Sorry, I didn't think to take any photos. There were three sessions on Saturday, at 9:30 am, 1 pm and 3:30 pm. I judged stouts at the first session, Belgian and French ales at the second, and American ales at the third. The judging was setup at two long tables and you were paired with the person across from you. At the first session, I believe everyone was judging stouts, and the beers came out in order of the subcategories, so that meant that we didn't do many beers in the same subcategory. For example, with the stouts, if my memory is correct, we judged one dry stout, one sweet stout, one oatmeal stout, two foreign extra stouts, one American stout, and two Russian Imperial Stouts.
I'm still thinking that through a little; I understand that we should be judging each beer on its own merits, not comparing it to the other beers we're judging, but judging three sweet stouts in a row helps, I think, get the palate and mind calibrated for the style. In any case, the competition worked very efficiently, from my where I sat.
I was a little surprised at the quality of the beers. I judged at least 25 beers that day (too much, for me), and really only three beers jumped out at me as very good. And there were many beers that were less than good, mediocre I would say. There were only two that were bad. In my experience judging at other competitions this winter, there seem to be a lot of beers that are good (roughly in the 30s) but not so many that are mediocre (roughly in the 20s). I found myself giving a lot of 23-28s at this competition, though. Maybe this is just a matter of the size of the competition and the huge number of entries.
Finally, for me, three judging sessions in a day isn't good, I do better work judging two flights in a day. At least that's my self-assessment.
