You’ve brewed your beer. Your friends all think it’s the best free beer in town. But you’re thinking that it could be better.
Question:
How do you get objective feedback from people who know a lot about brewing it?
Answer:
You enter your beer in a contest!
As a registered club with the American Homebrewers Association (AHA), Cap and Hare is involved in numerous competitions, large and small, throughout the year. Many of the competitions are sanctioned with the AHA and the BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program). This helps ensure that the beers are judged fairly and consistently by people who know what they’re talking about. The objective feedback you receive in competitions is invaluable for improving your recipes and techniques on brew day. Plus, there are plenty of opportunities for becoming involved in judging beers: both in the form of training and experience.
Check back to our website regularly to find updated information about specific competitions.
Masterbrewer
Every year, our club holds a year-long competition that is only open to our members. Club members can submit home brewed beers, meads, and ciders at the monthly meetings to be blind-judged by BJCP judges. Points are awarded for entering the monthly contest, for winning the monthly contest, and for judging the monthly contest. Bonus points are also awarded for placing at the Bluebonnet Brew-Off or at Nationals.The club member with the most points at the end of the year is named Masterbrewer of the Year and receives a custom mash paddle along with other great prizes!
Bluebonnet Brew-Off
Bluebonnet Brew-Off is the largest regional homebrew competition in the U.S. and it’s right here in DFW! This competition is so huge that it takes several weeks to judge all of the beers. After all of the judging is complete, the weekend-long Bluebonnet Conference commences, with pub crawls, educational seminars, beer/food pairings, lots of beer to consume, and a lot more. Come taste beers, ciders and meads from homebrewers and commercial breweries and choose this year’s People’s Choice winner. The Bluebonnet Brew-Off competition Best of Show winner will also have a beer brewed by local brewery Rabbit Hole Brewing later in 2018!
Iron Mash
The Iron Mash Competition was started by Cap and Hare with the intention of being a fun, competitive brewing event, to build camaraderie among brewers from the different home brew clubs across North Texas, and to promote the overall joy of home brewing while challenging brewers to work as a team to brew a beer in the field with unique and specialty ingredients.
Central to the Iron Mash competition is the fact that brewers are provided all brewing ingredients the morning of brew day. Each brewing team is provided the same “competition box” that contains a combination of grains, adjuncts, hops and “specialty” ingredients that are uniquely selected each year to challenge the brewers.
The brewing teams then design a beer based on current BJCP style guidelines, determine how the specialty ingredients are going to be used, and submit their recipe to the competition coordinator – in 90 minutes! The brewing teams then brew the beer on-site at Rahr & Sons. The brewing teams take their wort home to ferment, and submit a sample of the beer 3 months later for evaluation. The winners are announced at the Awards party a few weeks later, where the brewing teams re-convene to sample the finished beers with food-pairings they have prepared (yet another unique and fun aspect to the competition!), and vote on the “Brewer’s Choice” award for the best beer poured at the Awards Party as determined by the brewing participants.
The goal of the competition is to produce a beer using only the ingredients provided, with emphasis on using the specialty ingredients. The beers are evaluated on base style and how the specialty ingredients were used. A key element of the judging process is to evaluate the use and complementary aspect of the specialty ingredients with the base beer style brewed.
National Homebrew Competition
Also known as NHC or “Nationals,” the National Homebrew Competition has become the world’s largest homebrew competition. This is where you can go to receive feedback on your homebrew from some of the most qualified judges around the country. There are two rounds to this contest, with the final round winners revealed at Homebrew Con. This competition is open to all AHA members, and it attracts many of the best homebrewers to battle it out for the National Championship.
Lone Start Circuit
“The mission of the Lone Star Circuit is to actively promote and support the homebrew clubs, contests, and homebrewers of Texas.” Simply put, the Lone Star Circuit is a collection of long-standing homebrew competitions around the state of Texas. During the course of the year, homebrewers earn points for themselves and for their homebrew clubs by winning medals at any of the Lone Star Circuit competitions. At the end of the competition year, one homebrewer, one homebrew team, and one homebrew club will be awarded the Lone Star Champions of the Year.
Other Competitions
This page has barely scratched the surface of homebrew competitions. We strive to maintain a pretty comprehensive list of competitions that are most likely to be of interest to our members. This list is posted here on our website and is updated on a regular basis as new information comes to light. For a full list of AHA Sanctioned Events, please visit the AHA Calendar.
Beer Judge Certification Program
The purpose of the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) is to:
- Encourage knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the world’s diverse beer, mead, and cider styles;
- Promote, recognize, and advance beer, mead, and cider tasting, evaluation, and communication skills; and
- Develop standardized tools, methods, and processes for the structured evaluation, ranking and feedback of beer, mead, and cider.
To meet this list of purposes, the BJCP certifies and ranks beer judges through an examination and monitoring process, sanctions competitions, and provides educational resources for current and future judges.
Cap and Hare Homebrew Club offers many opportunities for our members to become involved with the BJCP, including training, judging opportunities, and program guidance. We encourage all homebrewers to become certified beer judges in the pursuit of the BJCP stated purposes.
