Competition Tips
One
reason many meadmakers begin making mead is a wish to make an affordable wine
through their own efforts. Once they succeed, they focus more on perfecting the
finished product. Their next question becomes, "Am I making really good mead? Or lousy
mead that my friends and I like but no one else would?"
Thus enters the competition. You can use the opportunity
to find out how your meadmaking skills compare on a local, regional, national,
or even international stage.
A couple of reasons
to enter your mead into a competition are:
Entering a competition
is the best way to evaluate the quality of your mead and to receive detailed
information on improving and/or correcting any faults it might have.
Occasionally judges include an e-mail address, on the evaluation form, if you
would like to ask a question.
Another reason to enter
contests is the spirit of competing - pitting your mead against others and
finding out how well it measures up. There is an excitement in competing and an
immense pride in winning. And, there’s nothing like knowing yours was one of
the best meads entered. While you pour it for your friends or family, you can
hold up your medal and say “I made this mead!”
Competitions come in
several flavors:
There are homebrew
competitions that also judge mead. These range from local club competitions,
with 50 or 60 entries, to regional competitions with several hundred entries.
There are many state
fairs that have beer and/or wine competitions of varying sizes and scopes,
which accept mead. For example: The Florida State Fair has a professional beer
competition and a homebrew competition - including mead entries, but, only from
the state of
Winemaker Magazine has
an amateur wine competition, with over two thousand entries, that also has a
mead category.
And, there are Mead-Only competitions – like Meadllennium.
These are few and far between. In a mead-only competition, your mead will be
judged against other similar meads, by judges that are only judging mead.
Finally whether you bring home a medal or
not, keep in perspective that no matter what, you’ve learned something and
gained by trying. One of my favorite quotes of Ralph Waldo Emerson is, “Win as
if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change,” which is a
pretty swell philosophy. Good luck to everyone!
So, if you’re entering your mead into a
competition, you should work as hard as possible to win — and there are some
things you can do to maximize your chances.
You
can’t win a medal if you don’t enter. A lot of meadmakers say, “I think I’ll
put some of my mead in next contest,” or “Someday I’ll send a bottle off to see
what other people think of it.” Pick a competition that interests you, find out
the entry deadline . . . and enter it!
Someone once said that 90% of life consists of just showing up. Winning a mead
competition is a little more than that, but you can’t win until you enter.
Do your homework and check
out the competition.
How many medals are there for meads? If there is only one medal offered for all meads
entered, your Dry Traditional may not fare well against a sweet melomel. Many
homebrew competitions award three medals – Traditional (24), fruit mead (25),
and other mead (26). Mead-only competitions usually offer six to nine medals,
but the smaller ones will probably collapse categories. The past two years, Meadllennium, on the other hand,
has expanded the “Other Fruit Melomel” category (25c), and awarded medals for Dry,
Semi-sweet and Sweet in the sub-category, as well as medals for the rest of the
sub-categories.
How large is the
competition? If you are just starting to compete and your primary goal is
to win rather than obtain feedback on your mead, stay away from the large
competitions and enter the smaller events that offer at least three medals. For
the best opportunity to compete, place, and sharpen your skills, enter multiple
competitions and submit multiple entries — more entries means more chances that
the judges will recognize your talent, and for you to get a place on the
podium. That isn’t to say that you should “shotgun” a contest with every mead in your cellar, hoping that one or more of
them will stick — enter only the meads you think have a good shot. If you can
afford it, enter as often as you’re allowed — hiding your brilliance under a
bushel basket won’t get you anywhere.
In the larger homebrew contests the judges are generally more experienced, but
the overall caliber of the entries is much higher. Once you have established
yourself in smaller competitions, then enter the
larger, more challenging events.
What type of
competition is it? Homebrew competitions are predominantly beer
competitions. Beer is judged differently than mead, and the judges may not make
the transition easily. Also in smaller ones, the judges evaluating your sweet
blueberry melomel, or your semi-sweet, oaked, Tupelo honey Traditional mead,
may have just finished judging a very hoppy IPA round, and might have trouble
giving you a fair assessment.
