stoutaholic
Well-Known Member
For anyone interested in the Midwest Homebrewer of the Year competition, there is a new site at http://midwesthomebrewer.com that now provides historical standings for previous years and a "Brewer Scorecard" for every brewer who has entered beer in a participating MWHBOY competition in the last six years (i.e. since 2008).
If you are unfamiliar with this competition, it is essentially a meta-competition in which brewers earn points by winning medals in any of the 15 competitions that are part of the circuit. However, instead of being based upon the number of medals alone, a brewer's score is also determined by their winning percentage -- i.e. the ratio of medals won to entries submitted. A brewer earns 8 raw points for a 1st place medal, 4 points for a 2nd place medal, and 2 points for a 3rd place medal in each of the 28 beer/mead/cider BJCP categories. Those "raw" points are then multiplied by the brewer's winning percentage to come up with a "net" score, on which the competition is based. For more details, see the rules page.
One of the intentions of designing this site was to provide a framework for pursuing brewing as a competitive sport. If you regularly submit beers to competitions in the Midwest, the new site provides an excellent way to track the improvement of your brewing skills from year to year, or to compare your performance with all other competitive brewers.
Unlike competitions like the NHC or MCAB, it doesn't require you to have all of your beers at the peak of their flavor at a single point in time. Since you win points at various competitions throughout the year, you can brew low-gravity beers or really hoppy beers that will not last more than a few months. With the NHC, an award winning beer that you brew in May is not likely to be award winning by March of the following year.
Anyway, if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement for the new site, I'd love to hear them. It is all custom code, so everything can be changed. One thought is to add the ability of brewers to compete as "teams", or collections of brewers. Teams would compete against other teams, rather than against other individual brewers.
If you are unfamiliar with this competition, it is essentially a meta-competition in which brewers earn points by winning medals in any of the 15 competitions that are part of the circuit. However, instead of being based upon the number of medals alone, a brewer's score is also determined by their winning percentage -- i.e. the ratio of medals won to entries submitted. A brewer earns 8 raw points for a 1st place medal, 4 points for a 2nd place medal, and 2 points for a 3rd place medal in each of the 28 beer/mead/cider BJCP categories. Those "raw" points are then multiplied by the brewer's winning percentage to come up with a "net" score, on which the competition is based. For more details, see the rules page.
One of the intentions of designing this site was to provide a framework for pursuing brewing as a competitive sport. If you regularly submit beers to competitions in the Midwest, the new site provides an excellent way to track the improvement of your brewing skills from year to year, or to compare your performance with all other competitive brewers.
Unlike competitions like the NHC or MCAB, it doesn't require you to have all of your beers at the peak of their flavor at a single point in time. Since you win points at various competitions throughout the year, you can brew low-gravity beers or really hoppy beers that will not last more than a few months. With the NHC, an award winning beer that you brew in May is not likely to be award winning by March of the following year.
Anyway, if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement for the new site, I'd love to hear them. It is all custom code, so everything can be changed. One thought is to add the ability of brewers to compete as "teams", or collections of brewers. Teams would compete against other teams, rather than against other individual brewers.
