Imagine getting to brew your very own homebrew recipe on a local brewery’s commercial system and your beer being served at locations around town. How cool would it be for your family, friends and fellow homebrewers to see your beer and your name on the beer list? Well, now you have the opportunity.
Central Oregon Beer Week (COBW) and the Central Oregon Homebrewers Organization (COHO) are teaming up to host the COBW Pro-Am Homebrew Competition, with winning beers brewed on professional systems to be served during COBW in May. So start brewing now.
This competition is open to any homebrewer age 21 or older and is not limited to any particular category or style of beer, within the below guidelines. The beers will not be judged to a specific BJCP style and can be a creative expression of the brewer’s intent, however consideration must be made to timing (there will be at most about 6 weeks of time between brewing and serving) and to the capabilities of the commercial breweries to brew the winning beers.
- As there is a limited amount of brewing and conditioning time, maximum alcohol by volume (ABV) must be 8.5 percent and no wood- or barrel-aging styles will be allowed.
- Similarly, only ale styles will be accepted, no lagers.
- No extreme or exotic ingredients can be used, particularly if they would be prohibitively expensive to the host brewery. This would apply to fruits, spices, vegetables, unusual malts, and so on. If there are any questions, please contact COHO.
- In general brewers can use whatever yeast variety, but be aware that a commercial brewery may be limited in what yeast it can use.
The deadline for beer entries is Saturday, April 6, and beers must be delivered to The Brew Shop in Bend by that time. Judging will be held in April by a panel of judges from the Central Oregon Brewers Guild and COHO, and participating breweries will choose which homebrewer’s winning beer they will brew. These winning beers will be brewed in April to be served at a special Beer Week event in May (date and location TBD).
cohomebrewers.org/cobw-2019-pro-am competition
