Yep, I'm sure all about organization. Nashville probably has a big stack of unorganized score sheets that they're dreading collating, stuffing into envelopes, addressing, and mailing, whereas KC probably had an addressed, alphabetized stack of envelopes ready for every entrant that they sorted the score sheets into after every flight.
The old "clean as you cook" adage applies here, I think.
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They say opinions are like arseholes but I think the saying really should assumptions are like aresholes. If you want to know how a region organizes and handles score sheets show up and volunteer to help.
I am not a member of the organizing club/group in Nashville but I was there judging for multiple categories. There was a team of 3 to 4 individuals who collected the score sheets from each category as they were finished and recorded in the computer. They were alphabetically sorted into folders with the entrants name on them the day of the competition.
They could not mail score sheets until all categories were finished and all data was submitted to the AHA. The AHA set timelines and deadlines for all phases of the competition. So far I have not heard one situation where any of the judging centers including Nashville has surpassed a deadline.
A little patience and understanding of what it takes to receive, sort, organize, and judge over 700 competition entries with a completely volunteer staff goes a long way.
For those that were all bent out of shape regarding the call for judges I agree that the wording of the post previously referenced was unfortunate. If it helps There were Recognized, Certified, National, and Master judges present throughout the judging. Gary Glass from the AHA was also present and judging at the Nashville location on the main Friday, Saturday, and Sunday judging sessions. All categories were judged by anywhere from 3 to 10 pairs of judges. Every pair included at least one ranked BJCP judge. The Mini-BOS was judged by to highest ranking 2 to 4 judges from the judging pairs of the category. Many of the non BJCP judges I encountered were extremely experienced brewers, a few professional brewers, and some judges who have yet to take the tasting exam. Pretty much like every BJCP competition ever done in the nearly 10 years I have been involved with homebrewing and competitions. This included the last two categories that they were unable to finish during the main weekend of judging.
If you entered the NHC for feedback you entered the wrong competition. If you are worried about getting beers through to the second round than submit better beers. The over all quality of entries was very low. There was a ton of mediocre beer, a good bit of truly bad beer, and a rare few outstanding beers. It was not a fun competition to judge for me and I have had far better beer at other small BJCP competitions. If you brew really good beer and submitted to Nashville you are probably in good shape and need to get bottles ready for round two.
Other notes I do not care for the new checklist score sheets. I pride myself on giving good feedback when judging a competition and I feel like I am cheating an entrant if I do not give some explanation of what I sensed for their entry. The new score sheets are not well suited or structured for that. There is certainly some room but it is limited and the AHA really did not seem to want judges to write many comments as was previously mentioned in this thread.
Well enough of my own bitching about others whining and bitching.
Congrats to those of you who did advance entries to the second round and good luck to those that have yet to get their results.
I spent part of this weekend getting new batches of my two advancing entries going and in the fermenters.
. Thanks for the responses guys, and for all the hard work you do.
