HOPS BOPS XXII
HOPS BOPS XXII – This is an opportunity for you to have your homemade beer evaluated by BJCP qualified judges. Awards will be given for winning beers in all categories and Best of Show. Additionally, winners will receive points towards “Delaware Valley Homebrewer of the Year”.
Well, yesterday was the HOPS BOPS XXII, and this time I stewarded the competition. I probably got up to NoDDing Head Brewery about 9:45 and the judging probably officially began about 10:30. Basically my job was to keep things cool for the judges: picking up empty cups and bottles, refilling water, empting the dump buckets, sorting the beers – things of that nature. I thought I was going to be treated more like a judge’s bitch, but mostly everyone was pretty nice. Two tables were pretty generous with letting the stewards(3) have samples after they were finished with the beers. Basically the one guy was like, “You have to try these samples, if you are stewarding that means you probably want to judge, and there is no better way than to drink these homebrews.”
I entered five beers and only one placed. The MacRae got a 3rd Place in the Old Ale category with a score of 33. The other beers were: ESB in the Best Bitter cat. with a 29, The ECPA in the American IPA cat. with a 25, the Mild Session Ale in the Mild cat. with a 26, and the California Common in the CC cat. with a 28. So really all of my beers scored generally the same. The two big things that kept coming up as comments were, 1 – possible oxidation & 2 – possible sanitation problems. Honestly I’ve REALLY been working on those two things and still – same stupid comments.
The funny thing is, the ECPA got banging comments like, “Superlative bottle inspection, … Flawless technical merit, … Brilliant medium walnut color with a good persistant moussy tan head.” But then they ripped it saying it wasn’t to style, were my hops stale, not enough of this and too much of that. It was so inappropriately categorized (according to the judges) that one of them came up to the head steward (he’s been stewarding for like 10 years) and asked him if it were accidently in the wrong category and to double check the computer data base. Crazy! I love the ECPA and I think it is a classic example of an American IPA.