Why to enter A BJCP Contest

At some point most of us homebrewers will want to enter some of our beers into a contest. But then again, some homebrews don’t or won’t. Usually because of a general misunderstanding of what happens in a homebrew contest or what it is all about. Let’s take a quick look. 

For this guide, I’ll be talking about a BJCP scored contest that uses the official BJCP guidelines.

Right out of the gate, the most important thing to understand is that while yes, it is important to make great tasting beer, (I personally know that everyone reading this already does), A BJCP scored contest is NOT where the “winners” are determined by.. “hmm, this tastes great, I’ll vote for this one” 

That is a “People’s Choice” style of contest, and not what the Titletown Open is. The Titletown Open is a BJCP scored contest.

A BJCP scored type contest, is a contest where you brew a SPECIFIC beer, that has SPECIFIC guideline levels of criteria including not only taste, but color, aroma, bitterness level, mouthfeel….,then those Beers are numerically scored on how closely they adhere to those SPECIFIC guidelines that are unique to each style. 

Most brewers more or less brew that way anyway. Maybe without even realizing it. When you are choosing what beer to brew, you ask yourself.. “What should I brew?” Then in your head you flip through the different styles. 

If someone hands a homebrewer a beer, the first thing they ask is, “what is it?”  Because we generally know, or generally expect specific colors, aromas, bitterness levels, mouthfeels… depending on what style it is.  

But, sometimes it’s hard for a brewer to understand why his/her beer is amazing, but then it scores low. The answer is almost certainly, that while yes, the beer tasted great,  it just did not fit the rigid guidelines for the particular style of beer that the brewer put it in. That does not mean that the beer was “bad”.

For some brewers, the best parts of the contest are figuring out just exactly where a beer fits, or tinkering with a recipe to better fit a certain style. 

Its not just brewing “a” beer, we all can do that.   Its more like, can I brew “that” beer. 

Getting to where you can brew “that” beer is a journey of all kinds of learning. And not just learning style guidelines, but things like how different ingredients, or amounts of ingredients affect a beer, or maybe how to use a new ingredient, how different things affect each of those points in the guidelines. You will start to see things in beer or about your beer you’ve never noticed before. 

See? A BJCP contest is far more than just who can add the current fad fruit, or donut to a beer. Its learning how to control every aspect of your beer, and how every aspect of your beer affects the other.

This is 100% not for everyone, thats for sure. But if you want to learn the ins and outs of ingredients and techniques in order to get exactly what you want in a beer, A BJCP contest is a great place to start. 

The judges feedback for each of those guidelines can really point out where things are great, and where things can be improved. Your beer is already good, use that feedback to get it even better. 

And please, don’t misinterpret what the judges are for, or what they are doing. They are NOT just there to decide whether your beer is good or bad. They are there because they have been trained to evaluate those different ranges of criteria for each each style, give a numbered score to those criterias, then give feedback on why your beer fit that criteria, or how to get closer to it. 

Don’t think you’ll need to brew differently, or go out of your way to enter.  A solid beer, entered correctly, will definitely get you some unbiased info on how close a beer is to a style. Plus, like mentioned, you probably learned something along the way.

So bottle a couple beers up and put them in. Everyone brings beers to the meetings to try, now bring one to the contest! 

Here are a few pointers to entering and help not only score well, but get the best feedback possible.

-Put your entry into the correct category: Seems pretty straight forward, but a very surprising amount of beers get entered wrong. You not only need to specify which style, but which sub-style your beer is. Use a style guide like this one to find the differences.

• FOR EXAMPLE: You brewed a stout and want to enter it. You cannot just enter it as a stout because there are 8 (or more) completely different styles of stout. You need to clearly identify which style you are entering it as.

-The beer will be judged as the style YOU put it in.  The judges, stewards, or organizer cannot move your entry to a different category than what you chose. So for example, if that stout you entered as a 16B Oatmeal stout, but would have been a great 20B American stout, it will be judged as an Oatmeal stout and nothing else.

Specialty Beers

Next thing important thing about entering into the right category is dealing with additional ingredients.

Once you start adding ingredients like fruit or spices, or use special techniques like souring or wood aging, this will almost certainly require that you enter that beer into a “specialty category”.

A Blonde ale with Raspberries would no longer fit the Blonde ale category. Your American Amber with Pumpkin spice is no longer an American Amber, or your Irish Stout using rye, it longer fits with the Irish Stouts, it’s now a specialty beer.

These need to be placed in one of the specialty categories: Fruit beer, Spiced beer, Smoked beer, Wood beer, Specialty, Alternative fermentable… (Check that Style Guide listed above)

But a very important note here, When you enter into a specialty category,  you will need to disclose a lot more about your beer in order for it to get judged properly.

• The base beer style.  Even though it’s a fruit or spice beer, the judges are still partly judging the beer as if there was nothing added and need to know what the original beer was. (Use style number and name)
• The Special ingredients must be declared. List every extra ingredient you put in. Cherries, nutmeg, pumpkin… (a word of warning here from past experiences: if you say they are in there and they are not detectable, this may detract from the score. Use caution)
• Make sure to declare anything helpful to the judges to determine exactly what they are looking at.  If you used smoked wood chips, or used rye instead of 2row, or things like that.. write it in.

Once again to be clear…. If you added or did any of the above, it probably should be in a specialty style. Specialty styles need that info added.

If you are not sure where it goes, bring a sample to a meeting and we can help.

Packaging

Bottling up your beer for a contest may also seem pretty straightforward, but there are rules. These rules may change from contest to contest.. especially for wine and cider, so make sure that you read through them so you don’t get disqualified right out of the gate.

Standard rules for bottles include: But each contest may vary. Check the rules

• 12-16oz regular shaped bottles. This is mostly so they can be stored easily.
• Brown bottles. Some may allow green, but would you really want to? Usually, no clear.
• No swing top bottles ever ever ever
• Silver or gold caps only. Some are starting to allow the white oxygen absorbing caps
• Sometimes bottles with raised lettering are not allowed, check local rules.
• All bottles must have properly filled out labels. (use the BJCP bottle labels to be sure)
• Labels must attached using rubberbands, no tape, or glue

Shipping- (this may or may not be relevant to your particular contest)

You may wish to enter a contest that is not local and your beer needs to be shipped there. Most would recognise the importance here, but you would be surprised.

First things first. Do not use the US Mail (USPS). There is a question of legality with that. Just use UPS or FedEx, and even then there may be some questions.

Proper packing is important:

• Individually wrap each pre-labled bottle in bubble wrap. Or that thin rubber foam. Try not to use newspaper though as it tends to crush flat and be useless.
• Put your wrapped bottles in ziplock bags. Just in case one does actually break it wont leak out the box and have your shipment pulled for any reason.
• Pack tightly in your shipping box so they do not jiggle around and use packing on both top and bottom.
• If check or money order is enclosed, put that in a ziplock as well.
• Use packing tape to seal, not masking tape.
• If you are concerned about winter, have it labeled with a “Do not Freeze” sticker from the shipper.

Your “Liquid yeast samples” or “Meat Marinade” is now ready to be shipped

Have fun and good luck.