We were absolutely blown away by the response to our 5th birthday home brewing competition! When entries went on sale, The Malt Miller’s website was momentarily overwhelmed. The first 100 entries sold out in a few minutes. After a hasty call from Martin, we decided to add 50 more so as many people could enter as possible. Those sold out soon afterwards too! 128 beers were received at MM HQ in Swindon and on Friday 16th July (henceforce known as Crisp Witty Day) we got together to judge the beers. The judging panel was made up as follows:

Rob Neale - Owner @ The Malt Miller
Martin Rake - Operations Manager @ The Malt Miller
Ruth Mitchell - Head of Sales, Marketing and Events @ Elusive (accredited Beer Sommelier and Certified Cicerone)
Andy Parker - Owner @ Elusive Brewing

Now, judging 128 Belgian-style Wits was quite the challenge! We started by revisiting the BJCP style guidelines then split into two groups to have a first pass at all 128 beers. 39 beers were selected for the second round of judging. Those 39 beers were judged and scored by all four judges. Once scoring was completed, 8 beers were selected to enter a final round. The 8 finalists were all poured out together and judged silently before the panel reconvened to put forward our favourites. The final two were then selected and sampled in open discussion in order to pick a winner. The whole process took around six hours and many water biscuits were consumed along the way! After much deliberation over those final two beers, a winner was chosen. Phoning the winner to tell him he’d won was quite an emotional feeling for me (Andy). I remembered the overwhelming moment being announced as the winner of The Craft Beer Co’s home brewing competition in 2014 and how that made me feel. The moment where I called the winner was captured on video…

Congratulations to SAM JONES! As many entrants have asked about the other finalists, here’s the full top 8.

SAM JONES (1st Place)
NIGEL MACEY (2nd Place)
ANDREW OLDRIDGE (3rd Place)
FRASER WITHERS (4th Place)
JOSH HALL (Top 8)
D BERGIN (Top 8)
BEN KENNEDY (Top 8)
ROBERT IAFRATI (Top 8)

When we launched this competition, my aim was to replicate the platform that National Home Brewing Awards had given me and hopefully help an amateur brewer pursue their dream of turning professional. The competition was open to all, of course, but on speaking with Sam I was absolutely thrilled to learn that, along with 4th placed Fraser Withers, he was in the process of setting up a nano brewery in South London. Keep yours eyes peeled for MIDDLE CHILD! As part of their prize, we’ll be inviting Sam and Fraser down to brew at Elusive and will release a beer bearing their branding. We’ll also be mentoring and guiding them as much as we can in order to pass on our own experiences of 5 years brewing professionally.

We’d like to thank Rob, Martin and the whole team at The Malt Miller for their help and support in running the competition. We definitely couldn’t have done it without them! After the judging, we retired to The Tuppeny for a few (non Wit!) beers and there was some slightly tipsy talk of making the competition an annual event. We’ll ponder that one in the coming months but in the mean time a huge THANK YOU to everyone who entered and made our job so difficult on the day. The home brewing community has supported Elusive massively over the past 18 months and helped us navigate a very challenging period. We hope this competition went some way to paying that support forward.

Andy & Team Elusive x

5th Birthday Home Brewing Competition - RESULTS