I’m sure some of you saw the teaser post put up today while we were running the event at Ninepenny Brewing, but if not – today was judging day for our Fall competition!
The competition was across BJCP category 19, which is American Amber and Brown Beer, and includes three subcategories:
- American Amber Ale
- California Common
- American Brown Ale
We had a total of 22 entries submitted across all three subcategories (9/4/9 respectively).
Our judges were:
- Tom Beckett from Tom Beckett on Wine and a driving force behind the craft beer wave finally hitting Newfoundland’s shores
- Nathan Byrnes, professional brewer at Quidi Vidi and BJCP recognized judge
- Keith Bartlett, professional brewer and co-owner of Ninepenny
- Alex Conrad, Newfermenters admin and long time homebrewer
A huge thanks to all judges and Ninepenny for hosting us today, including providing us a stock of tasting glasses from their taproom when the judges deemed glass would be preferable to the plastic glasses the club had provided.
Each entry was scored by a pair of judges (either Tom and Keith or Nate and Alex) with the two teams splitting duties on the California Common entries (so your results from this category may have either pair of names). From their individual judging sessions, four beer were short listed for Best in Show, and then the judges evaluated these four together to declare a finishing order for first, second, and third place in the competition.
Without further ado, here are the winning entries!
- 1st place: Entry #5, an American Brown Ale by Benjamin Hussey
- 2nd place: Entry #9, an American Amber Ale by Ryan McCarthy
- 3rd place: Entry #18, an American Amber Ale by Andre Reichel and Wally Meade
The judges noted that the top beer in the competition were all very close, making their job quite challenging.
Results and scoresheets have been posted to competition website. If you entered a beer, to get your scoresheet(s), login to your account on the website. Right on the first page you see, scroll to the bottom to the “Entries” list, and on the right hand side, under the “Actions” column there’s an orange hammer/judge’s gavel looking icon. You click that to open up your scoresheets.
Thanks again to all entrants for brewing, judges for judging and being such pleasurable people to spend time with, and congratulations to the winners! If you’d like to congratulate them yourself, head on over to the announcement post on Facebook.