2011 Boneyard Brewoff

Did anyone attend the BUZZ brewoff on Saturday? Any news on results or when they will get posted? I tried contacting them for the last couple of weeks to see if they would make a twitter stream during the awards part to post winners, but it seems this club is more concerned with hanging out and having an after party than truly performing a service to the people who entered.



*********Personal Rant*****
How hard is is seriously, for clubs to create a twitter account or facebook account for their respective competitions to be able to live post winners during the awards ceremony? All you need is one club volunteer with a phone or a computer to type them onto a twitter feed as they are announced during the medal ceremony. Every time I email a competition organizer about this, they never seem to respond. Is this idea just completely out of line? Think about how fun it would be if your club entered a bunch of beers in a competition in another state, and then got together on the day of the competition with a computer and watched the twitter feed come through during the awards ceremony. I have made it my personal crusade to try to get more competitions to post live results. Technology today makes it so simple that it is crazy that more are not already doing it.

After perusing the BUZZ forum on their website, it seems that there was all kinds of chatter about the afterparty, but nothing about how the contest was going to happen or how results were going to get posted. The club is making a ton of money on events like these, maybe they should consider all the people who entered and paid that money. There are a bunch of threads on HBT from years past about this competition also, so it seems to be a recurring theme.


Sorry for the rant, but I get annoyed by lack of motivation to make these competitions as good as they can possibly be. Real time results are super easy and it drives me nuts that they never even bother to look into it.

Thought I would chime in here. I too would like to get the results; however, I do understand the importance of a good party, as well as what those party's can do to a person the day after...

Inquiring minds want to know - who were the winners?

Please

they have a forum on their website ......... all someone has to do is create a 2011 results thread ....... would take 5-10 minutes.

I heard that they were super slow last year (and read the thread here on HBT about this) to post results. I entered anyway giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't really get why this is difficult with the technology available ..........

I don't even need real time results but I don't see why results shouldn't be posted the night of the comp of the next morning at least.

SamuraiSquirrel said:

they have a forum on their website ......... all someone has to do is create a 2011 results thread ....... would take 5-10 minutes.

I heard that they were super slow last year (and read the thread here on HBT about this) to post results. I entered anyway giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't really get why this is difficult with the technology available ..........

I don't even need real time results but I don't see why results shouldn't be posted the night of the comp of the next morning at least.

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Yeah, they're really slow. It was late Tuesday night last year before they posted results. It was a month before score sheets/medals went out. I appreciate the time it must take to hold a competition, but should it really take days to post a text file on the web site? No excuse to not have results posted the next day. It's freaking 2011.

If they're as slow this year as they were last year, it'll be my last entry in that competition. Ridiculous.

MachineShopBrewing said:

*********Personal Rant*****
How hard is is seriously, for clubs to create a twitter account or facebook account for their respective competitions to be able to live post winners during the awards ceremony? All you need is one club volunteer with a phone or a computer to type them onto a twitter feed as they are announced during the medal ceremony. Every time I email a competition organizer about this, they never seem to respond. Is this idea just completely out of line?

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No, it's not out of line at all. There was a pretty big competition last year that did this on Facebook (Schooner?) and it was fun following the results in quasi real time.

No, it's not out of line at all. There was a pretty big competition last year that did this on Facebook (Schooner?) and it was fun following the results in quasi real time.

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Yeah, I remember that one. I had three medal out of four at that one last year. They spread the judging over a couple weeks and at least posted who were the winners from each group. UMMO this year did a real-time blog feed during the awards ceremony this year. That was really cool to sit at home and follow along. I didn't have any beers in that one this year, but had some friends who did.

I did email the organizer for the Midwest Homebrewer of the Year circuit of which the BUZZ comp is part of. I asked them to nudge the comps that are on their circuit to move toward real-time results via twitter or the like. I have yet to hear back from Pat.


