www.nthba.org

I've been watching the National Homebrew Competition results for the last 2 or 3 years and I noticed something. For the 1st round, the guys from Austin don't tend to drop off their entries in Austin. Instead they pay to ship them somewhere else.

Why would someone do want to pay more than they have to, to enter?

I've seen Jeff Oberlin from Houston do the same thing in past years.

It's obviously a strategy. But WHAT is the strategy? Has anyone cracked the code?

With NHC, you want to get to the second round. It does not matter how you finish in the first round as long as you advance. They are probably shipping to a site that has better judges.

Or they may be shipping to a different site because the closest site if full.

Thanks Jimmy.

I understand that the goal of the first round is getting to the second round and I used to think that they were shipping elsewhere because certain locations were filled up. After seeing data from another year and also seeing how no one from our club had trouble getting entries into the Austin site I am now sure that it's a strategy.

Regarding better judges, was that a joke or were you serious? If you are serious, how do they know who the judges are going to be?

Another theory is that they don't believe that the competition is as good in certain regions. Or perhaps, they looked at past data and they found certain regions have fewer entries for the styles that they are entering.

Don,

I think the west coast has better judges since homebrewing is so big out there. Some of the largest clubs are in the west like DOZE, QUAFF and Maltose Falcons. I cannot defend that belief. They would not know who the individual judges are, just that the pool has more experienced judges.

As far as chasing the styles entered at a site, that is difficult to do as the styles counts change so much year to year. In the 2014 Bluebonnet English IPA had 11 entries, this year it had 26 entries.