Midwinter Homebrew Competition

It’s with a very heavy heart we announce that 2025 will be the last Midwinter Homebrew Competition. When we started this endeavor back in 2011 we set out to create a competition that rewards quality beer, mead, and cider makers and had a reputation for quality judging. Delivering on that for 15 years has been a great pleasure and a very rewarding experience.

Times have changed though and the judge numbers, in terms of existing judges as well as those looking to become judges, has greatly diminished over the past few years. We find ourselves at a place where we used to do early judging sessions to get back into the groove, but now we need to do those sessions in order to get everything judged. Rather than lowering our entry number cap below 500, and becoming a shadow of what we once were, we’ve made the decision to go out with a strong finish.

• Entry registration for the 2025 competition will open on December 20th. People can set up their accounts now on the registration site but they must return on December 20th to register their entries.
• We will be using the same score sheet format that we used last year with a few enhancements. It is designed to provide the same type of feedback as the standard BJCP scoresheet but it does it in a more condensed format. It will also be captured on an electronic device so no messy handwriting issues. Please familiarize yourself with this change before submitting entries.
• Score Sheet Example DOWNLOAD

• The majority of judging is scheduled to take place on January 31st and February 1st, 2025. We will make every effort to conduct the judging as safely and efficiently as possible. No results will be made public until all judging has been completed, but we will be providing updates on the site as to the progress we’re making. Awards will be mailed out within a week of judging completion.
• The competition will be limited to 500 entries. Entrants will be limited to 6 total entries. This year we will be judging to the BJCP 2021 guidelines and we will make every effort to have all entries judged by at least 2 BJCP Beer, Mead, or Cider Judges, Professional Brewers, Professional Mead Makers, or Professional Cider Makers.
• We will be limiting the styles accepted this year. Please be sure to check the accepted styles page on the registration system site for accepted styles.
• We will again be requesting 3 bottles per an entry in 2025. Should only 2 bottles be supplied or survive shipping then that entry will not be judged at best of show should the entry make it to that level.
• The drop off locations have all been confirmed for 2025. North Pillar Brewing Co has kindly agreed to be our ship to location for this year. Please be sure to verify the deadline date and time for the drop off location you plan to use. There is a specific time and date listed for each site and most deadlines are at least a week before the January 17th registration and shipping deadline. We highly advise that any shipping be done to North Pillar Brewing Co as some of the drop off locations are not open all of the days of the week.
• Please, and we can’t emphasize this enough, allow for allow for adequate shipping time. This competition takes place during the winter months where shipping delays are more common than not. Please take this into consideration. Only a few of us run this competition, and we don’t have the bandwidth to repeatedly pick up entries and re-sort everything. We opened registration earlier this year so people had some extra time to package up their entries and get them shipped. If entries arrive late we’ll still get you a score sheet with feedback from judges, but they won’t be eligible for eligible for placing or winning prizes.
• We are very happy to report that we will still be a part of the Midwest Homebrewer of the Year circuit and the Master Homebrewer Program’s Circuit of America.
• We’d like to let everyone know up front that we will not be doing any kind of awards ceremony. Why? Those of you who have entered our competition in the past know that our primary focus is to provide entrants with good, quality feedback from at least 2 BJCP ranked judges or industry professionals. In order to do that we gotta treat them to some fun so they come back year after year. So when judging concludes, we shift over to post competition festivities mode. Results will be published Sunday February 4th and an email will be sent to participants when posted.

That’s it for now. We’ll post additional updates as things develop.

Prosit, Sláinte, Salute, Na Zdravi, Cheers! – Bruce Buerger
Coordinator – Midwinter Homebrew Competition

The results for the 2024 competition have now been posted and are available at the competition web site – https://midwinterhbc.com/competition/

Scores and score sheets for your entries are also available on the website as well. Simply log in and click on the My Info and Entries link to see the numerical scores. If you don’t remember your password there is a Password Reset link that you can use to gain access. 

