Nationals: that’s a wrap!
Or, how I gained a ton of respect for event managers and BJCP as an org.
Over the weekend, the National Homebrew Club (of Ireland) hosted the much-anticipated Nationals Competition; the first since the C-19 Panini wrecked the world. The last Nationals was held in 2019, where - incidentally - I was a judge. Now, the experience of rocking up to a competition as a judge is a much different experience than being part of the organising committee, so for those who’d like a peek behind the curtain - you’re in the right place.
First, some context. Ireland may be a small island, but it’s got a bustling homebrew scene (between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland). There are clubs all over the country which are largely autonomous and run their own meetups, whether monthly or less regularly. Each club has a representative that communicates back and forth with the NHC, the national body that aims to organise club-agnostic events (like Nationals, BrewCon) but also to help with education (like running BJCP training and exams). Being on the NHC leadership committee is voluntary and is chosen by vote - although to be fair, a very tiny portion of the homebrew community gets involved at this level.
The Nationals Competition is a BJCP-endorsed contest where brewers from all over the island submit beers to be judged. Here’s an overview of the lead-up to the day:
A venue is selected. A good venue will be in a convenient location, have plenty of space (at least 20 tables decently spaced, plus a space for Best of Show that’s separated from the judges who are done by lunch), a large fridge for beer storage, glassware, and glasswashing facilities, and a kitchen that can supply food to ±70 people in a short space of time. A great venue will also dispose of the 400+ empty bottles for you. We were very lucky to have a great venue in BrewDog Outpost this year; they were absolute pros and went out of their way to allow us to disrupt their business for a full day.
The competition website is set up (using BJCP competition software) and tested, and the event is registered with the BJCP.
The competition date is announced, and the call for judges and stewards goes out.
Brewers brew their beer (some do it specifically for the comp, while others submit beers that they’ve brewed as part of their regular schedule).
They enter their beers on the competition website and pay their fee. The regulations for entry include 2x 500ml brown bottles with no distinguishing marks and a fairly specific printed label that must be attached by elastic bands.
Entries are closed ±2 weeks before the event date.
The entries get categorised into sets of similar styles (e.g. Stouts and Porters together) and assigned to Tables. This is to make sure that each pair of judges doesn’t have a wildly different number of beers to judge - we tried to keep each set to <12 beers.
They are dropped at collection points - usually the club reps house for that area.
These bottles are then brought to a sorting facility where they are placed into their categories and relabelled in order to be anonymised. This is a very important step. On the competition software (which BJCP provides), the entries each have an entry number and those entry numbers need to be assigned to the right tables, but also get assigned a Flight Order, which determines the order in which they’ll be judged (based on ABV amongst other things).
The entries (2 bottles) are split into 2 different colour crates (one for main judging and one for Best of Show - if they make it)
The crates of bottles are then transported to the venue ready for judging. Again, we were blessed to work with Premier Wholesalers who not only allowed us to sort the bottles in their warehouse but transported them to the venue for us.
Judge registration is closed and they are assigned to tables.
Prizes are sourced. In this case, medals for each category plus trophies for Best of Show, Best Brewer and prizes for those. We once again had Premier Wholesalers and Brewdog Outpost to thank, because they sponsored amazing prizes for our top winners.
Final logistics are sent to the venue - numbers, space planning, electrical requirements etc.
This is a simplification of the work pre-event, but it gives you an idea of the effort. For all its flaws, the BJCP have got quite a nifty piece of software that manages competitions from building the website to creating a prize-ceremony presentation and everything in between. It assigns entry numbers, allows you to take registration of entries, judges, stewards, create tables, assign judges based on preferences (and avoid tables with their own entries). It’s a massive help. Having now helped coordinate one competition would never want to do this without (some form of) this software.
