First Homebrew Competition

Been brewing for 2 years now and finally decided to enter my first Homebrew comp this past week, ran by the local radio station. Made it to the finals which were judged by a panel of 4 bjcp judges. I entered an imperial ipa and received the following scores:

39/50
38/50
37/50
32/50

Won third place, which is cool, but was upset with the low 32 score. Many of his comments were contradictory to the other 3. I understand the subjectiveness of these things and am happy with the overall results. I think it was a solid brew and think its cool to actually have intelligent feedback.

Interested in whether these are decent scores, I think its a good beer but obviously am partial. What are your experiences with these competitions?

My experience is about the same as yours- I've scored a 42 and a 22 with the same beer in the same weekend in different contests. You gotta just look at the general trend of comments and disregard the outliers.

Congrats on your beer, though- 37-39 are really quite good scores!

Great scores now cough up the recipe!

Those are good scores. After speaking with some judges a while ago I found that a 40 is almost the highest they give. Above that is reserved for truly wonderful beers in their eyes. Like said above, you have to look at the general consensus. You will get some differing opinions that make you scratch your head, but overall after you enter a beer a few times you will see a trend. Send it in to another competition and see what others say.