National Homebrew Competition 2017 - I'm In!

After some of my beers got a good reception (and very helpful feedback) from my local homebrew club, I thought I'd swing for the fences and enter the 2017 National Homebrew Competition. I put in for four entries, one more than I really wanted but padded it just in case they started trimming requests down. I picked Philadelphia as my preferred first-round site but selected all the others as acceptable sites (to better my odds of getting in somewhere).

Waited a few weeks, then got the e-mail that I was in!

I also got the 4 entries!

And I'm to ship them to Austin, TX!

I'm not sure how much it's gonna cost to ship 8 bottles to Texas, but it's gotta be cheaper than Seattle. 

What I (Might) Enter

There's enough time to brew most beers in the time between acceptance and the shipping deadline, but I'm not so organized. I asked for four entries thinking I'd only get three. I had two beers already finished, and by making use of my tincture method, I could easily make two more entries.

Today I just put my amber ale base into the fermenter - definitely cutting it close! Given this plus what I have already kegged1, my entries are shaping up like this:

19A: American Amber Ale (Rye Amber Ale base)

30B: Autumn Seasonal Beer (Oktober Surprise)

30C: Winter Seasonal Beer (Fruitcake Ale)

20A: American Porter (Deschutes Black Butte clone)

I only need to send two bottles of each, but will do five bottles in the slim chance that any of them make it through to nationals. Also, it'll free up a keg that's about to kick. :)

The best advice I got about picking categories was to go by what it tastes (and to an extent, looks) like rather than by the numbers or detailed descriptions. My Fruitcake Ale is intended to be a winter seasonal, but there's so little spice that it could pass as a fruit beer (29A), or maybe it has just enough to be a fruit and spice beer (29B). Likewise, Oktober Surprise could theoretically go in as a Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer (30A) but my pumpkin-spice concoctions really screams Autumn Seasonal.

If the amber base isn't ready, I might have to sub in Snowzilla. I finished it last month and it turned out a lot better than the original. I also have a small batch of a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone for a club competition I could sub in.

Now I gotta start emptying bottles. Cheers!