Lessons Learned from Throwdown! 2023

Another BCBS Throwdown! is in the books. This third iteration of our Club-only competition has once again demonstrated the fantastic growth of the Club. While I won’t be revealing any winners here – you’ll have to attend the February Membership Meeting to learn that information – I do want to talk about a few broader lessons and themes that I gleaned from the competition.

(BCBS History buffs will also want to check out Chuck’s recapitulation of Throwdown! 2022.)

Let’s start with some raw numbers from Throwdown! past and present:

Year	# Entries	# Very Good or Better	# Fair or Worse
2020	17	11	0
2022	24	16	2
2023	34	21	0

Reminder: There was no Throwdown! in 2021, because… reasons.

Very Few Bad Beers

Now, what do I see in those numbers? First off, there are very few bad beers, i.e. beers that scored Fair (20) or lower. In my mind that’s both good and bad. Good: because it suggests we largely have basic brewing skills down. Good: because it shows members are understanding styles and how to catagorize their beers when entering competitions.

Bad: because we may only be putting forth our “best” to the Throwdown! and missing an opportunity to get input on brews with which we are struggling. Brew long enough, and everyone eventually has a “dumper,” a batch that is just undrinkable. While having to watch your hard work disappear down the drain is difficult enough, I hope folks take moment to learn something before you dump out the fermentor.

I understand that the Grand Prize is very attractive – believe me, I UNDERSTAND! – this can also be an excellent change to get unbiased feedback from some very qualified people. So, if you’re not using the Throwdown! to get feedback on a brew that went sideways, bring it in to the next meeting. During last week’s Zymurgy Live with Charlie Papazian, the Godfather himself talked about a “bad beer” night held within his own club years ago and how helpful it was. Bringing in your bad beer and getting input from other Members might be one of the best things you can do to improve.

Lots of Good Beer

No seriously, we are making some great beer. Even if we are only putting our best beers into the Throwdown!, we are brewing those beers! Many of our judges have been a part of Throwdown! every year now, and they all commented about how the standards continue to improve across the entries. Even those beers that scored toward the lower end this year were good beers, often losing points because they weren’t quite in the right subcategory. (I’m guilty of that!) Selecting flight winners and Best of Show requires more and more discussion and picking of nits.

Let’s keep building on that! Once winners are announce, judging feedback sheets will be available on the competition website. Remembers that every single judge wants you to brew amazing beer, so read their comments and take them to heart. If you aren’t sure how to incorporate the comments, bring your scoresheets and your recipe/brewing log to a Meeting and discuss it with other Members. We’ve got a lot of great brewing knowledge throughout the club, so I guarantee someone will be able to offer you a specific tweak that might might take your brew to the next level. And when you do hit that next level, be sure to enter it into some of the other regional competitions to win Honor and Glory for yourself and BCBS!

Behind the Scenes

While the primary focus of Throwdown! is creating a forum for Members to get structured, competition-style feedback, there is another purpose. The event allows the Competition Committee to get practice at the administrative side of things. There’s a lot of work that goes into even a small competition like this one: Recruiting judges, stewards, and other volunteers. Setting up the registration site. Collecting, managing and sorting entries. Organization and logistics on the day of the event. Each year the Competition Committee tries out new things and learns lessons, and this year was no different.

For example, we discovered a quirk in the pull sheets used by stewards when presenting entries to judges. (“entry numbers” vs. “judges numbers”) Now that we know this, we can find a solution and apply it to the Fermentation Frenzy, our larger, public competition held during the Butler County Fair each summer.

When I was in business school, we learned the concept of kaizen, or “continuous improvement”. For BCBS, Throwdown! is an opportunity for all of us to practice kaizen, both as a club and as individual brewers. My thanks to everyone that helped this be such a smooth and successful event, and my congratulations to the Yet-To-Be-Named Winners!