Competition Season Is Here!

Season’s Greetings fellow FOAMers!

It is indeed beer competition season. Three of our High Plains competitions are already in full swing. As I mentioned in my last message, entering these competitions accomplishes great things for you as a home brewer as well as for our club itself. Not only do you get great feedback on your beer from BJCP judges and potentially win some sweet medals and prizes, but you also accumulate High Plains Brewer of the Year points for yourself and High Plains Club of the Year for FOAM. It doesn’t look like one of our brewers will win Brewer of the Year in 2019 (Dave Thompson won in 2018), and FOAM has not won Club of the Year since 2012! We need to work hard together to get our club back on top!

I’m going to cover the three competitions that are currently open for registration and entry, giving you the information you need to get your beers entered. As a reminder, FOAM pays for shipping for all entries to High Plains competitions, you just need to pay your individual entry fees. For all of these, you need to register anew each year in order to put entries into the competition. Once you have set up this account, you can then go back into their system to add and/or edit entries.

Make sure that you identify Fellowship of Oklahoma Ale Makers (FOAM) as your home club!

I’ll cover some the critical rules for each one, but make you read all of the information on the “Home: and “Info” links your see at the top of each account page.

General Rules:

• You will enter based on a BJCP 2015 category. You can find the full list of categories here. (This will be a PDF download.)
• Only use the bottle labels that you print from each website for your entries.
• Please put your bottle labels in a small zip-lock plastic bag before you attach it to your bottles with a rubber band.
• Each entry will consist of capped or corked bottles that are void of all identifying information, including labels and embossing.
• Printed caps are allowed, but must be blacked out completely.
• 12 oz brown glass bottles are preferred; however, green and clear glass will be accepted. You can usually go up to 16.9 oz (500 ml) bottles, but no larger!
• Each of these competitions will accept capped, corked and/or swing top bottles. (See the special swing-top requirement for the KCBM competition.)
• Be meticulous about noting any special ingredients that must be specified. If you don’t, the judges will not be able to judge your entry appropriately.
• Please pay all of your entry fees before dropping off your bottles. In some cases, you cannot print the labels until the fees are paid, but that’s not universally applied.

Minnesota Mashout

To register for this competition, click this link. Once you’ve registered you can begin to add entries.

Registration is open until January 10, 2020, but you’ll need to have your beers at High Gravity no later than 5:00 pm on Saturday, January 4, 2020 so that we can get them packaged and shipped in time for the shipping deadline of January 10, 2020.

The entry fee is $10.00 per beer. Entry consists of 2 bottles. This competition allows multiple entries per category, but only one per each subcategory.

There is apparently no limit to the total number of entries for this competition. As of 9:30 am on December 21, there were 388 entries.

Judging will take place on January 24 and 25, 2020.

Kansas City Bier Meisters 37^th Annual Homebrew Competition

To register for this competition, click this link. Once you’ve registered you can begin to add entries.

Registration is open until February 7, 2020, but you’ll need to have your beers at High Gravity no later than 5:00 pm on Saturday, January 31, 2020 so that we can get them packaged and shipped in time for the shipping deadline of February 7, 2020.

The entry fee is $8.00 per beer. Entry consists of 2 bottles. This competition allows multiple entries per subcategory, provided they are different beers, meads or ciders. This competition will only accept swing top bottles that fit in a normal beer carrier (like a six-pack).

This competition actually has a couple of special categories that you can enter:

• Told You Honey Is Good In Beer! – This is a Beer only category. We are asking that you showcase your best honey beer’s whether that is a Bier de Miel, Kolsch, Hefeweizen, whatevery you desire as long as it is honey and beer! For those wanting to enter a braggot we ask that you enter it into this category instead of the “Love Is In The Air” category. This category will require 2 bottles and there will be a special prize specifically for this category!
• Love Is In The Air! – This is a Mead and Cider category. We are asking all of our Cider and Mead makers to enter the best Chocolate themed Mead and Cider! 2 bottles are required to enter this category and there will be a prize specifically for this category!

Even better, KCBM has a few “Scale Up Categories”:

• Entrants must be willing to travel to Kansas City for their brew day in the event they win a scale-up at a brewery.
• KC Bier Co – Will be selected based upon recipes submitted with entries that are German Ales or Lagers. No Sours will be accepted and in order to be eligible your recipe must printed out and included with your entry. We must receive your entry and check it in to be judged as well as have the printed recipe in order for you to be considered.
• Red Crow Brewing – TBD
• Olathe Homebrew ProShoppe – Will be scaling up the winning beer of the Strong Belgian category into a kit that will be sold to the public at their store. Winner will receive one of the kits!

This competition is limited to 600 entries. As of 9:30 am on December 21, there were 106 entries, so lots of time you get your entries submitted!

Judging will take place on February 10 through 15, 2020.

IBU Open – 21st Annual

To register for this competition, click this link. Once you’ve registered you can begin to add entries.

Registration is open until February 18, 2020, but you’ll need to have your beers at High Gravity no later than 5:00 pm on Saturday, February 14, 2020 so that we can get them packaged and shipped in time for the shipping deadline of February 21, 2020.

The entry fee is $8.00 per beer. Entry consists of 2 bottles. This competition allows multiple entries per category, but only one per each subcategory. You need to use the labels printed from the website, place each one in a small zip-top plastic bag, and attach to each bottle with a rubber band. This competition will accept capped, swing top (Grolsch style) bottles as well as corked bottles.

This competition is limited to 500 entries. As of 9:30 am on December 21, there were 85 entries, so lots of time you get your entries submitted!

Judging will take place on February 25 through 29, 2020.

Best regards, and best of luck to all who enter!

Gary Elliott, VP-Competitions