To access the score sheets simply log in and click on the My Info and Entries link. To the right of your scores you should see a gavel or hammer icon. Click on that and the document will download or open. Note you will need some sort of Acrobat Reader installed to see the sheets. Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure we’re not going to keep them out there to download for forever so please get them before we turn the site over in 300 days or so for the next competition. 

This is our fourth year using electronic score sheets so if you see something that you have questions about please either check out our faq page or feel free to contact us by replying to the email address for this email. We have made several improvements to our scoresheet system since last year, adding more quality controls that the judges see as well as aesthetic ones to the PDFs that the entrants will see. 

Some interesting factoids about the 2024 competition:

• We received a total of 465 entries this year, 31 which were meads and 38 which were ciders.
• Entries came from AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, MA, MD, MI, MN, MO, NC, NE, NH, NJ, OH, OK, SD, TX, UT, WA, and WI.
• All judging was performed by 2 Grand Master, 1 Master, 11 National, 16 Certified, 16 Mead Judges, 10 Cider, and 2 Recognized Judges from all over Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri. 
• To maintain quality judges judged maintained an average of 7 entries per a sitting. At no time did a set of judges judge more than 8 entries per a session.
• All entries were judged by at least two BJCP judges with at least one of them having a rank of Certified or higher.
• All Mead entries were judged by one of 16 Certified Mead Judges.
• All Cider entries were judged by one of 10 Certified Cider Judges.
• All category mini Best of Show sessions were conducted with a pair of BJCP judges, each of which had a rank of National or higher. 
• The Beer, Mead, and Cider Best of Shows were all judged with panels comprised of National, Grand Master, Master, Mead, or Cider BJCP judges.

Medals and awards will be mailed out over the next few weeks. Best of Show barrel heads will ship separately. On behalf of the Midwinter Home Brew Competition organizing committee and the Beer Barons of Milwaukee I would like to thank you all for participating in this year’s competition.

Words cannot express our appreciation enough to everyone who help us put on this competition. A huge thank you also to North Pillar Brewing, Revere’s Wells Street Tavern, Northern Brewer, all of the out of town judges that came in to help us out, and all of the local judges and volunteers. We could not possibly do this without you!

Hope to see you all back in 2025!

Prosit, Sláinte, Salute, Na Zdravi, Cheers! – Bruce Buerger
Coordinator – Midwinter Homebrew Competition

Those that have entries in the system but hadn’t paid will be able to do so if current entrants delete some of their entries. So keep checking back!

Registration is now open! Please take note of all drop off location deadlines:

Drop Off Location	Entrant Drop Off Deadline	Notes
The Cellar – Oshkosh, WI	Friday, January 12th
Wine & Hop Shop – Madison, WI	Friday, January 12th
Farmhouse Brewing Supply – Janesville, WI	Friday, January 12th
The Purple Foot – Milwaukee, WI	Friday, January 12th
Truebru Homebrew Supplies – New Berlin, WI	Friday, January 19th
North Pillar Brewing Co. – Waukesha, WI	Friday, January 19th	** Ship to Location Only

Please be sure to verify the deadline date and time for the drop off location you plan to use. There is a specific time and date listed for each site and most deadlines are at least a week before the January 19th registration and shipping deadline. Also please remember that this competition takes place during the winter months. We strongly advise that participants take into consideration weather conditions to avoid issues associated with entries freezing and delays associated with blizzards or polar vortexes. Entries that arrive late will still get a score sheet with feedback from judges, but they won’t be eligible for eligible for placing or winning prizes.

For those that are shipping entries we highly recommend using some form of product designed for shipping bottles or cans. Uline, Spirited Shipper, and Gorilla Shipper are products that we’ve successfully received entries with in the past. Products like these help to reduce the chance of breakage during shipping and they greatly reduce the amount of waste. 

Best of luck to all that enter!

