First Competition Results: Discouraged

Dont forget that the judges are basing your beer on how true to style it is, not necessarily on how tasty it is in general.

Matt Up North said:

I also think that people look for flaws. I served someone a beer of mine and he said he could taste the water softening salts. That is complete and utter BS on so many levels. Yet he couldn't taste the diacetyl in his own beer.

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The thing is, people can taste different things. Its very possible that he can't taste diacetyl AT ALL, and you can't taste something hes picking up in your beer.

Synovia said:

The thing is, people can taste different things. Its very possible that he can't taste diacetyl AT ALL, and you can't taste something hes picking up in your beer.

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Truth. A guy that sat next to me in Siebel really had a hard time with diacetyl, and a few others could not pick up acetaldehyde. Not everyone can detect everything.

My first competition I was dusting off my mantle to make room for all the trophies I was going to win.

Best score I got was a 29...out of 9 entries.

Just about made me give up homebrewing. Instead, I took the judges scoresheets and did a tasting of my entries I had stashed. Turns out...they were right.

Instead of trying to figure out why the judges are wrong about your beer...assume for a moment they are right and go back to work to improve your product.

My next competition a few months later I entered four beers (four of the same styles I'd bombed out in earlier.) I took a 1st and two 2nds.

Don't despair. It is inevitable what happens to a first time competitor.

Good graph. The five beers I'm dropping off for comp today are really just things I had laying around and I don't have high expectations for. I'm guessing 33-35s for most of them, maybe a bit higher on the barleywine. That said, if they all come back as lower, I won't care. I know my stuff well enough to know what's a great beer and what's a good beer.

That said, after tasting a bunch of homebrewed beer at a popularity contest type event, I havve no problems thinking I make pretty damn good beer. But it has taken a lot of patience and practice to get to that point.

BierMuncher said:

My first competition I was dusting off my mantle to make room for all the trophies I was going to win.

Best score I got was a 29...out of 9 entries.

Just about made me give up homebrewing. Instead, I took the judges scoresheets and did a tasting of my entries I had stashed. Turns out...they were right.

Instead of trying to figure out why the judges are wrong about your beer...assume for a moment they are right and go back to work to improve your product.

My next competition a few months later I entered four beers (four of the same styles I'd bombed out in earlier.) I took a 1st and two 2nds.

Don't despair. It is inevitable what happens to a first time competitor.

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I didn't really say the judges were wrong about my beer. And I certainly didn't think I would score in the 40's!! I was just surprised that a Sweet Stout with 1.25 pounds of Lactose in it, had a comment that I should try using lactose in it next time. I think I have a decent palate and it's pretty hard to miss the lactose in this beer.

I wasn't expecting medals and if you read all of my posts in this thread, I'm more disappointed about the credentials (or lack of) than I am the feedback.

To me, it just makes the feedback less valuable. If it were from BJCP judges, I would take more stock in what was being said. Now I have this feedback and I'm not sure if I should try to change some things based on it or not.

Heart of the Valley runs one of the oldest (maybe the oldest) homebrew competition in the USA. We strive to have one BJCP judge on each flight. Not easy when you're looking at 300+ beers. Everyone who judges is required to completely fill out each form and stick to the style guide.

As far as your beers, with 80% of homebrewers being hopheads, an English IPA is risky. Too many people expect the enamel-removing properties and grapefruit juice aroma of a Left-coast IPA. If they had been following the guide, I think you would have done better. Sweetness is very subjective, the ability to taste lactose varies by a factor of ten from one person to another. Yooper has commented on how she finds it nasty sweet, I can barely taste it.

BK makes a good point, if the scores are all over the place, the judges probably didn't discuss their impressions. My first judging, I scored a beer very highly. When we went over the guide, I knocked 20 points off. Great Mild, but not a Bitter.

All of you bring up excellent points. Everyone tastes a little differently. That is why there are at least three judges for each category. Most times five, if the organizer can get the judges.

