These photos are from the 2015 Pacific Brewers Cup homebrew competition which was held Saturday afternoon at Four Points by Sheraton at LAX. The event was hosted by Strand Brewers Club, Long Beach Homebrewers, and Pacific Gravity. There were 458 entries consisting of beer, mead and ciders.

While these photos were all taken Saturday, the fact of the matter is that with 458 entries, the judging portion actually started two weeks ago when members of the Strand Brewers Club had to sort the 1300 plus bottles into categories and get all the information entered in the competitions database. I helped out on the sorting by scanning in the entries with their assigned competition number; this gave me an opportunity to see where the entries came from. I have to admit, I was pretty surprised at how far and wide they came from; with several entries coming from out of state. Because of the substantial number of entries, there were a couple judging sessions done ahead of time.

As you might think, it is quite the task to judge 458 beers, mead and ciders and it truly takes a lot of work by an organized team to pull that off. The team yesterday consisted of 70 judges and 42 stewards. I met one of the judges yesterday that came all the way from Chandler, Arizona “for the love of beer” as opposed to trying to escape Chandler’s 100+ weather. While the judges were truly put to the test, I doubt that the event could have moved as smoothly as it did without the efforts of the stewards. Head Steward Barbara Bovee is to be congratulated for keeping things as organized as they were.

The judging was broken up into two sessions with a lunch break in between to help cleanse palates and soak up some of the brew. After the main judging was completed, the work really began; judging the Best of Show. If you ask me, there is nothing that will change beer drinking from an enjoyable experience to actual work than to try and choose the best three beers out of more than 20, but that is exactly what five judges did.

I am afraid that I do not have the results of the competition available at this time, but they should be up shortly on the Pacific Brewers Cup website. Congratulations to all the homebrewers that entered and I hope you won a medal or at least gained some valuable experience for your next brew day. Cheers!

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