Competition Corner – October, 2010
Entries are due at the Culver City shop no later than Saturday, October 9th for the last major competition of the season, the California State Homebrew Competition. This is one of the key competitions that are considered for the California brew club of the year awarded sponsored by Anchor Brewing, so we need a good showing. Complete rules and entry forms can be found at http://www.nchfinfo.org/state-comp . Since this is a remote competition, your entries must be packaged for shipping by UPS. Make sure you have plenty of padding, and a good tip is to line the box with a plastic bag to prevent leakage in the event of breakage. Leakers will be returned. The club will pick up the postage. The competition uses the BJCP style guidelines, but they have re-shuffled and merged the categories, so make sure you look through the style descriptions carefully. The entry fee is $8.00 per entry and 3 bottles are needed.
Results of the 14th Annual Pacific Brewers Cup have been released. Kudos to Pacific Gravity as a club, which picked up the most awards in the competition. Kudos also to Jeff Koehler, who picked up four ribbons, lead off by a first place for his specialty beer. Altogether, nine different brewers picked up either ribbons or honorable mentions. Good showing guys! Complete results can be found at http://www.pacificbrewerscup.com/ . Also, a big thanks to everyone who helped out on judging day. The Long Beach Brewers did an outstanding job on a large competition. Next year, Pacific Gravity will be running the show.
The next Club-Only competition is upon us. The theme for this is Strong Ales BJCP category 19, Old Ale, English Barleywine and American Barleywine. Entries for this are due at the October Club meeting on October 21st. If you have any one of these three bring three 12 oz. bottles and make sure you let Carl know they are there. If possible, please also fill out an entry form, which you can download from http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/attachments/0000/0326/entry_recipe.pdf. The club picks up the entry fee, so it is free to you. If your entry is selected, we’ll ship off the two remaining bottles to the national judging site. If you lose, you can take back the two extra bottles. Or if you prefer, you can pop them open to console your losses.
Factoring in the results of Pacific Brewers Cup shows that Jeff Koehler is starting to put some distance between himself and the rest of the pack. However, it is still close enough for the Cal State Comp to swing the race.
Get those brewkettles going and don’t stop until the 2010 Brewer of the Year has been announced. If you need still more competitions, you can find the whole list at http://www.bjcp.org/apps/comp_schedule/competition_schedule.php.
2010-11 Competition Schedule
October 8 Queen of Beer (open to ladies only) NOTE: Based on the recent Brewer of the Year vote, this will NOT be counted toward the point tally.)
October 9 California State Homebrew Competition
October 21 COC – Strong Ales, BJCP Cat #19
January, 2011 COC – English Pale Ales, BJCP Cat #8
March, 2011 COC – Bock BJCP Category #5
April 2011 COC – Wood-Aged Beers, BJCP Cat #22c
Brewer of the Year Point Totals as of October 2, 2010:
| Brewer | Points | Ribbons |
| Jeff Koehler | 24 | 12 |
| Chris Simental | 17 | 11 |
| Neil Saund | 15 | 6 |
| Craig Corley | 14 | 6 |
| Carl Townsend | 14 | 8 |
| Heath Haynes | 6 | 2 |
| James Bardeen | 6 | 2 |
| Larry Caldwell | 5 | 2 |
| Josh Jensen | 5 | 4 |
| Bob Henderson | 4 | 2 |
| Jon Porter | 4 | 2 |
| Thomas Lee/Andrew Bakofsky | 4 | 2 |
| Timothy Golden | 4 | 2 |
| Nick Springer | 2 | 0 |
| Greg Nylen, Dave Chapman | 2 | 1 |
| Audrey Hill-Lindsey | 1 | 1 |
| Matt Timmers | 1 | 1 |
| Rick Matthew | 1 | 1 |
| Dan Hakes | 1 | 0 |