Wine competitions use a different judging form. Find one
on the internet and familiarize yourself with it. Some wine competitions (but
not all) are very prejudiced about mead. You may find wide-ranging scores, from
different judges for the same mead. The larger wine competitions MAY
offer a better opportunity for your mead to be judged by judges that are
familiar with mead.
Mead-only competitions – like Meadllennium – offer the greatest
chance for you to get the best assessment of your mead. Judges will be
evaluating only mead – no bone-dry merlots or sour Gueuzes
or hoppy pale ales to get their taste buds out of shape. At Meadllennium,
we have a mead evaluation class a couple of weeks before the competition to go
over the guidelines and discuss how to judge mead.
Read the rules very, very carefully, to make sure that you know
all requirements, and then follow the entry regulations. Most homebrew competitions have fairly
standardized rules, BUT, one competition may allow only 12-ounce brown bottles
while another competition may adhere to the American Homebrewers Association
(AHA) competition standards of 10 to 14 ounce green or brown unmarked bottles.
Some competitions allow multiple entries in a category while others permit only
one entry per sub-category. Most competitions require three bottles to enter,
but some smaller competitions request only two bottles per entry. Regardless,
you must review the competition rules and follow them. Most competitions require
you to remove all labels and blacken any identifying caps. Some wine
competitions even require you to remove foil or plastic capsules from the
bottles. Skip any of this, and your mead may not be judged! Most rules include
attaching an identifying tag or label to the bottles with a rubber band – NOT scotch tape or glue. Going to the trouble of
sending one or meads to a competition only to have them disqualified, because
you haven’t followed the instructions, can be tragic.
Pay attention to is the entry deadline. This is one of the most important entry
requirements. Don’t wait until the week before the contest to get your mead
together and ship it. Contests are held annually and you’ll have a whole year
to get ready for them. If your mead arrives the day after the competition, your
chances of winning a medal are pretty slim, although the free mead will be
enjoyed by the organizer and his committee.
Make sure you keep good records. Most competitions require not just the category
and sub- category, but the varietal name of the honey, whether it is still or
sparkling, sweet, semi-sweet or dry and strength. Depending on the
sub-category, you must supply the type of fruit or which spices you used. A few
ask for your recipe, so you will need to know the starting and final gravities,
alcohol content, dates, etc. Of course, as conscientious meadmakers we all know
that keeping good records allows us to repeat our successes and avoid repeating
our failures, so it should be a snap to pull all the information you need from
your meadmaking book.
Do a critical assessment of your “cellar”. Why assess your cellar? Well, if you’re planning
to enter a contest and don’t have any mead ready to drink, you’re too late. One
of the great things about mead is actually one of the drawbacks: they’re so
easy drink that a lot of people don’t wait and they drink them before they have
had a chance to rest. Even the simplest Traditional mead benefits from six
months of age, and your super-premium sack probably needs at least a year in
the bottle. Many types of mead need two to three years before they begin to
show well. Most Melomels are ready fairly quickly, but even they need at least
a month to recover from what winemakers know and call “bottle shock”.
If
you have trouble building up a stock of well-aged mead, try this: save six to
twelve bottles from each batch you make(that’s two to four competitions) and tuck them away in an aging-appropriate
spot for at least a year. You’ll have meads to drink, and meads to compete
with. Of course, the best strategy for building a cellar lies in making mead
often and putting away up to half of each batch you make for a year, and
leaving the rest in your “drinking rack.” That way you’ll eventually have a
large supply of appropriately aged meads both for drinking and competitive
purposes (this isn’t a bad idea, even if you never enter a competition).
Evaluate your meads to see where they fit, tasting them critically to
assess how they express their character, before you enter them into a
competition. By periodically tasting your meads, you will be able to ascertain
how well they are developing and maturing. Ask others that are knowledgeable
about mead styles to sample your efforts and tell you how well it fits the
category you plan to enter and if it has any faults. I have never had to twist
arms to find volunteers.
