On March 13th, on the very day that judging was to start for the National Homebrew Competition (NHC), the American Homebrewers Association cancelled the competition due to the novel coronavirus.

Thus, local homebrew club, the Diablo Order of Zymiracle Enthusiasts (DOZE), which was coordinating the SF Region judging, found itself sitting on hundreds of bottles of beer entered into the competition. What was DOZE to do with them all? Well, they decided to judge all the entries anyway, making this the only region in the country where the entries were actually judged (in most others the beer was reportedly made into hand sanitizer or simply dumped).

Over the course of several months, and working in small physically-distanced groups and over Zoom, the small corps of DOZE’s certified beer judges -with help from judges from The Mad Zymurgists and Bay Area Mashers (BAM) homebrew clubs- worked its way through more than 600 entries in 35 categories covering ales and lagers, meads and ciders.

To cap it all off, they put together an awards presentation and livestreamed it over Facebook!