KC Bier Meisters Competition - KC's Premier Homebrew Competition - Is Coming Soon!

Kansas City Bier Meisters is once again hosting their spring homebrew competition! This is the biggest and most comprehensive competition in the city and one of the bigger and more respected competitions in all of the Midwest. You can get a full listing of all the detailed info on their club website.

This year, the competition organizers expect nearly 600 entries in every category. So getting a medal in this competition is a big deal for any of you hopeful homebrewers out there! The judging is also top notch (mostly because I'm there judging...), so you can expect to get great scorecards back from your judges. And because the competition is so large and well known, there are always a lot of awesome prizes. For the entrants, there are TWO scale-up prizes this year! The winning beers will get scaled up sold commercially at Cinder Block and KC Bier Co. In addition to these awesome prizes, there are a bunch of other awesome prizes like a counterpressure bottle filler, a 10 gallon brew kettle fitted with a ball valve outlet and thermometer, and a build-your-own jockey box kit.

Some of the raffle prizes from last year.

It's also a great festival if you've ever thought about judging or stewarding a competition. I've heard from many an experienced judge that the KCBM competition is one of their favorite to attend. There are a lot of experienced judges there to help out newbies, and the flights are usually pretty reasonable (usually <10 beers) so there is enough time to really put a good effort into judging each brew and discussing them. The organizers also have food, commercial & homebrews donated for your drinking pleasure outside the judging flights, and an awesome raffle. This year, they've got over $9,000 worth of donated items for the raffle for volunteers. In addition to this, they'll have custom engraved "can" glasses & coozies for each volunteer.

Entries for the competition need to be registered and received by this Friday. Volunteers also need to sign up by this Friday. You can access the entry website here. The judging will take place the from Feb 16 - 20. See you there!

Note: If you are entering beers for this competition, please remember that we'll be using the new 2015 BJCP Style Guidelines. These are significantly changed from the 2008 guidelines. PLEASE review the 2015 guidelines before you enter your beers!! First competition I judged with the 2015 guidelines, about half of the brews I judged were entered wrong and got dismal scores as a result. These are beers that might have award winners if they had been entered correctly.