'The National Craft Brewing Festival 2008'

[SiHoltye]

http://www.craftbrewing.org.uk/

It may be my recently inflated confidence that leads me to post this but I intend to enter this beast of a competition next April.

If you plan ahead in your brewing it's easy. Just increase every brew length by 5 litres and bottle 8 bottles of each brew you do for the next 3 months. Come March drink a bottle of each and see what's good, of the remaining 7 you need 6 bottles to enter. You do have to brew in a given style though.

Give it some thought eh? It's supposed to be fun, and you get feedback from trained beer judges.

[SiHoltye]

I don't have that experience yet. Is that something like 1 week per 5 OG points? Assuming hops around 0.5-0.7 BU/GU. Do you have a useful marker?

[spearmint-wino]

It may be my recently inflated confidence that leads me to post this but I intend to enter this beast of a competition next April

Someone's got the bug then

I would totally recommend it too, its a great way to get proper feedback on your beers and having the judges on hand to talk about solving any problems, tweaking recipes etc is invaluable. Plus you get to drink a lot of great beer