Return-Path: owner-judge at synchro.com Received: from srvr8.engin.umich.edu (root at srvr8.engin.umich.edu [141.212.2.81]) by srvr5.engin.umich.edu (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id AAA08106 for ; Sat, 1 Jun 1996 00:16:42 -0400 (EDT) Received: from twins.rs.itd.umich.edu (twins.rs.itd.umich.edu [141.211.83.39]) by srvr8.engin.umich.edu (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id AAA27026 for ; Sat, 1 Jun 1996 00:16:41 -0400 (EDT) Received: by twins.rs.itd.umich.edu (8.7.5/2.2) with X.500 id AAA02252; Sat, 1 Jun 1996 00:16:40 -0400 (EDT) Received: from uu6.psi.com by twins.rs.itd.umich.edu (8.7.5/2.2) with SMTP id AAA02239; Sat, 1 Jun 1996 00:16:35 -0400 (EDT) Received: by uu6.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via UUCP; id AA02477 for ; Fri, 31 May 96 23:59:08 -0400 Received: (from majordom at localhost) by synchro.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id XAA05414 for judge-digest-outgoing; Fri, 31 May 1996 23:38:38 -0400 Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 23:38:38 -0400 Message-Id: <199606010338.XAA05414 at synchro.com> From: owner-judge-digest at synchro.com To: judge-digest at synchro.com Subject: judge-digest V1 #1287 Reply-To: judge at synchro.com Errors-To: owner-judge-digest at synchro.com Precedence: bulk judge-digest Friday, 31 May 1996 Volume 01 : Number 1287 ============================================================================ J u d g e N e t - t h e b e e r j u d g e d i g e s t ============================================================================ Moderator: Chuck Cox Archivist: Spencer Thomas Publisher: SynchroSystems Submissions: judge at synchro.com Administration: judge-request at synchro.com Archive: http://realbeer.com/spencer/judge BJCP info: geninfo at bjcp.synchro.com ============================================================================ contents: Lot's of responses RE: Combining categories collapsed categories Re: Collapsed categories Re: NHC '96, Collapsing Categories smoke beers Bay area exam ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Dennis Davison Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 00:06:08 +0600 Subject: Lot's of responses > In judge-digest Volume 01 : Number 1284 Mark Johnston says: > > > >Many people have been citing previous awards as evidence of poor judging. > >(This took BOS at (local comp here) but only scored a (your "bad" score > >here) at the NHC.) > > > >While there are many blatant examples of poor judging available, I'm not > >entirely sure that this one is the best argument. Time, environment, and > >handling can all collaborate to make two bottles from the same batch taste > >radically different. Steve Dempsey Replied: > This is my sentiment as well. I have the same sob story about > how my beer was judged far lower at the NHC than a local event. > But I can make the same comparison between many local events. > Different judges in a different setting at a different time > will yield different scores. Guaranteed. So I realize people > are different and take these lumps as they come. I don't enjoy > my beer any less after an unfavorable score. It's true, lets face it. It just doesn't have to be a regional thing either. I've sent beers around the country and found differences in how judges nationwide perceive and relate guidelines to what's sitting their in front of them. Experience level plays a strong roll in how beers are judged. It's not always the case but generally speaking a judge with 50 experience points and travels around their region generally has a better understanding. Those that judge just a couple of competitions a year don't have the broad experience to help them. The question is what do we do to change this? How do we get 1500 people on the same track? Does this mean we scape the essay and concentrate on the tasting for the exam? Lot's of difficult questions do arise. Currently, when I see large discrepancies, I laugh, and shrug it off. Steve continues: > Let's face it, truly good judging happens only when you have > an abundance of time and judges. Most competitions are run > as one furious marathon using whatever judges show up. Only > a few places around the country have the dense population of > judges to do large events well. Otherwise, rare is the > organizer who would not press whatever warm body is available > to fill out a panel, or overload the available judges with > 15 beers per flight in order to get the job finished on the > appointed day. Time is the key. Since organizers don't know exactly how many entries they'll have until a week or so before hand, and since the room that they use is arranged far in advance, generally with a time frame set, like they have to be out of it by 5:00, and then coupled with judges that just decide not to show up for a commitment, you do get pressed for time and bodies. One of the problems I've been seeing for the past few years as opposed to several years back is that every club now wants to hold a competition or two each year. The Chicago area has close to a dozen competitions a year. When people are married with children and other interests, this weakens the judge pool since they only go to one or two events. John DeCarlo writes: > What is *not* acceptable, is for judges to write blatantly contradictory > comments like "needs more hops" and "too hoppy--cut down on hops". Those > judges should talk it out and come to some sort of understanding--calling