So you're saying beer judging is subjective

[gbx]

Not to say I do this all the time, but it's quite fun brewing and entering a total ****ing disaster of a beer, gusher, sour, infected and enter it into the comps, just to see what they say. To my surprise, one of the worst beers I made actually came back with a decent score, which made me laugh. My inspiration came from some dude that actually entered a chili beer, complete with fermented hot dogs and all.

This is another reason why being a judge stopped being fun. Usually this sort of crap lands in specialty categories that can be avoided and left for the judges grinding up their rank but the last flight I judged had a US IPA that smelled like it was dry hopped with weed. It was fun filling out the score sheet with lots of pot references but I didn't really want to taste it. What else is in there? Is the next beer in the flight a fentanyl IPA?

Brew what you like and have fun, but take comps for what they are, subjective. Once in awhile you get a great BJCP that will actually teach you something.

Comps are for winning medals, if you want a great BJCP judge to teach you something, find a homebrew club with BJCP judges and sit down with them in person. A great one will do their best to taste the beer blind and do a mini judging right in front of you THEN start asking questions and help you figure out what went wrong/could be better. A crappy one (like me) will do a cold reading and ask questions about the ingredients/process before committing to anything (this can still be helpful but not as impressive)

 

[Qhrumphf]

This is another reason why being a judge stopped being fun. Usually this sort of crap lands in specialty categories that can be avoided and left for the judges grinding up their rank but the last flight I judged had a US IPA that smelled like it was dry hopped with weed. It was fun filling out the score sheet with lots of pot references but I didn't really want to taste it. What else is in there? Is the next beer in the flight a fentanyl IPA?

That doesn't bother me. Close relatives and certain hops will absolutely give that impression.

But yes. Weird and poor. Had a comp where someone submitted "prison hooch" complete with TP in the bottle. Fortunately wasn't my category but heard it wasn't as bad as it could have been, somehow.

Judged a "Sourdough Kvass with beets and salt" once. It won category because it was as described and very well executed, but I didn't like it at all.

Had one with a dead wolf spider in the bottle. Was my category, fortunately the other judge pair. I was dumb and curious enough to taste it (after they pulled the second bottle refusing to judge the first). Most horrificly infected thing I've tasted. The other ranking judge (who's been at it decades) gave it below courtesy, IIRC. Said it was the lowest he'd given before.

And then there are the bad quick sours. The isovaleric and butyric bombs. I've given a 13 before for a rotten parmesan baby vomit Berliner Weisse before.

Comps are for winning medals, if you want a great BJCP judge to teach you something, find a homebrew club with BJCP judges and sit down with them in person. A great one will do their best to taste the beer blind and do a mini judging right in front of you THEN start asking questions and help you figure out what went wrong/could be better. A crappy one (like me) will do a cold reading and ask questions about the ingredients/process before committing to anything (this can still be helpful but not as impressive)

This.

People forget that in a sanctioned comp, judges don't know you, what your recipe was, what you intented, what your process was, all they know is the beer in front of them and what style you said it was. That's not great for fixing your brewing problems. Even the best judges are still flying blind.

If you're trying to fix problems in your beer, sitting down with a judge and discussing will be far more helpful. Most clubs have one or two or many BJCP judges.

Although don't make the mistake of thinking a BJCP judge necessarily had a better palate than you. They just may be better at isolating and describing what they taste.

 

[Braufessor]

Lots of good points and I agree with much of it. I brewed for close to 15 years without entering any comps. I kind of refocused my brewing at that point (most of my brewing to that point was mediocre, inconsistent, etc). I entered a few comps and kind of ended up all over the board..... I had some good ones that did well, others that scored poorly and I got some good feedback. It actually really helped be focus in on my brewing and I explored new styles and gravitated toward 6-10 styles that I really tried to perfect over a 2-3 year period. In the end, it made me a much better brewer as I entered many comps with the same beer, got lots of feedback, tweaked my recipes and processes...... It made a big difference for me for sure. I live quite a ways from any large home-brew club, so it was kind of good way for me to get that type of feedback I could not get another way.

I enter some here and there, but not as many as I used to. At the most, I was probably sending 4-6 entries to 10 or 12 comps. per year. Entering the same beers, or different batches of same beer, many times really allowed me to ignore outlying comments and look for consistent criticism or praise.

To me, there are kind of 3 reasons to enter comps -

1.) Feeback/Evaluation - if you are doing this, you almost really have to enter a lot. Now that I enter comps sporadically, I really find the "feedback" sort of worthless to some degree because I am getting one set of sheets, on one beer, one time..... and that is it. You need many perspectives, and you need to be an active participant in reevaluating your beer with the feedback you get and rebrewing the beer multiple times for more evaluation. In my opinion, that is the only way the "feedback" concept is going to pay off.

2.) To win.... that is why they call it a competition. Whatever the motive..... pure competitiveness, medals, some great prizes that are given out.... Nothing wrong with entering just because you are trying to beat people.

3.) Fun and to support home-brew clubs and local organizations that are hosting. Some contests are fund raisers for a cause, some are fundraisers for homebrew clubs, some are just a way for a bunch of people who like beer to get together and talk beer. This is a good enough reason to enter as well.

In the end, even though there are good and bad judges, and even though it is still subjective it isn't all "blind luck" either. Blind tasting of a decent sample size of your beers can tell you (in general) if you are consistently producing very good beer.
If you enter 50 beers in big comps (I am talking 300-400-500+ entries or bigger, the ones run by big home-brew clubs with lots of support, and lots of solid judges) ..... people who consistently brew very good beer are generally medalling somewhere in the 33%-50% range over 50+ entries, and spaced out over a 8-12 different comps. And, they are probably also getting low to mid 30's (or better) on almost all of the beers they enter. From my experience and observations, if you really want a "blind" validation of how your beer stacks up, that would be a pretty good benchmark.

*** OH, my favorite feed back of all time (from a well known Master Judge): On a british ordinary bitter - "Faint vomit notes initially...... fades quickly, however, and quite nice after that." Scored something like a 34 or so. And, he was right..... it did smell a little "vommity" on first whiff

 

[dmtaylor]

This happens a lot -- I've seen many instances where the same beer judged twice has a difference of 20-25 points -- even from the same judge! Most judges suck these days. The newer judges don't have to take the big essay exam that some of us did >10 years ago. Also look at their rank. Many "judges" have no real qualifications whatsoever.

It's a crapshoot. If you really must enter comps to feel some independent validation of quality or to improve your brewing, then you NEED to enter each beer into AT LEAST 3 if not 4 competitions, weed out all the scoresheets for idiotic comments (probably about 40% of them), then take the average of what remains. That's the way to get the best feedback. Otherwise you can get bent out of shape or conversely overly excited for a beer that is actually really good or really bad.

 

[myelo]

This happens a lot -- I've seen many instances where the same beer judged twice has a difference of 20-25 points -- even from the same judge!

Same thing happens in wine judging, where there's been a fair amount of research. In one study they gave wine judges the same wine 3 times in a row. The scores often ranged from like 87 one time to 95 the next. Exact same wine. And some judges were much worse. Only about 10% were consistent. And when the test was repeated the next year those 10% were inconsistent, suggesting they were just lucky the first time.

If you give wine experts two samples of the same wine, one with a table wine label and the with a grand cru label, they consistently score the "table wine" lower.

In another study, wine judges were given two identical white wines but one was colored red. They ALL judged them completely different.

Bottom line ... human beings aren't very good at this. If you want relaible results, get your beer judged by something like a Labrador retriever.

... but he will probably still prefer water from the toilet.