• Entry registration for the 2024 competition will open on December 22nd. People can set up their accounts now on the registration site but they must return on December 22nd to register their entries.
• We will be using the same score sheet format that we used last year with a few enhancements. It is designed to provide the same type of feedback as the standard BJCP scoresheet but it does it in a more condensed format. It will also be captured on an electronic device so no messy handwriting issues. Please familiarize yourself with this change before submitting entries.
• Score Sheet Example DOWNLOAD

• The majority of judging is scheduled to take place on February 2nd & 3rd, 2024. We will make every effort to conduct the judging as safely and efficiently as possible. No results will be made public until all judging has been completed, but we will be providing updates on the site as to the progress we’re making. Awards will be mailed out within a week of judging completion.
• The competition will be limited to 500 entries. This year we will be judging to the BJCP 2021 guidelines and we will make every effort to have all entries judged by at least 2 BJCP Beer, Mead, or Cider Judges, Professional Brewers, Professional Mead Makers, or Professional Cider Makers.
• We will again be requesting 3 bottles per an entry in 2024. Should only 2 bottles be supplied or survive shipping then that entry will not be judged at best of show should the entry make it to that level.
• The drop off locations have all been confirmed for 2024. North Pillar Brewing Co has kindly agreed to be our ship to location for this year. Please be sure to verify the deadline date and time for the drop off location you plan to use. There is a specific time and date listed for each site and most deadlines are at least a week before the January 20th registration and shipping deadline. We highly advise that any shipping be done to North Pillar Brewing Co as some of the drop off locations are not open all of the days of the week.
• Please, and we can’t emphasize this enough, allow for allow for adequate shipping time. This competition takes place during the winter months where shipping delays are more common than not. Please take this into consideration. Only a few of us run this competition, and we don’t have the bandwidth to repeatedly pick up entries and re-sort everything. We opened registration earlier this year so people had some extra time to package up their entries and get them shipped. If entries arrive late we’ll still get you a score sheet with feedback from judges, but they won’t be eligible for eligible for placing or winning prizes.
• We are very happy to report that we will still be a part of the Midwest Homebrewer of the Year circuit and the Master Homebrewer Program’s Circuit of America.
• We’d like to let everyone know up front that we will not be doing any kind of awards ceremony. Why? Those of you who have entered our competition in the past know that our primary focus is to provide entrants with good, quality feedback from at least 2 BJCP ranked judges or industry professionals. In order to do that we gotta treat them to some fun so they come back year after year. So when judging concludes, we shift over to post competition festivities mode. Results will be published Sunday February 4th and an email will be sent to participants when posted.

That’s it for now. We’ll post additional updates as things develop.

Prosit, Sláinte, Salute, Na Zdravi, Cheers! – Bruce Buerger
Coordinator – Midwinter Homebrew Competition

The results for the 2023 competition have now been posted and are available at the competition web site – https://midwinterhbc.com/competition/

Scores and score sheets for your entries are also available on the website as well. Simply log in and click on the My Info and Entries link to see the numerical scores. If you don’t remember your password there is a Password Reset link that you can use to gain access. 

To access the score sheets simply log in and click on the My Info and Entries link. To the right of your scores you should see a gavel or hammer icon. Click on that and the document will download or open. Note you will need some sort of Acrobat Reader installed to see the sheets. Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure we’re not going to keep them out there to download for forever so please get them before we turn the site over in 300 days or so for the next competition. 

This is our third year using electronic score sheets so if you see something that you have questions about please either check out our faq page or feel free to contact us by replying to the email address for this email. We have made several improvements to our scoresheet system since last year, adding more quality controls that the judges see as well as aesthetic ones to the PDFs that the entrants will see. 

Some interesting factoids about the 2023 competition:

• We received a total of 485 entries this year, 43 which were meads and 27 which were ciders.
• Entries came from AR, CA, DE, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, NC, NJ, NV, OH, OK, SD, TX, UT, WA, and WI.
• All judging was performed by 2 Grand Master, 1 Master, 12 National, 14 Certified, 17 Mead Judges, 10 Cider, and 3 Recognized Judges from all over Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Alberta. 
• To maintain quality judges judged maintained an average of 7 entries per a sitting. At no time did a set of judges judge more than 8 entries per a session.
• All entries were judged by at least two BJCP judges with at least one of them having a rank of Certified or higher.
• All Mead entries were judged by one of 17 Certified Mead Judges.
• All Cider entries were judged by one of 10 Certified Cider Judges.
• All category mini Best of Show sessions were conducted with a pair of BJCP judges, each of which had a rank of National or higher. 
• The Beer, Mead, and Cider Best of Shows were all judged with panels comprised of National, Grand Master, Master, Mead, or Cider BJCP judges.

