Club Competition - Brown Ale Judging

Last night was a first for me, and a first for our club, the Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale (CAMRA). We had more than one club entry into the American Homebrewers Association's (AHA) Club-Only Competition. For those not familiar with these competitions, you can find more information on the AHA's website, but it is basically a series of homebrewing competitions where each club can only submit one entry. The idea is to have interested homebrewing clubs organize brewers to work on a style, then pick the best entry from the club and submit it to go head-to-head with other clubs. It is used in evaluation for the AHA Club of the Year award, and is a neat concept.

The next Club-Only Competition is for English Brown Ales, which include milds, Northern English brown ales, and Southern English brown ales. These ale styles are popular in CAMRA and we actually had six entries competing for the honor of representing the club in the competition. This was the first time we had more than one entry for a Club-Only Competition. To determine which beer would be selected, four of us gathered at a member's house last night for a tasting.

We printed out a copy of the BJCP style guidelines and a score sheet and sampled each beer. Our general process was to pour the beer, visually inspect it, then smell it, taste it, smell it again, and taste it a final time. We took notes and evaluated the sample individually, and then discussed our thoughts together. We tried to come to a relative consensus about each beer, but we did not always get that far. The discussion was lively and very interesting.

In the end, we chose one beer to represent CAMRA. I had a great deal of fun with the actual judging and discussion. It reaffirmed to me once more that what I love most about this hobby is the people I have met through it. It was a great evening spent in the company of friends.