As far as rank of judges, remember these are all volunteers. Some have to travel pretty far to participate in judging. They are there to give back to you. Take their feedback in the spirit in which it was intended. to help you, to the best of their knowledge, to become a better brewer.

If you want more experienced judges to give you feedback, try entering a regional or national competition in a larger city. Chances are there will be a greater pool of judges to be drawn upon.

Judges do need to be within 6 points in their spread. If there is a great difference in points, the beer is discussed and points changed. It is in this regard that the lead judge is a great help in assisting the other judges. I have also had my mind changed by another judge pointing out a flaw that my palette was not as sensitive to.

Judging beer is hard work. You have to put aside the enjoyment you get from consuming your favorite beverage to picking everything about it apart. After a weekend of judging, I just want to sit down and ENJOY without worrying about if the hop chosen is appropriate to style or if the phenolic taste is from iodophor or chlorophenol.

Lodovico said:

To me, it just makes the feedback less valuable. If it were from BJCP judges, I would take more stock in what was being said. Now I have this feedback and I'm not sure if I should try to change some things based on it or not.

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I think you're making a mistake here. Sure, not all feedback is perfect, but just because someone has passed a test doesn't mean they're better tasters. You seem to be pointing out an issue that you can use as justification for your scores not being as high as you hoped. It is an ego check for sure, but don't dismiss it entirely.

First of all, not being BJCP certified/recognized etc. doesn't mean that your comments are invalid. Nor does having a certification make you infallible

I've stewarded at competitions before and have entered my beers to be judged. My experience followed almost exactly the graphs above. I started out thinking my beers were the best, was devastated by the judge's scores, and got really down on the hobby. But I read the scores, I looked at what they said and what the score sheets actually said. I didn't agree with everything, but I took it and worked with it and concentrated on making changes to my process to make better beers.

Since first competition my average beer score has gone up in every competition thanks to the constructive criticism of BJCP judges and layperson judges alike.

Also, after my first crushing defeat, my SWMBO pointed out that, according to the sheet a 24-26 score is actually pretty good. Scores in the 40-50 range verge on perfection and flawlessness. Do you really think that you brew flawless perfection? That your beers are the next best thing to ambrosia or the elixir of the gods? I don't think mine are that good. If they were I might as well hang up my hydrometer because there would be no room for improvement.

I've also sat there and listened to the judges discuss beers. I know how much thought and effort goes into each beer. They don't just sip the beers and arrange them from best tasting to worst. They dissect each beer for even miniscule off flavors and look for tiny flaws and variations from the style. The results can be very different from simply which beer tastes the best. As one judge put it, you can enter the worlds best pilsner in the stout competition and still lose to the world's worst stout. Because they are judging to style.

And pointing out your beer's flaws is the only way that you are going to make your beer better. At a recent competition, the Best In Show received about 40/50 points and the judges still tried to point out some areas of the beer that the brewer could work on to make it even better. 24-25 points suddenly doesn't sound that bad does it?

If you want to win medals and awards, you should concentrate on brewing beers that not many other people brew. Brew sour beers, or spiced beers, or smoked beers. If you brew an average sour beer, in a category with only three entrants, you are probably going to place. In a category like IPA or Stout or Porter, where a competition could get as many as 40-50 entrants... well, with competition that fierce the judges have to be particularly aggressive in their judging and your beer has to truly be as close to flawless as it can be to win.

Just my opinion though.

I think the best advice you've gotten is to enter larger competitions. Harder to win, but better judging in general.

The best judging (in terms of nearly everyone being a BJCP member) will be at AHA club only competitions, 2nd Round NHC and MCAB. You generally have to earn your way into these, but the quality of judging is consistently high.

I can't recommend a particular competition in the NE but the competitions that qualify for MCAB are all excellent, so that would be a good place to start.

And I guess you have to learn how to parse the judges comments. If they say your sweet stout has no process flaws but just isn't sweet enough, maybe you really like the level of sweetness yours has and so you can consider that positive feedback and choose not to go sweeter. On the other hand, if you want to brew to compete and you get similar feedback on that same stout in other competitions, you know exactly what to do.

