but heard of some poor feedback.[/quote]
Yes, thanks. I’m going to try again.
Last year I entered all 3 local comp’s that had drop-offs at my LHBS. I’ll definitely do those again as I found the feedback to be very helpful. Now and then I’d get some useless feedback, but if I entered something in all 3 comps, the aggregate feedback from all the judges would even out and be useful.
This year, my club is trying to send beers into the AHA Club Only comps, and we are holding informal competitions at meetings to choose entries. I won the first one for dark lagers and had to send my beer off to another state. I’ve always been nervous about sending beer, but it really wasn’t as big a deal as I had feared. Now that I’ve done that, I may enter some beers in comps that I can’t drop off bottles locally for. In fact, I just registered 3 beers to send off to the AHA Regionals. I’m excited to get the feedback from that.