Medals and awards will be mailed out over the next few weeks. On behalf of the Midwinter Home Brew Competition organizing committee I would like to thank you all for participating in this year’s competition. COVID continued to throw us some challenges again this year with logistics, staffing, and judging.

Words cannot express our appreciation enough to everyone who help us put on this competition. A huge thank you also to Northern Brewer, Revere’s Wells Street Tavern, all of the out of town judges that came in to help us out, and all of the local judges and volunteers. We could not possibly do this without you!

Hope to see you all back in 2024!

Prosit, Sláinte, Salute, Na Zdravi, Cheers! – Bruce Buerger
Coordinator – Midwinter Homebrew Competition

We’re checking our lists and making sure everything is everything is right. Expect the results, scores, and score sheets to be posted no later than 8pm Sunday night. We’ll send out an email when everything is posted as well.

• Entry registration for the 2023 competition will open on January 6th. People can set up their accounts now on the registration site but they must return on January 6th to register their entries.
• We will be using the same score sheet format that we used last year with a few enhancements. It is designed to provide the same type of feedback as the standard BJCP scoresheet but it does it in a more condensed format. It will also be captured on an electronic device so no messy handwriting issues. Please familiarize yourself with this change before submitting entries.
• Score Sheet Example DOWNLOAD

• The majority of judging is scheduled to take place on February 3rd & 4th, 2023. We will make every effort to conduct the judging as safely and efficiently as possible. No results will be made public until all judging has been completed, but we will be providing updates on the site as to the progress we’re making. Awards will be mailed out within a week of judging completion.
• The competition will be limited to 500 entries. This year we will be judging to the BJCP 2021 guidelines and we will make every effort to have all entries judged by at least 2 BJCP Beer, Mead, or Cider Judges, Professional Brewers, Professional Mead Makers, or Professional Cider Makers.
• We will again be requesting 3 bottles per an entry in 2023. Should only 2 bottles be supplied or survive shipping then that entry will not be judged at best of show should the entry make it to that level.
• The drop off and ship to locations for the competition are still being confirmed. Please be sure to verify the deadline date and time for the drop off location you plan to use. There is a specific time and date listed for each site and most deadlines are at least a week before the January 20th registration and shipping deadline. 
• We are very happy to report that we will still be a part of the Midwest Homebrewer of the Year circuit and the Master Championship of Amature Brewing circuit.
• Despite our success the past two years, we will not be a part of the American Mead Makers Association’s National Mead Maker of the Year award circuit. Their organizers have decided to only allow mead only competitions to be a part of the circuit. We wish them luck with this approach.

That’s it for now. We’ll post additional updates as things develop.

Prosit, Sláinte, Salute, Na Zdravi, Cheers! – Bruce Buerger
Coordinator – Midwinter Homebrew Competition

The results for the 2022 competition have now been posted and are available at the competition web site – https://midwinterhbc.com/competition/

Scores and score sheets for your entries are also available on the website as well. Simply log in and click on the My Info and Entries link to see the numerical scores. If you don’t remember your password there is a Password Reset link that you can use to gain access. 

To access the score sheets simply log in and click on the My Info and Entries link. To the right of your scores you should see a gavel or hammer icon. Click on that and the document will download or open. Note you will need some sort of Acrobat Reader installed to see the sheets. Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure we’re not going to keep them out there to download for forever so please get them before we turn the site over in 300 days or so for the next competition. 