Fairness in conversation, Joshi from BUZZ did reply at first and said they were short on judges due to the Longshot being in Chicago. But, I emailed him back and said it doesn't have to be a judge posting the results to twitter, anyone with a cell phone can do it. I never received a response after that. I'm not even sure they had an awards ceremony. There was nothing posted about it at all on the site. Only that judging would start at 9:00 am on Sat. I'm sure they like the money that the competition brings in, but they need to do a better job of making the competition better.

I realize not all competitions are big enough to warrant the extra work, but being on the MWHBOY circuit should hold them to a higher standard. I would like to see the following from competitions in the near future.

1. Real-time results via twitter/facebook/ etc...
2. Post result sheet on website the next day at the latest
3. Scoresheets and medals mailed out within one week.


Seriously people, that is only about 10 minutes worth of planning ahead to accomplish those three items. If you want to hold a competition and like the money that it brings into the club, then you should be doing a better job of planning for these things. It really isn't that hard to do. If you feel like it is too much work to do, then don't bother having the competition. Yes, competitions are a lot of work, if you aren't up to it, then cancel it next year!




EDIT: http://www.buzzbrewclub.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=243&p=942#p942 Just saw this post on the club website. I registered as a forum member last week, so I will try to reply and share my thoughts.

Technology did allow them to get this posted up already though


http://www.buzzbrewclub.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=244:drunk:

Sorry, we literally had our hands full just keeping the competition going this year, let alone adding new technology to it, maybe next year.

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I just got this response from Anthony on the forum in regards to this post that I put up:

I had emailed last week to see if you guys would open a twitter account to post results real-time during the awards ceremony. This has been a personal crusade of mine to get competitions to start doing this. It is super easy, free, and is really nice for those of us who don't live close enough to attend the festivities. Our club had a few entries and we would have liked to get together during your awards ceremony and watched the results come through like we were actually there. Technology in 2011 makes this very easy to do, all it takes is a club member with a cell phone and access to a club twitter account. UMMO did something similar this year via a blog feed. As the winners were announced, someone posted it to the feed for each award.


Thank you for your concern regarding this request.

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Yeah, I saw their forum posting that they were short on judges. Still, it's over and it would only take a few moments to post a text file showing the winners. Do they really need a couple of days for a "breather" before tackling this monumental 5 minute task? They say they had a record number of entries. That means that there's a record number of people waiting to hear the results. It's absurd that they can't find 5 minutes to upload a list of winners. This is the 17th year of this competition.

Yeah, I saw their forum posting that they were short on judges. Still, it's over and it would only take a few moments to post a text file showing the winners. Do they really need a couple of days for a "breather" before tackling this monumental 5 minute task? They say they had a record number of entries. That means that there's a record number of people waiting to hear the results. It's absurd that they can't find 5 minutes to upload a list of winners. This is the 17th year of this competition.

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I couldn't have said it better myself. I am really trying to be nice when talking to the organizers of these events, but it is difficult when there isn't a certain standard that they feel they should hold themselves to as organizers of a rather large competition. Maybe they need to drop out of the MWHBOY if they can't handle the extra volume.

Anyone know how many entries there were? Doesn't say on the site. Just wondering

Over 250 I guess.

I had the following email exchange with the judging organizer last week:

Joshi,

I tried emailing Marco about this question last week but have not received a response yet. I would like to know if you guys are planning on posting results during the awards ceremony via twitter or facebook? A lot of other competitions have started doing this by posting them real time as the awards are announced. This is really nice for those of us who entered, but do not live close enough to attend. It makes everyone feel like they are more a part of the competition rather than waiting a couple days for results to be posted on the website. Posting the results real-time via twitter is free and super easy to do. Someone could do it from a cell phone even. It is nice to grab a beer and park in front of the computer for a little while to watch the results come through.

Thank you for your consideration, and could you please forward this to whomever is in charge of making these decisions.