ETA: I just got sheets back from the Upper Mississippi Mashout, which is a very big and very good comp. 14 score sheets, 3 are BJCP Grand Master or higher. Almost all of the flights had a National or higher judge on them. All of the score sheets, even the non-BJCP judge score sheets, were good or very good (in terms of helpful feedback and descriptions) which likely reflects the value of pairing the less experienced judges with more experienced judges.

And I got some celeia hops as a prize which is weird because I had never heard of them until yesterday when I had a beer at Free State Brewery made with them.

carnevoodoo said:

I think you're making a mistake here. Sure, not all feedback is perfect, but just because someone has passed a test doesn't mean they're better tasters. You seem to be pointing out an issue that you can use as justification for your scores not being as high as you hoped. It is an ego check for sure, but don't dismiss it entirely.

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I'm sorry, but no I think you are missing my point. I'm not using the lack of BJCP judges to justify my scores. I just said a couple of posts ago that had they been BJCP judges, maybe I would have scored even LOWER.

My point is that I don't know how much stock to put into the suggestions and feedback on these beers because I don't know how qualified these judges were.

Does that make sense? I realize that there are judges that are not BJCP certified that can contribute valuable feedback but that doesn't help me if I don't know if these were quality judges.

I know others here are differing on this but I still feel that if they were BJCP certified, I would at least feel like it is solid, quality feedback versus knowing absolutely nothing about the level of experience of the judge.

So honestly, it's not an ego check thing. It's not like these came back rated Problematic or Fair, they scored Good.

I have already learned one lesson that was consistent among folks. Hop aroma needs to be jacked up for competitions.

Well, I still think that rank means very little, and you're putting a lot of emphasis on a system that comes down to a set of judgement calls. I really don't think they're just pulling people off the street to judge beer. These will all be people that are really interested in beer, so you'll have a lot of people who know what they're doing. Taking a test doesn't make someone better.

carnevoodoo said:

Well, I still think that rank means very little, and you're putting a lot of emphasis on a system that comes down to a set of judgement calls. I really don't think they're just pulling people off the street to judge beer. These will all be people that are really interested in beer, so you'll have a lot of people who know what they're doing. Taking a test doesn't make someone better.

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I think thats the problem though, atleast with a BJCP judge, you know that they're aware that they're supposed to be judging to style, etc. Some random Competition may just be pulling guys from the local home brew club to judge, and they may not know exactly what they're trying to do, or what they're looking for.

NYCHomebrewer said:

Also, after my first crushing defeat, my SWMBO pointed out that, according to the sheet a 24-26 score is actually pretty good. Scores in the 40-50 range verge on perfection and flawlessness.

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That was going to be my point. When I judged a county fair BJCP comp last summer, the highest score I gave was a 41, and most scores were in the mid 20's- low 30s. That is actually a good score. A 27 score is considered a "very good" beer. There were more than a few beers that got under 19 due to major flaws, but I'm sure the brewer didn't like those scores.

I've received only a couple of 40-45 scores, and those were for my absolute best beers. I've received far more 30-39 scores. One of my favorite beers got a 27! (And I still love that beer, but really it's out of style).

I've had comments like "would be a world-class beer if it was dryhopped" on a beer that had three ounces of dryhopping. Well, I guess they wanted more of a hops nose than they got. Maybe the hops faded some, or maybe I was last in the flight and their palates were tired. Either way, I took the comments and decided that I liked the beer even with a "meh" score.

As David_42 pointed out, some of us are able to taste things that others can't. I can taste lactose a mile away, and I can taste diacetyl in a very small amount. Some people can't taste diacetyl at all, or only if it's a butterscotch bomb. If the scores are close, that means the judges did come to an agreement on the score. The comment "needs lactose" might just mean that the sweet stout wasn't as sweet as expected. That could be related to the recipe, or the attenuation level of that beer.

It is worth it to point out that there really aren't that many BJCP certified or even recognized judges out there. I think you can consider yourself lucky if your beer is judged by at least two judges, and one of them is recognized or certified.