This is our second year using electronic score sheets so if you see something that you have questions about please feel free to contact us by replying to the email address for this email. We have made several improvements to our scoresheet system since last year, adding more quality controls that the judges see as well as aesthetic ones to the PDFs that the entrants will see. 

Some interesting factoids about the 2022 competition:

• We received a total of 482 entries this year, 131 which were meads and 23 which were ciders.
• Entries came from CA, GA, HI, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MI, MN, MO, NC, NV, OH, OR, TN, TX, WA, and WI.
• All judging was performed by 2 Grand Master, 1 Master, 8 National, 9 Certified, 1 Mead & Cider, and 2 Recognized Judges from all over Wisconsin and Minnesota. 
• To maintain quality judges judged maintained an average of 7 entries per a sitting. At no time did a set of judges judge more than 8 entries per a session.
• All entries were judged by at least two BJCP judges with at least one of them having a rank of Certified or higher.
• All Mead entries were judged by one of 8 Certified Mead Judges.
• All Cider entries were judged by one of 5 Certified Cider Judges.
• All category mini Best of Show sessions were conducted with a pair of BJCP judges, each of which had a rank of National or higher. 
• The Beer, Mead, and Cider Best of Shows were all judged with panels comprised of National, Grand Master, Master, Mead, or Cider BJCP judges.

On behalf of the Midwinter Home Brew Competition organizing committee I would like to thank you all for participating in this year’s competition. COVID continued to throw us some challenges again this year with logistics, staffing, and judging. Words cannot express our appreciation enough to everyone. A huge thank you also to Northern Brewer, Revere’s Wells Street Tavern, all of the out of town judges that came in to help us out, and all of the local judges and volunteers. Hope to see you all back in 2023!

Prosit, Sláinte, Salute, Na Zdravi, Cheers! – Bruce Buerger
Coordinator – Midwinter Homebrew Competition

• Entry registration for the 2022 competition will open on January 15th. People can set up their accounts now on the registration site but they must return on January 15th to register their entries.
• We will be using the same score sheet format that we used last year with a few enhancements. It is designed to provide the same type of feedback as the standard BJCP scoresheet but it does it in a more condensed format. It will also be captured on an electronic device so no messy handwriting issues. One of the motivating factors behind this change is an attempt to reduce the chance of virus transmission as a result of paper exchange. Please familiarize yourself with this change before submitting entries.
• Score Sheet Example DOWNLOAD

• The majority of judging is scheduled to take place on February 18th & 19th, 2022. We will make every effort to conduct the judging as safely and efficiently as possible. No results will be made public until all judging has been completed, but we will be providing updates on the site as to the progress we’re making. Awards will be mailed out within a week of judging completion.
• The competition will be limited to 500 entries. As in years past we will be judging to the BJCP 2015 guidelines and we will make every effort to have all entries judged by at least 2 BJCP Beer, Mead, or Cider Judges, Professional Brewers, Professional Mead Makers, or Professional Cider Makers.
• We will again be requesting 3 bottles per an entry in 2022. Should only 2 bottles be supplied or survive shipping then that entry will not be judged at best of show should the entry make it to that level.
• The drop off and ship to locations for the competition have been confirmed. Please be sure to verify the deadline date and time for the drop off location you plan to use. There is a specific time and date listed for each site and most deadlines are at least a week before the February 4th registration and shipping deadline. Unfortunately this year we are unable to arrange transportation from our regular MN and Northern IL locations.
• We have confirmed that we will still be a part of the Midwest Homebrewer of the Year circuit, American Mead Makers Association’s National Mead Maker of the Year award circuit, and the Master Championship of Amature Brewing circuit.
• We are very happy to announce the return of the professional ramp ups and a pro am qualifier affiliated with the competition. Please see the Awards section on the registration site for details regarding the Brewmaster’s, Mead Maker’s, and Cider Maker’s Choice awards.

That’s it for now. We’ll post additional updates as things develop.

Prosit, Sláinte, Salute, Na Zdravi, Cheers! – Bruce Buerger
Coordinator – Midwinter Homebrew Competition