It
might be that you have an excellent Orange Blossom Traditional that you think
could place very highly in competition, but when you taste it, it doesn’t have
a strongly identifiable varietal impact — good mead, but no Orange Blossom
aroma.” If you mentioned the Orange Blossom honey variety it will may not score
as well as a poorer tasting mead with more easily
identifiable varietal character, or one that did not mention a flower variety.
In this case, it would be best not to mention the honey variety at all .This is
also true of the spices you used in your Metheglyn. You may have used a half a
dozen herbs and spices, but only two are readily recognizable. When filling out
the entry form, only list the two that the judges can single out. I am sure
there have been Melomels that did not have any fruit expression that were
entered as Traditional meads. This isn’t cheating, and isn’t even fibbing: it’s
placing the mead in the category where it can show best. It is not unusual for a mead to turn out different than intended and have
characteristics more closely fitting another sub-category.
Careful packing is important, to ensure your entries arrive in good condition.
A broken bottle can eliminate you from the possibility of first place or best
of show, and you may be liable for paying to have all of the other packages in
the shipment cleaned.
- First, completely cover each bottle in
bubble-wrap and tape it securely. You can buy rolls of bubble wrap at
shipping service centers or stationery stores. This will help reduce
impact shock if the box is dropped or mishandled.
- Then securely tape all the bottles for that
entry together. This saves the coordinator time, if each entry is
together, and also prevents the individual bottles from bumping each
other, while in transit.
- Next, wrap the entries in a plastic bag. If
the worst should happen, other entries won’t be damaged.
- Then, line a sturdy cardboard boxes with a
plastic bag and pack the bottles tightly into it with at least 2” of
packing peanuts, or other shipping material, on all sides, and tape securely — but don’t forget to
put your entry forms and payment inside the box before sealing! You can
further protect your shipment by packing the box into another larger box
with additional packing, such as bubble wrap, popcorn packing, or even
fluffed-up newspaper, all around the inside.
If
you are a member of a homebrew club, encourage your club to hold packing
parties to help members ship their entries to the competition. Maybe a club
member has business connections and can get the UPS business shipping rate, or
your local homebrew supply shop might be willing to help you ship your entries
at a discount.
Shipping is another area to which many
competition entrants do not give adequate attention. Although alcohol cannot be
shipped through the US Postal Service, it is legal to ship it through
commercial parcel companies, such as UPS and Federal Express, for competition
and tasting.
1.
Find out what
the shipping time will be and when they will arrive, because you want your
shipment to get there in plenty of time to allow the mead to stabilize and
settle before being judged. If possible, avoid shipping over weekends, because
the shipment may sit in a hot truck or in a freezing warehouse. It doesn't take
much abuse to affect the flavor and taste of mead. The deadline for entries is
often as much as five days to a week before competition judging, so, ship in
time to arrive before the weekend - even if it is a week before the
competition. As a rule, the larger the competition, the earlier the entry
deadline. During extreme weather or when you only have limited shipping time,
consider spending a couple of extra dollars to air express your prized entries.
2.
Most shipping
companies will not accept alcoholic beverages for transshipment, regardless of
the purpose, because they are not knowledgeable about the legalities of
shipping alcoholic beverages. So if you write “wine” or “mead” or “beer”, it
will almost certainly be refused. To avoid problems, if you have to provide a
content-declaration for shipping purposes, be inventive in what you label your
shipment. Make sure to indicate the contents as “flavor samples for analysis —
not for resale”, or call it "perishable food products", "liquid
bread", or even "yeast samples”. My favorite is “Liquid Honey Samples
– Not for Resale”.
3.
Be sure to
mark the package “FRAGILE” in large letters.
This
article has been adapted from “Make Your Beer Competition Ready” by Ron Bach
and “Entering Wine Competitions” by Tim Vandergrift.