MN Brewers Cup and Awards

Thank you for your interest in the MN Brewers Cup and Awards organized by the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild.

You only need to register your information once and can return to this site to enter more brews or edit the brews you've entered. You can even pay your entry fees online if you wish.

If you are willing to judge or steward, please return to register on or after Thursday, November 21, 2024 9:00 AM, CST.

Rules

REGISTRATION OPEN UNTIL FEBRUARY 10

>> Click here for registration instructions.

This competition, organized by the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild, is open to member breweries and brewpubs ONLY. Non-members will be contacted to join the Guild, or will be disqualified.

• NEW THIS YEAR: NA BEER CATEGORY!
• REGISTRATION: Brewers are not limited to one entry in each category, but may only enter each subcategory once. Payment for all entries must be made through this website by the registration deadline; entries with nonpayment will be disqualified. Changes to your entries can be made until the registration deadline. No refunds will be issued for entries after the registration deadline closes.
• DROP OFF: All entries must be received at the drop-off location by the deadline—no late entries will be accepted. Entries may not be shipped to location. The competition organizers are not responsible for miscategorized entries, entries that are not received by the entry deadline, or entries that arrived damaged or unlabled. No refunds will be given for disqualified entries or entries not received. Packaging will not be returned.
• JUDGING: This competition is judged using the 2021 BJCP guidelines. Judges will evaluate and score each entry. The average of the scores will rank each entry in its category. Each flight will have at least one BJCP judge and all judges will have sensory training. Local judges employed by a brewery will be assigned to categories outside of any categories in which they submitted an entry.
• AWARD CATEGORIES: The competition committee reserves the right to combine overall style categories based on the number of entries. All possible efforts will be made to combine similar styles. All entries in combined categories will be judged according to the style they were originally entered in. You can see how we combined all submitted BJCP subcategories into 23 Award Categories for last year's competition on this document (this is only intended as reference and does not represent how the categories will be sorted this year).
• BEST IN SHOW: The Best of Show selection will be determined by a highly experienced panel of judges for each of the gold medal winning entries of each competition category.

Entry Acceptance Rules

Number of Bottles Required Per Entry: 3

Each entry may consist of capped/corked bottles, 12/16oz cans, or crowlers. Vessels can be branded; judges do not see the submitted vessels. We will require the following number of vessels per container type. Additional submissions will not be accepted.

• 12/16oz cans or bottles: Submit 3 per entry
• Crowlers/Bottles(750ml): Submit 2 per entry
• NO GROWLERS

All required paperwork (labels) must be submitted with each entry and can be printed directly from this website. Directions can be found at the top of this page and will be sent to all entrants. Labels must be attached to entries with clear packing tape. 

Be meticulous about noting any special ingredients that must be specified. Failure to note such ingredients may impact the judges' scoring of your entry.

Entries not registered or labeled, entries shipped to location, and entries dropped off outside official windows will be disqualified and removed from the competition.

Competition Official

You can send an email to any of the following individuals via Contact.

• Jess Talley — Competition Coordinator