in > the judge coordinator/organizer for assistance if necessary. I have also been > involved in this--sometimes winning, sometimes losing, but always with the goal > of coming to a common understanding of what to expect for a style and how to > evaluate the beer. John what I cut out of your message was your reference to thresholds judges have. Wouldn't this also be considered a threshold item? This could also be explained as pallete burnout. I have yet to ask the other judge to see his score sheet. Maybe this should also be required for competitions. Judges exchange score sheets. This however adds time to the judging, which most organizers don't have the luxury of. Bill writes: > Most competition state that if there are fewer then six entries the category > will be collapsed into another category. > > What useful purpose does this serve? I can't think of any. I can think of one. If there are three entries, do you award all three places? Or just two or one? What kind of cut off do you use? I've had organizers call me asking me what I thought about on how they planned on collapsing categories. It's not done just on a whim. I was disappointed in February when I went to a competition only to find that one of the collapsed categories contained four of my entries with three other beers included. But it happens. > Does it make the competition easier to judge? NO. It actually doesn't make much difference in how easy it is to judge. Let's get rid of Herb Beers also because they aren't easy to judge, and Barley Wines can only be limited to six so the judges don't get drunk, and APA's are limited to six because of pallete burnout. > Does it make the brewers happier? I never was happy when a beer of mine was > collapsed and lost even though it very well could have won in its category > and had in previous competitions. Ah, but remember that the organizer states that they could be collapsed, (some don't and it should be mentioned). So going into the competition you knew it could happen. What's the problem? The organizer is excusing their right to do it. I could scream why didn't a 42 point Barley Wine place in just Barley Wines. But I really wish I could have judged a category that had 4 , 40+ beers in it. > From: "Andrew R Thomas" > I cant imagine how bad some people must need the judging points > to do all of that work for 5 points.....essentially for nothing. It's not the points, it's the challenge. I was Site and Judge Director for the Chicago Site this year. It was a challenge. It was fun also to see the fruits of my labor finish on Sunday. Actually, Saturday night was a giant burden off my shoulders. Yes, I had help from several other people Roger Deshner, Chuck Wettergreen were the other directors, and then we had four other CBS members help unpack. - -- Dennis Davison ddavison at execpc.com BJCP Representative for the Midwest BJCP President http://www.execpc.com/~ddavison/bjcp.html ------------------------------ From: Robert Paolino Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 00:08:26 -0500 (CDT) Subject: RE: Combining categories Bill Giffin wrote about Collapsed categories: >Most competition state that if there are fewer then six entries the category >will be collapsed into another category. > >What useful purpose does this serve? I can't think of any. I can think of some obvious useful purposes. It makes it possible for an entry to win an award, for one thing. What do you do with a beer if there aren't enough of that style to warrant giving awards? Do you send the entry back? Do you just score it and tell the entrant, "sorry. good beer, but not enough in the style to give an award"? Say you've got only two entries in a style, one with a 42 score and the other a 26. Do you award first and second (to say nothing of third) on that basis??? Hell, if I recall such things correctly, even in a horse race, they don't pay off for "show" with only 4 horses in the race. Collapsing categories allows for the possibility of giving an award by combining it with other "orphan" entries (or added on to a similar category that does have enough entries). Ideally, there's some similarity in the styles (English pale ales with American pale ales, or with bitters), but that's not _essential_. As long as they're all judged according to their merits for the style entered, you make the same kinds of decisions for awards as you do in a BOS judging, except you have the additional benefit of numerical scores. You hope that the scores are consistent enough across categories combined that you can order them by scores. I bet that the 42 beer will still do fine in the combined category and the 26 will not. >Does it make the brewers happier? I never was happy when a beer of mine was >collapsed and lost even though it very well could have won in its category >and had in previous competitions. I'm not sure what you mean here by "could have won." Do you mean that you weren't happy because you had a "second place" beer....out of the two in the style, but didn't get anything because it didn't make the top three when combined with four entries from other orphan categories to make a combined flight of six?? (This is not a comment on your brewing capabilities, or anyone else's; it's only a hypothetical to illustrate the point.) >Collapsing categories should be discontinued as it is counter productive to >the spirit of a good competition. I feel that we should have a rule that no >category will be collapsed. I don't see how it