It will be interesting to see who will be the first major competition to use the new guidelines and how smooth it goes. I'm guessing that NHC2016 will be using the new guidelines then?
yeah we've talked about how the increase in number of categories could be problematic for NHC - assuming your max size is set by the max size of the Final Round, that trickles down to only 8-ish First Round regions if you have 40 categories.
I would hope they use a modified alternate categorization, similar to #2, from page 72, with at least two exceptions: Make Specialty IPA and American Wild Ale their own categories. Going from 23 to 25 beer categories wouldn't be nearly so painful, and those 2 categories will be extremely popular.
(My name is on the front page! "Things are going to start happening to me now!")
