THE MEAD COMPETITION OF THE GODS
The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul is the Valhalla of Mead Making in America. This competition will determine who is worthy of Valhalla. Come join our horde.
Valkyries Horn competition strives to provide entrants with the highest level of judging and feedback using experienced and high-quality judges. This premier competition is run by mead makers for mead makers. We will provide a very high level of judging for your meads, including some of the best home and commercial mead makers in the world. However, we cannot do this alone. We would encourage you to volunteer for what we know will be a very exciting event.
Key Dates
- July 9th: Registration opens at noon
- August 20th : Entries must be received at Northern Brewer by 3:00pm NOTE: Will we allow for local drop off? If so, we may need to ensure they are dropped off at Midwest etc. earlier.
- Due to the ongoing uncertainty the competition will be judged by experienced mead judges over a 3 week period to give ample time to the judge ensure all entries are judged, yet provides flexibility to all involved.
- September 18th: The Mini – BOS, BOS and in person awards ceremony will be held on September 18th at Northern Brewer Warehouse at 2221 MN-36, Roseville, MN 55113 . Fully Vaccinated people will be welcome to attend the awards ceremony. Details on exact timing on the awards ceremony will follow.
Special Category
Mead is the hottest new health beverage…right?! Our special category for 2021 will be “Healthy Hydromels”!
Entries in this category will have an abv of less than 7.5% and have at least one ingredient with purported health benefits. We encourage you to be creative here, we are not looking for dozens of lemon zest meads “because lemons are good for you, man!!!” Think outside the box and mix up some “Healthy Hydromels” that can help add some years (or maybe just seconds) to our judges’ lives. Any illegal or dangerous ingredients will result in an entry’s disqualification.
Other Volunteer Info
Please look at the volunteer page for additional details. Register on this site to stay up to date and get notifications.
Entry limit: 500 total entries
Limit of 10 entries per participant with no limit on subcategory.
Judging: What to expect
3 bottles per entry: To limit bottle requirements, we will be using two bottles per judging group (1 per judge). 1 bottle will be judged by a different group of judges for mini BOS and BOS will quickly follow by a very knowledgeable celebrity judge.
Judging may be done remotely or in person depending on the assigned judging pairs preference.
We will combine and split categories to ensure mead flights are manageable by judges.
Judges will complete their flights for a given category on the same day and will decide what mead gets pushed to Mini BOS.
We will limit judging to no more than 2 flights per day.
BOS show judging will be done by a very experienced celebrity judge.
You will receive a copy of the judging scoresheet from both judges assigned to the flight.
Prizes: We are happy to announce we will have prizes in 2021!
Judging expectations:
Valkyries Horn expects that if you sign up to judge you will have a computer and acceptable internet access to enable remote/virtual judging if needed.
We expect that you will work with your other assigned judge to set up a time to judge the assigned entries within the time frame allotted, and will ensure that judging is done simultaneously.
Judges must be available to pickup entries from the Northern Brewer warehouse location.
One person may pick up and transport entries for multiple judges in out-of-town areas, as long as the entries are driven and not shipped via air.