is counter-productive. All it is saying is that an entry has to be _at least_ in the top 50% in its flight (3 out of 6) to deserve an award. The fact that you may have gotten an award with that beer in one event and not another may mean that the quality of the entries was higher in one event than another, that a particular bottle was for various reasons in better shape (age, shipping, storage, just plain random variation) in one place than another, that the inevitable variation in judging in different settings or from judge to judge had an effect, et cetera. If you wish to have a rule such as you propose in a competition you run, fine, but the rest of us may continue to combine categories to be able to give brewers a chance at meaningful awards. Now, there _is_ another way around the "problem" that Bill perceives. In a handful of competitions, awards are given based on scores rather than rank order, with the possibility of multiple awards or none at all for the same "place." The AHA/NHC "certificates" are one example, using the good, very good, and excellent fixed score ranges printed on the score sheets. The Wisconsin State Fair sets point ranges based on all the entries' scores (rather than being pre-determined) and you get ribbons if your scores fall into those ranges. In the WSF, a category may have two second places and no firsts, or it could have three firsts depending on the scores. Maybe a category with less than stellar entries will have no firsts or seconds, only thirds, while a category with lots of great beers will have multiple firsts. It's not perfect--you might not end up "happy" if your entry is in a category where the beers are just fine, but the judges consistently give lower scores than another set of judges might give on the same top three beers. But the principle of using absolute standards, however they may be determined, is a valid alternative to the usual 1-2-3 ranking. There are many ways of approaching competitions, and the BJCP should continue to allow such flexibility. Now go have a beer, Bob Paolino Madison rpaolino at earth.execpc.com Have a beer today... for your palate and for good health ------------------------------ From: Btalk at aol.com Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 07:45:30 -0400 Subject: collapsed categories Collapsing categories have no effect on making the contest easier or harder to judge. It does serve to make the contest easier to manage for the organizers. Also, collapsing categories controls the cost of running a contest by reducing the number of ribbons/prizes that are handed out. This is particularly important if the ribbons/awards are not donated and the contest is struggling to break even. Later, Bob Talkiewicz, Binghamton, NY ------------------------------ From: Bill Giffin Date: Thu, 30 May 1996 20:16:17 -0500 Subject: Re: Collapsed categories Top of the morning to ye all, Al K says: > >It makes the competition easier to afford... i.e. it makes it easier for >the organizers to break even. If you have only 35 entries in the competition, >there's no way to pay for 29 * 3 ribbons, even really cheap ones and still >break even. You need to have a ribbons availiable for every category you have in your competition. If you don't you will get caught as one of the competitions in NE did by not having enough ribbons for the competition. If you only expect 35 entries I do not see any way you can breakeven. Breakeven for the competition MALT runs in Portland, ME is somewhere around 175 entries. If you can't afford ribbons use certificates printed on a laser printer cost of each of these is about $0.10. Al K says: > Remember that few competitions have to >pay for not only one room for a whole day (1.5 days if you count the >BOS), but also rooms for all the first rounds. Who say the AHA has to pay for the rooms to hold the AHA NHC. The Portland competition has managed to get two and three function rooms eash year for just agreeing to book a certain number of rooms. We even managed to get a break on the room rate. This is why a hotel function room is a good place to hold a competiton. The lighting is always good, there are very few distracting odors, and it is free. We had the room for two days by the way as the last time MALT ran the competition the BJCP exam was administered on Sunday. Mark Johnston says: >Collapsing categories makes it easier for the organizer to better allocate >what may be limited judging resources. It is NOT counter-productive if it >avoids the snafus involving inexperienced judges, etc. that accompany >out-of-control large competitions. Sorry the above doesn't work. By having a number of small flights in a competition you can balance out the work load for all the judges and have the competition finish the judging sooner. Remember one entry wins one ribbon. Another reason to avoid collapsing categories is that more interest is created in styles that are not entered because they always get collapsed. If a brewer wins a first because his beer was the only beer entered in that category, you can bet that next year there will be more then one beer entered in that category. May you be in heaven an hour before the devil knows you are dead, Bill Bill Giffin 61 Pleasant St. Richmond, ME 04357 (207)-737-2015 All you need is a few good friends and plenty to drink because thirst is a terrible thing! ------------------------------ From: Scott Bickham Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 