Category: competition

By Posted on Posted in competition, homebrew 4 Comments

Earlier this year, David Bishop (otherwise known as @broadfordbrewer) put together an excellent article on the “State of UK Homebrewing“. He kindly asked me to give my take – and I concentrated a bit on what people like to brew, and what might be trends in the coming year or so. Ali Kocho-Williams, as organiser of the UK National Homebrew Competition has kindly allowed me access to use data from the last 4 competitions to do a bit of analysis to see if there are any trends (going into this I had some suspicions). Jumping straight into it, here’s a table of entries by category …

Style Spreads and Trends, 2011-2014 Read more »

By Posted on Posted in competition, homebrew 2 Comments

Another September, and back to Bristol again for another National Homebrew Competion. Again, another good day judging (though tiring as usual!). This year I was assigned Fruit beers (not my favourite style, but some good examples in there!), a very strong Belgian & French ales, and an American IPA-heavy category 14. I was fortunate enough to pickup some medals and the award for Best of Show for a Munich Helles against some very good beers. Congratulations to *all* the winners – some familiar names and faces included in those lists.

By Posted on Posted in competition, homebrew, oxford No Comments

And so passes the UK National Homebrew Competition for 2013. Sadly, I couldn’t make it this year after having an unfortunate coming together with a 70mph+ cricket ball and putting 4 fractures in my face shortly beforehand. Worse that it was held in Oxford, so close! Hope it went well and the venue worked out well, and congratulations to all who got places in their classes. Big “well dones” to Ali Kocho-Williams (@alikocho) for Best of Show with his Lambic; and Rich Caller (@rcaller), Steve Syson (@marisotter) and James Poole/Lee Thomson for their respective 2nd, 3rd and 4th overall places.

By Posted on Posted in competition, homebrew 8 Comments

On Saturday 12th Nov, the London and South East Craft Brewing Festival took place in Wimbledon. I was there bright and early (9am…) to help out as a steward. During judging, a steward is required to fetch entries for and assist the judges in their duties. As part of the educational aspect of this (yes, there is learning to be done here!), the judges very usually share the beer with the stewards to discuss the quality of the beer after completing their feedback forms. I was steward to John Hatch (from the Ram Brewery in Wandsworth) and to BJCP judge …

London & SE Festival; Brewing Low Gravity Beers Read more »