Regards,

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Matt,

We have discussed it and hope to be able to do something like that. However our problem with this particular event is that we have about 250 entries and only 16 judges. The Sam Adams Longshot has stolen many of the judges that normally come from the Chicago area to help us with our event. So we are fairly strapped. We are also trying to coordinate scanning score sheets into pdf format and having them ready very soon after the competition instead of having to wait for the mail. We have great intentions, just modest man-power. We've even had to begin judging some flights last night! We'll be continuing through Saturday. We can't post any preliminary results though, as it could impact the Best of Show judging.

Regards and best of luck to you.
Joshi

Sent from my TRS-80

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Joshi,


You guys are having an awards ceremony on Saturday, right? Is it possible to have a club member volunteer to set up a twitter account for the Brew-off and post awards as they are announced during the ceremony? That is what I was wondering. It wouldn't have to be a judge, just someone in the club who wouldn't mind doing this for those of us who can't make it. Our club(BYOB) has a few entries and we were maybe going to get together and hang out to watch the results come through if you guys were posting them to twitter or facebook. You guys would be able to use the twitter account then in the future to put out any information regarding the contest that you would need to. UMMO did this to a streaming blog this year and it was really cool to watch the results come through as they were announced at the awards ceremony.

Thanks and good luck,

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To which I did not receive a response.

After further digging, they already have a facebook page although it doesn't look like anyone uses it. I thought this club was a bunch of college members and no facebook users?

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boneyard-Union-of-Zymurgical-Zealots/205629306245

I dunno, I'm not trying to rip on the competition or organizers in any way. I hope I don't come off that way.

I just want to know if my entries won any hardware (or software - not sure if they did ribbons or medals) or not lol.

How many sets of results have you live tweeted?

I try not to criticize a competition unless something egregious happened, or I volunteered (at least at the judging level).

How many sets of results have you live tweeted?

I try not to criticize a competition unless something egregious happened, or I volunteered (at least at the judging level).

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Doesn't matter. Heading off to an after party before taking 5 minutes to post a text file of the results to the club website is unacceptable to me. Like was stated before, this isn't their first rodeo. Most of these competitions have been around for years. They have all year to plan on how they are going to post results. Putting more thought into the after party than was put into getting results online in a timely manner is not becoming of a respected competition. I mean, the judging is all done, there must be a list of winners somewhere. Why is there a need for a "breather" before posting results? If they can't handle the amount of work required for a competition of this size, then they should limit entries or cancel it completely. I apologize for being direct, but come on people, get a little more organized. Someone could have typed everything up during the best of show judging and had it posted a few minutes after the winner was picked.


I hate the old line "Have you ever done it...." The answer is no, I haven't had to organize a competition. Our club could not handle the amount of work required to organize something like that. I'm not disputing that it is a ton of work, but like they say, if you can't pee on the tall bushes....

MachineShopBrewing said:

Doesn't matter. Heading off to an after party before taking 5 minutes to post a text file of the results to the club website is unacceptable to me. Like was stated before, this isn't their first rodeo. Most of these competitions have been around for years. They have all year to plan on how they are going to post results. Putting more thought into the after party than was put into getting results online in a timely manner is not becoming of a respected competition. I mean, the judging is all done, there must be a list of winners somewhere. Why is there a need for a "breather" before posting results? If they can't handle the amount of work required for a competition of this size, then they should limit entries or cancel it completely. I apologize for being direct, but come on people, get a little more organized. Someone could have typed everything up during the best of show judging and had it posted a few minutes after the winner was picked.


I hate the old line "Have you ever done it...." The answer is no, I haven't had to organize a competition. Our club could not handle the amount of work required to organize something like that. I'm not disputing that it is a ton of work, but like they say, if you can't pee on the tall bushes....

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The reason they don't post them before the party is that they are read first to the people attending the awards ceremony. The reason they don't post them after is they want to clean up and go home as they have likely done many hours of work in the past day.

