competitions and disappointment

[progmac]

I've entered one of my beers into a contest...I and everybody I brew with and anybody who tried it loved it! Got my results from the competition and they said it tasted like cardboard and wet newspaper. I was discouraged and had one bottle left that I was going to age so I tried it...tasted amazing still. I'm going to chalk it up to the fact that I had to mail it to the competition and something got muffed up there. The other thing is the only people who placed in the competition were members of their homebrew club... Lesson learned for me is to forget competitions, I like my beer, my friends like my beer that's all that matters(may still try and enter one more if I can find one around me where I can hand deliver my product)

Having your friends love a beer and having someone with a trained palate love a beer are very, very different.

 

[Ridire]

I entered a beer into the same comp. I've only been brewing since February and my score reflected it (26.5). However, I am geeked to enter another. I learned from my scoresheet that the slight off taste I detected in the beer is most likely caused from my neglecting to neutralize the chlorine in my tap water.

If that's all I learned from the comp, then it was worth sacrificing 2 bottles of homebrew and $14.

I am going to immediately find another comp to enter a nearly identical beer with better water (and other slight tweaks based on the judge's comments). I thought the beer was very good as brewed, by the way, but could tell there was a little something off...chlorine seems to be the culprit.

 

[solavirtus]

I entered 3 beers in the same competition the OP is talking about. It's my first after brewing for over 3 years. Of note, there was a shortage of judges as well. My scoresheets imply the judges' experience was quite variable, from BJCP National and certified to a pro-brewer to a novice. I assume some kind of training was given to the novice judges, but I'm not sure. That also implies the flights were probably on the larger side.

All that being said, feedback on all the beers is really useful for me. Perhaps the actual scores are less important, especially from the non-BJCP judges. Even their qualitative feedback is welcome, though.

 

[jeffjm]

Side note: the cover sheet for each of your entries should say what position in the flight you had - sixth in a flight of nine, for example.

 

[Rhumbline]

I've never entered any contests but the way I understand them is they are judging your beers on how closely they match particular style that they were entered as.

It's not a question of how good the beer tastes, if the style is supposed to have certain characteristics and your beer doesn't match those then you'll get a lower score, regardless of how tasty it is.

So, your beer could be fantastic, but a bit darker than expected, and you'll get dinged.

Good luck in the future.

 

[Ridire]

I've never entered any contests but the way I understand them is they are judging your beers on how closely they match particular style that they were entered as.

It's not a question of how good the beer tastes, if the style is supposed to have certain characteristics and your beer doesn't match those then you'll get a lower score, regardless of how tasty it is.

So, your beer could be fantastic, but a bit darker than expected, and you'll get dinged.

Good luck in the future.

My blonde got dinged for being too hoppy, so you are certainly correct.

 

[sidepart]

Eh. I've had a beer win BOS, and not win any awards since. Another beer submitted to four competitions won 2 medals at around a score of 40, and two competitions where it scored around 20.

There's a lot of variation in judging. As much as I like medals because this is the first hobby that I feel I'm actually good at (and it's fun to brag, and be praised)...it's really not a big deal. The judges I'm sure try their best to be consistent, and I'm absolutely sure there's nothing sinister or incestuous (favoring) going on behind the scenes. People are different, and it is what it is.

There are two reasons I enter competitions right now. I want style judges to rip apart my beer and let me know if there's something unusual, off flavors, etc and what they recommend to fix it. I also enter to try and get my name out there a little bit. Hey, if I ever start a brewery, it's nice to have a little name recognition to go along with it.

 

[blaster_54738]

I can't tell if you're implying that there was some sort of favoritism being applied, or if the winning beers were simply better by virtue of the fact that they were brewed by people more active in the brewing community, and thus more likely to produce good beers. But in case it's the former, my understanding is that the judging is blind. That is, the judges would have no idea whose beer they were judging - yours, or their buddy's from their homebrew club - until after they'd already assigned a score and selected a winner.

I'm implying there was favoritism. Each of the bottle tags applied had name of brewer, style, so on and the last line was homebrew club. Like I said the most important thing to me is that I and my friends/family enjoy my beer. I entered one comp and got crappy results (mostly came from shipping I'm sure) but it's not worth the entry cost's for me.

ETA I'm not trying to discourage anybody from entering them just giving my experience with the one I entered. Like I said in my previous posts, if I can find something local where I can hand deliver my beer I'd probably enter it.

 

[Wynne-R]

Every competition I’ve had anything to do with, the labels are stripped and replaced with an entry number. It would take quite an effort to fix it. A lot of people would have to be in on it. It’s hard to imagine anyone would go to the trouble.

These things take years to build up and they wouldn’t happen except for all the volunteers. If word got out it was crooked it would die a quick well-deserved death.

 

[Yooper]

Every competition I’ve had anything to do with, the labels are stripped and replaced with an entry number. It would take quite an effort to fix it. A lot of people would have to be in on it. It’s hard to imagine anyone would go to the trouble.

These things take years to build up and they wouldn’t happen except for all the volunteers. If word got out it was crooked it would die a quick well-deserved death.

That's how the competitions are run. The organizer pulls off the entry tag, and assigns a number to the entry. The steward and judges never see a name, or even a "name" of the beer, just "Entry 205, Style 8A, Entrant #415". To fix a competition would require many people who would cheat, disregard BJCP rules and guidelines, and forget the BJCP style guidelines.

The organizer usually doesn't judge, and judges do not judge beer styles that they may have entered in the same competition.

It's certainly possible that there is a rogue homebrew club that would want all the medals for themselves, but then why on earth would they set up a competition and get BJCP judges for it? That doesn't make any sense to me.