Beer judging at the Fair
A report from Tampa
The Medieval Faire wasn't the only Faire in March. The following weekend, a group of us drove down to Tampa for the beer contest at the State Fair. That was certainly a different kind of fair. Our own Ray Badowski was the original organizer for a beer competition at the State Fair.
It has since been taken over by Jeff Gladish and the Tampa Bay Beers homebrewing club. They are doing a great job with it, I might add. The competition doubled in size over last year, going from approx. 130 entries to over 260. They also started a new tradition this year. There is now a challenge cup with a great trophy that goes to the Florida club with the most winning entries in the competition.
The Best of Show round and the announcement of winners took place on Sunday (we didn't stay), so I'm not sure, but I strongly suspect the Central Florida Homebrewers took the cup home. But that won't necessarily be true in future years. There is a lot of competitive spirit in some of the other clubs (not to mention a bunch of great brewers). So things may change, it may even come to Gainesville if we start entering more of our beers. According to Sue, many of our beers would have done well if entered.
We certainly did well in the judging. Although it was far from an ideal judging environment (we were in a large exhibition hall surrounded by crowds and lots of noise), we did ourselves proud. We had a contingent of five judges (George, Sue, Robert, Dave, and Mark), not to mention that Jamie came from Tallahassee (and Gville) to steward and we were also accompanied by the rest of the Williams clan who came to take in the pig races and other attractions at the Fair. We all had a great time and since there were only approx. 25 judges, Hogtown Brewers provided a significant amount of the judges overall, despite the fact that we are a relatively small club. Jeff and the other Tampa folks were very appreciative.
Most (if not all) of our judges are planning to go to Tallahassee on April 29th for the First Round of the AHA National Homebrew Competition. The rest of you should think about going as well. You don't have to be BJCP certified to judge, and there are a number of you that are certainly qualified to do it. Even if you don't feel ready to judge, they always need stewards. Any of you can do that, it's an important and necessary function to putting on a competition. You can be involved in the experience; it's a lot of fun. This will be a much bigger competition than the Big Bend Brew-off and I'm sure they'll need all the help they can get. The Tallahassee club certainly made us feel welcome the last time. Come and be part of the adventure.