I’m hoping I can get some feedback on a judging/score sheet. I’m organizing a small competition, and trying to keep it low key. Our club doesn’t do a whole lot in terms of formal/BJCP competitions, we normally do more of a popular vote kind of judging for beers. I’d like to steer things towards giving more feedback on beers, but I think a full BJCP scoresheet will scare people off. We have one BJCP judge (Not me, but I’m working on it). Any thoughts on the scoresheet below? Too complicated, not enough? I was thinking about adding some checkboxes for common off flavors, maybe a key at the bottom for some of the flavor descriptors.
The competition is not style specific, but is sponsored by a local hop farm. Any style can be submitted as long as you use their hops. There are currently 12 entries.
Remove the brewer’s name from the sheet. Use an entry id so the beers remain anonymous.
The spider graphs are cool but you might want to cut down on the number of items in each.
Here’s the one I designed for my club, with 8 per page so you’ll need a paper trimmer (I hope this link works for you):
It’s very simple, people seem to appreciate the simplicity.
Before the tasting, announce the BJCP style of the beer and discuss the style parameters at a high level. Many people will immediately pull out their phones and look up the guidelines themselves.
Then ask them to rate the beer from both aspects of style alone, and pleasure alone. Finally, tally up all the scores on all the sheets, announce winners, and hand the sheets back to the entrant. That’s how we did it for many years. It works.
When we do these semi-informal tastings, both the entrants and the judges are anonymous – only one or two people in the club know whose beers are being poured and judged. This is helpful for the most unbiased feedback and nobody has to hold anything back but can be as brutally honest as they see fit.
Thanks Santoch. I did see that one a while ago, I really like that one. I’m a little concerned that I won’t be able to get people to commit to a style (We’re not radegast yet). I like the simplicity of your also, I’m just worried I’m not giving enough feedback.
I’d really like to give people meaningful feedback, although good in means good out. I’d really love to grow my club, I don’t think it can survive as is. Right now it’s a mess of random people, I’d love to get to the point of giving the maltose falcons a run at the comps and raise some money for charity.
Denny, I absolutely believe the bjcp sheet is better and more thorough then whatever I come up with, I just think if I throw a thousand check boxes and a full page score sheet per beer at my club I’ll get riots.
Are you worried about pushback from the people doing the judging or the people receiving the feedback? Or both? (Sounds like it could be both).
I would suggest introducing the club to the BJCP scoresheets and have an education topic about how to fill them out and what they mean. If you have a local competition maybe find the director of that comp, a local National/Master level judge (if you have one) to come give a talk. Encourage your members to judge local comps (they don’t have to be BJCP ranked). Learning how to give feedback to another brewer will also help you receive it. Do a group send off to a comp (like NHC Regionals) and then have everyone sit down with their scoresheets together and go over them.
How small is your club? Are their other local clubs in the area you could lean on for help as well?