I think where that certification is important and really shines is in being able to recognize and differentiate the various faults. Before my first competition I had read lots of different terms like diacetyl, ester, acetaldehyde, DMS, phenols etc. I even thought I knew what they meant. It wasn't until I sat down and tasted a beer with someone who had real experience that I learned how to differentiate a phenol from an ester etc. Even so, with my experience I will probably miss some of those in a complex beer.

At my most recent competition, the system was set up as much to give the new judges and stewards experience as it was to give feedback to the entrants. The two or more judges would sit down and taste the beer individually, write down their thoughts and comments and scores, and then discuss and reconcile their scores. If one person thought the beer was way better or worse than the other, they needed to sort of walk the other judge through their reasoning. The end result wasn't just an average of the two initial scores but, rather, a sort of arrived at score. Sometimes it resulted in the less experienced judge raising or lowering their scores a little or the more experienced judge discovering something new on his or her palate that the less experienced judge had caught and adjusting their score accordingly.

At the local level then, I would expect a lot of inexperienced judges. But I think even with their inexperience, they tend to arrive at the right conclusions and give good feedback. And, after all, no one is born a judge. We need inexperienced judges judging beer so they can become experienced judges. As you get to more exclusive contests, say contests where all the entrants are already winners of regional contests, you are going to find almost all the judges are experienced and BJCP certified.

What I would take from a judge telling me that I should use lactose (when I had already used lactose) would be that, at least to that judge, my beer seemed a little out of style for lack of milky sweetness. If I know how much lactose went in, I might consider other ways I could accentuate the sweetness. Maybe mashing a little higher to give the beer more mouthfeel, or using a slightly maltier base malt to back up and support that lactose a little. Maybe a lower carbonation level would lead to a creamier "sweeter" beer.

Carbonation is one thing that a lot of home brewers seem to forget or think they can't address, yet it can have a huge and often detrimental affect on the final product. Too often I think we just toss in our 4-5 oz of dextrose given to us by the LHBS and leave it at that. But some styles should have half that and others almost twice (and thats not even taking into account volume of wort differences and the change of sugar contribution necessary to account for those).

Lots of good points and information here. I'm feeling a little better about this. I guess for a first competition, it's decent. I definitely got crushed on Aroma scoring which should be an easier thing to improve on.

Thanks for all the good advice.

Yeah. Don't get down. Use this as fuel to make the best beer you can. That's all what we really want to do!

Ok, I've already learned something big from this first competition.

* Don't ever go on a homebrew forum and be pissed and questioning feedback and judge credentials until you go home and try the beer that you entered again.

Even from the non-BJCP judges, I feel like the feedback is pretty accurate. When I read the comments as I drink the beer, I can appreciate many of the critiques they are giving.

It's time to tighten things up in the old brew house and examine all aspects of my process. Cheers.

I've just sent my brew off to my first competition. I'm glad to see that there's decent feedback. Without a local homebrew club, my feedback so far has been "Dude...this is good shiz!" from my bros.

hook_dupin said:

I've just sent my brew off to my first competition.

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BFBC? best florida beer championships?

remilard said:

ETA: I just got sheets back from the Upper Mississippi Mashout, which is a very big and very good comp. 14 score sheets, 3 are BJCP Grand Master or higher. Almost all of the flights had a National or higher judge on them. All of the score sheets, even the non-BJCP judge score sheets, were good or very good (in terms of helpful feedback and descriptions) which likely reflects the value of pairing the less experienced judges with more experienced judges.

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I, too, just got my sheets back from the UMMO, and they were fantastic! Even the novice scoresheet you could tell had comments that were thoughtful and possibly even helped by his asking a more experienced judge how he should describe what he's trying to get across. VERY well done sheets, and really helpful. I entered a couple of bottles of EdWort's Apfelwein I had laying around on a lark, and it took the gold medal in Category 28 ... with only a combined score of 35 and in a pool of 14 total entries! Either people are making some crummy Specialty Ciders or the style archetypes are just spectacular...

