Judgment can only come from skilled, experienced use of your senses. As WBC wrote, examine them with all your senses. For training purposes, it helps to have fresh examples near to hand for calibration purposes. If I were you, I'd take your samples down to your LHBS and ask to compare. If the chaps there are cool, they'll let you do this. Perhaps, if the chaps need some convincing, wrangle some of your local homebrew club members to join you in a bit of seminar.
All I'm saying is, you have to know without a doubt what good ingredients look/taste/smell/feel like before you can make a judgement. That's something incredibly difficult to describe verbally.
Cheers,
Bob