AHA Nationals first round judging in Indy

[Dwayne_Delaney]

Attn: Indiana Homebrew Clubs,
--- PLEASE MAKE SURE TO DISTRIBUTE THIS MESSAGE TO YOUR CLUB! ---

This is a Big Deal! For the first time in a very long time, the First Round Judging for the Largest Homebrew Competition in the World, the AHA Nationals, will not be held in Chicago, and for the First Time ever, it will be held here in Indianapolis!!!

This is something that Brian Steuerwald and myself, Ron Smith, have been thinking about for a while, and we made it happen this year. The AHA would like to have multiple locations for each of the 8 regional first round competition sites, so hopefully this will be the start of alternating this location with Chicago for the Great Lakes region.

It is very important that we do a great job with this competition, and we are very confident we will. With the BJCP study groups that myself and others have conducted over the past 5 years, we have developed a large base of trained and experienced BJCP judges here in Indiana. We are counting on this group, as well as many other volunteers to help make this competition a great success!

Brian and myself are somewhat sharing the leadership roles of running this large competition, which may see anywhere from 500 - 750 entries. Technically, Brian will be the Competition Coordinator and I will be the Judge Coordinator, but we will be dividing up the tasks slightly different.

Sun King Brewery has volunteered to be our receiving, storing and judging site, which should work out great. A Big Thanks to Sun King for welcoming us in for this event. This is also going to make it much easier for many of us here in Indiana to enter our beers, since we can drop them off in person at Sun King (and of course pick up a growler while we are there).

This First Round competition's purpose is to identify the top 3 beers in each major BJCP category for our region, which includes all of Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. These winning beers then advance to the Final Round held at the AHA National Conference in June in Minneapolis this year (this is a traveling conference that goes all over the country). You can learn more about the competition and the conference at http://www.HomebrewersAssociation.org.

More information about hotels, judging and weekend activities and agenda, etc. will be forthcoming, but for now, we need to start lining up BJCP Judges, Stewards and Volunteers. The competition will be held over the weekend of April 23rd, 24th and 25th. Ideally, we can do this in one day on Saturday, 24th, but knowing that it takes other regions additional sessions on Friday Night as well as Sunday Morning to get it all done, we need to keep these times open as options.

We are really looking forward to hosting a great and fun competition, but we need your help. Please contact us with the following information if you can help out...

Judges:

- Name
- BJCP Rank and Experience
- BJCP Number
- Email Address
- Availability (23rd, 24th, 25th)


Stewards and Volunteers:
- Name
- Experience
- Email Address
- Availability (23rd, 24th, 25th)



Let us know if you have any questions or need any additional information.

Thanks,
Ron Smith

RonSmith@MarketWiseSolutions.com

[Michael Erwin]

Anyone going to judge or steward?

I'm going to be in Indy on Friday, the 23rd, so I've volunteered for Friday evening and Saturday morning. Looking for a place to crash Friday night.