Entries are now open for this years competition to provide 5 beers for Bar Nouveau at the Stockport Beer Festival. The competition last year was a great success and the beers at the festival where very well received. This year the competition is looking for five new beers which will be brewed in collaboration with some of the best of Manchester's professional breweries. The competition will be officially announced in the December edition of Opening Times and judging is planned to take place in March. There are five broad categories to encourage innovation Mild - 5% Bitter - 5.5%...

At the July Manchester Homebrew meeting I am going to be giving a brief introduction to judging beer in competitions like the UK National Homebrew Competition and the US NHC. I will be introducing how to judge beers using the Beer Judge Certification Program(BJCP)'s techniques and also running through what you need to do to become involved in judging beers at a national level. I will also talk a little about how to enter your beers into competitions and things to consider if you want to brew a high scoring beer. After this brief introduction we will be...