Kansas City Bier Meisters 31st Annual Homebrew Competition

Last weekend I decided to volunteer my day to a homebrew competition in North Kansas City. The Kansas City Bier Meisters put on their 31st annual competition with entries from all over the area, including Kansas City, Lawrence, Wichita, St. Louis, and even as far as Lincoln. In all there were 564 entries in to the competition with 229 participants, judges, and stewards. I was a steward and my job was to help out around the judging tables to make sure they got each beer, had cups to drink out of and most importantly receive the judging decisions for each beer and checking math of each score(It was real hard to add a few numbers to a sum lower than 50).

I walked in and found my name on the list of registered stewards, all I had to do to register was send an email to the people at KC Bier Meisters. These guys really know how to host an event! I was immediately handed a nice glass and some raffle tickets for some interesting drawings, was shown where the beer was. Beer was provided by a lot of local brewers, such as Boulevard, Free State, 75th Street, Martin City, Cinder Block, and a lot of others! I was able to taste quite a few good beers from around the area. The highlight of the raffle was some brewing equipment and some brewery signs including a neon sign and 4 foot tall Beer stein. The lowlights of the raffle would include a Colt 45 Malt Liquor sign with Snoop Dogg on it. While I was enjoying this good beers, I got to some great people while learning about the homebrew competition. With each person I talked to I either heard a story about brewing beer or a good place to go get a beer, I also learned a lot about techniques of homebrewing and styles of beer. I had a lot of fun and now I am excited to learn more and brew more of my own beer applying what I have learned.

Each beer was evaluated by at least two judges on aroma, appearance, flavor, mouthfeel, overall impression with scores record on this sheet. Each category of beer got a first second and third, and each beer could be nominated for Best of Show for a grand champion of sorts for the whole competition. Here are the results of the Kansas City Bier Meisters 31st Annual Homebrew Competition.

The most memorable moment from the judging was one judge actually spitting out the beer because it was "not what he was expecting" from the category. For a porter the beer was really pretty bad. Though this would give me confidence to enter a competition in the future. I had a great time and I wish I had a chance to do more with this event. I wanted to sit in on the Spiegelau glass event for $25. I would have had a chance to learn about specialized glassware and keep the glasses that would normally have cost $50 at store. And there was an award banquet that would have cost $35 for a four course meal paired with six different beers. If the course menu is any indication of future competition banquets, then I will look for future events to volunteer for and maybe compete in. Boy O Boy I wish I had seen this site before the competition and I would have known about all these things. I am also pretty sure the tweet below is directed at me... I am just saying...

Thank you all to everyone who entered this year! Also a huge shout out to all of our volunteers, we couldn't have done it without any of you
— KC Bier Meisters (@kcbiermeisters) February 23, 2014

This experience has inspired me to start a series of posts looking at each of the four ingredients for beer. Then I will detail the brewing process through a few of my own homebrew sessions.