Next year go down with your cell phone and tweet for them. I doubt they would turn you down. That's all that is missing, a volunteer.

remilard said:

The reason they don't post them before the party is that they are read first to the people attending the awards ceremony. The reason they don't post them after is they want to clean up and go home as they have likely done many hours of work in the past day.

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When is the awards ceremony? Before the party? At the party? What about yesterday? No one could find a few minutes to post them yesterday? How about today? Will they be posted today?

They are getting grief because it is like this every year with this competition. There are threads each of the last two years with people wondering (days after the event) where the results are. That might have been the norm when Boneyard #1 was happening, but this is 2011. People are fine waiting for snail mail score sheets. That's a lot of work. Posting a page to an internet web site is not. They must realize that their "record number of entrants" are interested in the results.

The reason they don't post them before the party is that they are read first to the people attending the awards ceremony. The reason they don't post them after is they want to clean up and go home as they have likely done many hours of work in the past day.

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Part of hosting a competition is posting the results. Maybe ten years ago when most entries were just local, they could wait with posting them. Nowadays there are many, many people entering comps from out of state who deserve to know what the results were the day of the competition. I don't understand why they feel like they can just post them whenever they happen to get around to it. It is a critical part of the competition that should be accounted for and organized ahead of time as to who is going to post it immediately after or during the awards ceremony. I'm sure someone had a laptop there to log the information, and they have a forum built right into their site they could have posted it in. Seriously, it would take 5 minutes. I don't buy the excuses that you speak of. If they can't get organized enough to post results right away, then don't have the competition next year. I'm sure the club budget would take a hit though.

I try not to criticize a competition unless something egregious happened, or I volunteered

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That logic doesn't make any sense at all. That would mean that you never complain about a product that you bought if it fails to work how you would like because you were not part of the design and production of that product and can't possibly know what it is like to design something. Or, you never criticize a restaurant for poor service or bad food, because you didn't cook it or serve it. They are performing a service by hosting a competition, and in return they are getting a lot of money for their club budget. By paying money for the service, I feel that I am by no means out of line in asking for results being posted before the "after party" begins. Its not really after anyway because posting results IS part of the duties of holding a competition.

Next year go down with your cell phone and tweet for them. I doubt they would turn you down. That's all that is missing, a volunteer

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Tweeting would just be a bonus. At this point, I would at least like to see results posted at all. The judging is done, they have to have a list of winners typed up somewhere or how else would they give out awards? How long would that take for one of them to copy and paste the text into their forum? Seriously?

Here's a link to the AHA forum (a bragging thread). You can at least figure out if you won BOS or runner up BOS.

I found it by googling 2011 boneyard results lol. I thought maybe someone possibly postsed results off the BUZZ site somewhere. I didn't win BOS or runner up but still have hopes for something placing lol

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=7824.0

Well, none of those are mine. But on the bright side none of those were in categories that I entered, so I still have undamaged category medal hopes.

Thanks for the link.

I'm still clean on my entries too. I entered the same beer under IPA and IIPA. We had 8 categories covered from our club too.

MachineShopBrewing said:

I'm still clean on my entries too. I entered the same beer under IPA and IIPA. We had 8 categories covered from our club too.

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Our club won six medals there last year, and well, four of them were mine.

This year I was the only one from our club who entered. The rest were too irritated by the last two years to enter again. It's not just the immediate results, but the score sheets didn't go out for a month.

Btw, we had two or three guys from our club judging in the Longshot last weekend. Said it was pretty cool.

This year I was the only one from our club who entered. The rest were too irritated by the last two years to enter again. It's not just the immediate results, but the score sheets didn't go out for a month.

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Yeah, it really sucks for our club. I have been entering comps for a while, but the rest of the guys are new to competition brewing. I hate for this to be a bad experience right out of the gate. I am sure the guys will be excited to get their scoresheets back. If BUZZ drags this on for a month without getting scoresheets out, like last year, then I am going to try to petition the organizer for the MWHBOY to drop their competition from the circuit. I think MWHBOY comps should be held to a higher standard in this regard due to the fact that many of the entries are going to come from out of state and these brewers need to get that feedback to brew for the next competition on the circuit.

