Competition Corner – September 2014
Ok, folks, we had an awesome Pacific Brewers Cup this year. With 501 entries, this has been our biggest one yet by a huge margin. Congratulations to all the winners! If you haven’t checked them out yet, all the results can be found on the PBC website. While you’re at it, how about a round of applause for all the judges, stewards and volunteers and all who made this competition the rousing success it was. And of course, don’t forget to stop by the sponsors and buy a beer or two while you are there. If you didn’t pick up you prizes or scoresheets, they are available at the shop. Oh yeah, thanks for our cooler. If you didn’t get yours back, contact Terry.
With PBC behind us (whew!) don’t forget we have one more contest to enter this year. Registration is now up and running for the California State Homebrew Competition at http://nchfinfo.org/castatecomp/. Like usual, we need a volunteer to drive our entries up to Berkeley. If you can help out, the club will reimburse you $125 for gas money. Entries would need to be hand-delivered between October 4 and October 11, 2014. Please drop me a line by October 2 at [email protected]. If we don’t have a volunteer, everyone will be on their own to ship their entries. This competition is one of the three used by Anchor Brewing to select the Club of the Year award, with a banquet dinner at Anchor Brewing in February, 2015. Pacific Gravity is gunning for the award this year, since we are approaching our 20th anniversary.
With the results of PBC in, the Brewer of the Year race has tightened up. Simon Ford had a great showing to pull to within 1 point of our leaders Michael Patterson and the executive team of Brian Holter and Kingsley Toby. This means that it is wide open with the Cal State comp being the last contest of the year.
While I’m at it, I would be remiss in not letting you know that the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) is embarking on a new revision to the beer style guidelines. A Preliminary draft can be found here, and a discussion group will be posted here. If you have ever though the styles were too restrictive, too dull, or otherwise not to your liking, now is your chance to speak up!
Finally, with fall weather approaching (soon, I hope) don’t forget to get the brewkettles going. There will be plenty of competitions coming including the Hop Courage Autism competition and others up early next year. If you are hard-core competition junkie, there are a bazillion other contests to enter. The AHA has their master list at http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/competitions/aha-bjcp-sanctioned-competition/.
| Brewer of the Year totals as of Pacific Brewers Cup | ||
| Brewer | Points | Ribbons |
| Michael Patterson | 12 | 8 |
| Kingsley Toby & Brian Holter | 12 | 6 |
| Simon Ford | 11 | 6 |
| Carl Townsend | 9 | 5 |
| Craig Corley | 5 | 3 |
| Eric Moreau & Scott Stonberg | 4 | 2 |
| Ian Fraser & Tim Bardet | 3 | 2 |
| Lloyd Johnson &Ted Silva | 3 | 1 |
| Neil Saund | 3 | 1 |
| Ryan Truax & Constance Marshall | 3 | 1 |
| Gerardo Reynoso | 2 | 1 |
| Kristofor Barnes & John Rockwell | 2 | 1 |
| Mark & Izumi Takahashi | 2 | 1 |
| Rafael Orozco | 2 | 1 |
| Dan White | 1 | 1 |
| Kevin Segna | 1 | 1 |
| Steve Hash | 1 | 1 |