Ha! I've also medaled with a 35 for EdWort's Apfelwein in decent sized competitions!

I took the test with some clubbies, we studied (drunk) hard for a long time and ALL 4 passed, and I have judged a couple so far, entered many.

Honestly, anyone can judge. Without taking the BJCP test a judge should enter as "novice". If you take the test and fail it, you get an "apprentice" status which OFFICIALLY means you can judge.. but the fact is that sometimes people judge anyway. Its pretty much up to the organizer, who can make a judgement on the person's qualifications.

Most organizers will try to have non-BJCP judges paired with at least one experienced judge.

If you get alot of sheets without any judge info on them, you should write to the organizer or club and complain. Competitions should be run tighter than that. I mean you put alot of work into those beers.. seems lame.

Budzu said:

I took the test with some clubbies, we studied (drunk) hard for a long time and ALL 4 passed, and I have judged a couple so far, entered many.

Honestly, anyone can judge. Without taking the BJCP test a judge should enter as "novice". If you take the test and fail it, you get an "apprentice" status which OFFICIALLY means you can judge.. but the fact is that sometimes people judge anyway. Its pretty much up to the organizer, who can make a judgement on the person's qualifications.

Most organizers will try to have non-BJCP judges paired with at least one experienced judge.

If you get alot of sheets without any judge info on them, you should write to the organizer or club and complain. Competitions should be run tighter than that. I mean you put alot of work into those beers.. seems lame.

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Right. That is still the one point I'm sticking to here. Out of 5 judges, only 1 had any BJCP credentials. The rest had no boxes checked and no information.

But again, I do agree with some of the feedback the "novice" judges gave, so it was still useful but I expected a few more official judges.

I have to agree with some of the other posters, as long as you and your friends are enjoying your beer that's all that matters.

I mean, essentially these judges are the ultimate beer snobs and the majority of their opinions are based on how close your beer is to style.

BlueSunshine said:

I mean, essentially these judges are the ultimate beer snobs

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I am assuming you:

A: Have not heard of beer advocate and
B: Have not met many beer judges

if you would make that claim.

There is something decidedly not snobby about giving a great light american lager a higher score than a pretty good RIS.

Also something decidedly not snobby about giving up a Saturday to fill out 20+ score sheets to help other brewers.

remilard said:

I am assuming you:

A: Have not heard of beer advocate and
B: Have not met many beer judges

if you would make that claim.

There is something decidedly not snobby about giving a great light american lager a higher score than a pretty good RIS.

Also something decidedly not snobby about giving up a Saturday to fill out 20+ score sheets to help other brewers.

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Agree. I judge a lot (not BJCP... someday!) and do my very best. It is true that every beer is judged to the style guidelines, but that is the idea of course. Every single judge I know is a good person with good intentions, as well as a decent homebrewer.

Thought this was a good time to drop a quote from you, remilard. (from a homebrew vs. commercial debate).

remilard said:

Thinking your own beer is great is like not minding the smell of your own farts. Getting other people to purchase your beer is like having the general public not mind the smell of your farts.

I would contend that it is fairly challenging to get others to enjoy your farts.

Everyone on the internet benches 300, makes better beer than any commercial brewery, has well behaved children, etc. Making a salable product is a whole different ball game than convincing yourself that you make a product that would be salable.

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Thinking your own beer is great is like not minding the smell of your own farts. Getting other people to purchase your beer is like having the general public not mind the smell of your farts.

I would contend that it is fairly challenging to get others to enjoy your farts.

Everyone on the internet benches 300, makes better beer than any commercial brewery, has well behaved children, etc. Making a salable product is a whole different ball game than convincing yourself that you make a product that would be salable.

Lol. This is hilarious.

My Extra Stout got an awesome score (43) from a BJCP certified judge, the other had a label but was not certified and gave me a 40, and the last guy just wrote in his name and checked nothing, he gave me a 35 and his comments were way off from the others. Sucks there's not more good certified judges. I feel like a lot of comps you may only get one certified.