09:53:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: NHC '96, Collapsing Categories Regarding the NHC, I had the opportunity to compare scoresheets from the Pensacola first round and the Spririt of Free Beer, which took place on May 18th. Only two of the entries were the same, but I submitted a similar number in each competition. Judging ability aside, the results are best interpreted by the breakdown of judging ranks (allowing for double counting if the same person judged different entries): NHC SoFB National 1 2 Certified 3 6 Recognized 5 4 Apprentice 4 2 Not in the BJCP 2 0 The comments were generally much better on the SoFB scoresheets, even when the judging levels were identical. In the AHA's defense, they did send a couple of staff people to help run the competition, but the problem was obviously a lack of qualified judges. If this were any other competition, I would stifle my complaints and not enter again. However, I enjoy competing in the NHC, but unfortunately the AHA forces good brewers from the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast to send their entries to a site where the judging is not at the level it should be for this type of event. It was particularly frustrating for me, since there was an excess of good judges at the Lancaster site. Regarding the collapsing of categories, there are arguments both ways. If the competition organizers choose to use the full set of AHA Guidelines, then collapsing makes sense after the distribution of the entries has been determined. It is simply not cost-efffective to purchase and award ribbons in categories where there are 0-6 entries. However with pre-established categories, such as the World Cup of Beer, the Mazer Cup, etc. then any deserving entry should get a ribbon, even if there are fewer than six entries per category. Of course I violated this at the 1996 Spirit of Belgium, where I combined the single entry in the Oud Bruin category with the four entries in the Oud Bruin with Fruit category. See you in N'awlins. Scott - -- ======================================================================== Naval Research Laboratory, Code 6691 E-mail: bickham at dave.nrl.navy.mil Complex Systems Theory Branch Home or BJCP: 7507 Swan Point Way Washington, D.C 20375 Columbia, MD 21045 (202) 404-8632 FAX: (202) 404-7546 (410) 290-7721 ========================================================================= ------------------------------ From: "Andrew R Thomas" Date: 31 May 1996 09:27:09 GMT Subject: smoke beers - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS MAIL MESSAGE IS FROM THE INTERNET AND MAY HAVE BEEN READ, COPIED, OR MODIFIED BY USERS OTHER THAN INTENDED RECIPIENTS. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >From: "P.S. Edwards" >Well, my NHC 1st round score sheets finally arrived (seems the >keypunchers entered the wrong zip code into the data base). >Mostly, I thought the judging my four entries got was pretty competent. >I did learn that judges want ***SMOKE*** in a Classic Style Smoked Beer, >not just "smoke" (this was a smoked porter). I have to relate a funny experiment that I did with a close friend, Guy Hagner, about 7 years ago. We wanted to make the perfect rauchbier, and had smoked some malt in a homemade smoker. We made two beers with the same procedure, one using 100% smoked malt and one 100% unsmoked malt. Decoction mashed, 2206, blah blah blah. We then took the two beers and blended them so we had 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% smoke to see where the "perfect" blend was for a Spezial look-alike. We tuned up on the 0%, then drank the 25% (initially very smoky). We thought that was it. We drank the 50%, it tasted similar to the 25% but seemed to be dying out. We jumped straight to the 100% smoke, and it tasted like the others. What's the point? Simple. A normal palate burns out on smoke incredibly fast. For those that have been in Bamberg, you will no doubt recall that at the end of the first pint of Schlenkerla, you were tasting more beer than smoke. The first sip is way different from the last. I have never found any other beer flavor component which behaved this way on the palate. So now go back to P.S. Edwards comment "judges wanted more smoke". Most judges are not experienced with rauchbiers and are unaware of this phenomenon. If they drank that beer toward the end of the pack, those comments would not surprise me. If they drank toward the front of the pack, the comments probably said "holy smoke, tone down the smoke!". Just food for thought. andy thomas, thomaar at texaco.com ------------------------------ From: Jeremy Bergsman Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 09:28:07 -0800 Subject: Bay area exam I am starting the process of scheduling a BJCP exam for sometime this winter. If anyone is interested in taking it then, please drop me a line. If you don't think you are ready please contact me anyway, my club (Worts of Wisdom) will be doing some prep classes. There should be no problem getting ready by then. Note that there is an exam coming up soon if you are anxious: 6/9 Santa Rosa, CA Byron Burch (707) 544-2520 - -- Jeremy Bergsman jeremybb at leland.stanford.edu http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~jeremybb (415) 988-0118 ------------------------------ End of judge-digest V1 #1287 **************************** Send subscription cancellations & changes to judge-request at synchro.com. Messages sent to the wrong address will be ignored.