MachineShopBrewing said:

Yeah, it really sucks for our club. I have been entering comps for a while, but the rest of the guys are new to competition brewing. I hate for this to be a bad experience right out of the gate. I am sure the guys will be excited to get their scoresheets back. If BUZZ drags this on for a month without getting scoresheets out, like last year, then I am going to try to petition the organizer for the MWHBOY to drop their competition from the circuit. I think MWHBOY comps should be held to a higher standard in this regard due to the fact that many of the entries are going to come from out of state and these brewers need to get that feedback to brew for the next competition on the circuit.

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To be fair, I don't think it's a bad competition. They're just slow. I know that many in our club have entered Buzz before in order to get feedback before the Indiana State Fair Brewers Cup, which is early July. Last year Buzz didn't get the sheets back before the State Fair entries were due at the end of June. So many were sort of peeved since they were counting on feedback to help them decide what beers to send to State Fair.

Whatever. They'll post results eventually, I suppose. My beers weren't all that this year so I'm probably a loser anyway.

To be fair, I don't think it's a bad competition. They're just slow. I know that many in our club have entered Buzz before in order to get feedback before the Indiana State Fair Brewers Cup, which is early July. Last year Buzz didn't get the sheets back before the State Fair entries were due at the end of June. So many were sort of peeved since they were counting on feedback to help them decide what beers to send to State Fair.

Whatever. They'll post results eventually, I suppose. My beers weren't all that this year so I'm probably a loser anyway.

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I am sure the judging and feedback are great. It just makes me mad at the lack of organization/motivation to finish the job. They should have had a plan in place to accomplish all these tasks, rather than having to take a "breather" and maybe get around to it in the next few days.

I started this thread talking about trying to get results posted real-time, but it has morphed into getting ANY results in a reasonable time, due to it now being two full days since judging ended. I do applaud Anthony from BUZZ as he seems to be trying to stay out front and has been saying that he sure hopes the organizer will get those results up soon.

MachineShopBrewing said:

I am sure the judging and feedback are great.

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I hope that's the case this year. Sounds like the judge pool was severely depleted by the Longshot competition. Oh well. If I'm a loser (as I suspect that I will be) I can always blame it on sketchy judging, right?

I hope that's the case this year. Sounds like the judge pool was severely depleted by the Longshot competition. Oh well. If I'm a loser (as I suspect that I will be) I can always blame it on sketchy judging, right?

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I'll go with that one too. I kind of entered on a whim at the last minute with an IPA that kind of straddled the line between IPA and IIPA so I entered it in both. Both can be tough categories.

MachineShopBrewing said:

I'll go with that one too. I kind of entered on a whim at the last minute with an IPA that kind of straddled the line between IPA and IIPA so I entered it in both. Both can be tough categories.

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As long as they don't end up combined categories. 250 entries is kind of on the border for comp size where categories start getting collapsed. If there's going to be plenty for anything though it's probably going to be the IPA category.

Still nothing as far as results go...... I was hoping they'd be trying to improve on last year's Tuesday turnaround.

Not looking promising lol

Still nothing as far as results go...... I was hoping they'd be trying to improve on last year's Tuesday turnaround.

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I am hoping they have something posted by tomorrow. We have a club meeting tomorrow and it would be nice to know if anyone placed before then.

Results are up by the way. Both of my entries medalled. Rock on!

Nice, a couple guys from our club took medals! One gold, one silver, and one bronze.

Thanks for the heads up. I went 2 for 3, silver with a Traditional Bock and silver with a Foreign Extra Stout.

3rd Place on my Scotch ale, 2nd Place on my Bitter, and 1st place on my German Rye beer!!!!!