There are a number of roles involved with organising a competition. The BJCP defines Comp Co-ordinator (responsible for venue, prizes, and overall faciliation), Judging Co-ordinator (who recruits, assigns, and manages the judges and helps with judging disputes), Steward Co-Ordinator (who recruits, assigns, and manages stewards and cellar staff), and Data Entry/Tech Officer (responsible for setting up the website, capturing scoresheets and other software-related tasks). We also have the BJCP Officer (responsible for setting up the comp with BJCP and getting points assigned to judges, stewards, and staff) and we have a “Sorting Officer” who organises and runs the sorting day. This year we also had a Communications Officer who shared info on Twitter, the Forum, and Discord and also took pics of the various activities. In our case, these roles were not a 1:1 ratio to people. There were a fair few more who pitched in to help with medals, prizes, tech and everything in between. It takes a village ;)
One of the biggest challenges is the loss of institutional knowledge.
On the one hand, folks who have been involved for many years have a lot of experience that is crucial to the success of the event, but what we found is that not much of it was written down. When people move away (or don’t want to be involved), or when people’s roles have been singularly focused, it can be tricky to map out all the tasks needed for a holistic event. This is something that this year’s committee was focused on changing - we have a “Bible” now on how to run the Nationals and a Trello board with all the tasks in their suggested timeline.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that this year’s competition didn’t run without any hitches! Hell, if anything, it was a bit of a baptism by fire. We got a late start to the whole thing and spent A LOT of time on venue selection - it’s the biggest decision to be made and we wanted to get it right. We also weren’t sure whether the post-Covid return would be relatively small or whether there would be folks with loads of beer that they’d brewed over lockdown to be entered. So we erred on the side of “big” and chose the venue accordingly. There was some backlash due to it being Brewdog - expectedly - but soon after there was a nice buzz about the long-awaited return of Nationals.
This year saw 209 beers being entered and they were marvelously diverse and spread out over the styles. Gone are the days of IPAs dominating; we saw more entries into stouts than we did IPAs. Lagers had so many entries, they had to be split between Pale, Amber and Dark. Saisons were one of our biggest categories and the only style that warranted its own table (unlike, say, Speciality IPAs which contained Black, Red, Belgian, Rye, and Double IPAs). The biggest category, though, was Fruit & Spiced with 16 entries. What an interesting batch of brews.
List of styles grouped into their tables
Mostly, the event ran smoothly - we had an amazing team on the day from the competition staff and the spouses, friends, and family members who came to set up (and clean up!) to the cellar team (who ran the order of the day and emptied all the extra bottles) and stewards for getting in more than their required steps for the day, and the judges for being so thorough and thoughtful with their feedback. It was truly a sight to behold, even with all the little hiccups along the way.
As Organiser, I wasn’t judging this year. I spent my time making sure that all of the intricate bits of the day were running smoothly; setting up registration tables, swag tables (new for 2023!), ensuring food was ordered and brought up in good time (the hardest thing to co-ordinate when judges finish at different times), helping clean up slop buckets, empty glasses, collect rubbish… the unglam parts. But I also did have the pleasure* of announcing the winners of all the tables, plus the Best of Show and Best Brewer awards - who were gifted amazing prizes.
We’d not reached out for sponsorships or prizes but a few came along anyway. In fact, we gave out more prizes than any other Nationals before us.
BrewDog for gifting BOS brewer a “brew at BrewDog” day for their recipe, along with a launch event for that beer.
Dean McGuinness from Premier Wholesalers for gifting BOS and Best Brewer a trip to Belgium soak up the best of Belgian beer.
9 White Deer for sponsoring 2nd BOS beer with €100 voucher.
Yards & Crafts for donating gift bags to Judges, Stewards, Cellar staff as well as Bottle Sorting staff, plus giving out 20% discounts to all attending on top of that.
Loughran Brewing Store for donating a bag of malt in a raffle for the stewards.
So that’s it, Nationals 2023 is a wrap and planning for 2024 will be commencing soon! ;)
Massive thanks to the core team that made this happen:
Rich Lubell - NHC President and Judging Co-ordinator
Tara Pollard - Steward Co-Ordinator
Mick O’Toole - Ex-NHC President and Data/Tech Officer
Matt O’Driscoll - Comms Officer
James Keane - BJCP Officer & Sorting Co-ordinator
Brian Dempsey - Finance Officer & Medal/Trophy organiser
*and the embarrassment of butchering many people’s names, amongst other things.
